Holidays and turnout at presidential elections in France: An update

This short note aims to update the model of Dubois and Ben Lakhdar, which showed the significant impact of holidays on the turnout at French presidential elections. The main result of this update is that holidays are still relevant in the explanation of turnout after the sample was expanded in both spatial and temporal dimensions. More precisely, estimations from a sample composed of the maximum number of territories (96 Metropolitan departments) and of the maximum number of periods (9 elections between 1965 and 2012) indicate that holidays affect the turnout rate by about 1 point. © 2012 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.