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Party Systems Electoral Competition(Closeness of elections) : Hypothesis 7: The higher the level of electoral competition the higher the voter turnout. Argument and operationalisation of closeness or electoral competition: The measure of closeness is the gap (in vote shares) between the leading and the second parties. They considered closeness to matter. When there is a gap of 10 points between the leading and the second parties, turnout is reduced by 1.4 points. It should be stressed that they are measuring only the impact of overall systemic competitiveness. They argued that election may be very close at the national level but not close at all in a number of districts. Those results thus underestimate the true impact of closeness. Number of Political Parties: Hypothesis 8: Turnout tends to be lower in countries with so many number of political parties. Argument and operationalisation of number of political parties: Even though they considered multi-party system to offer more choices to electors which can boost turnout, they however, argued that the greater the number of parties, the more complex the system, and the more difficult it can be for electors to make up their minds. Moreover, the greater the number of parties, the less likely it is that there will be a one-party majority government. (Jackman 1986) considers elections that produce coalition governments as being less decisive since the government there after the elections is a product of backroom deals among the parties rather than the electoral outcome per se. Their findings on the number of parties confirmed Jackman’s finding that turnout tends to be reduced when the number of parties increases. Turnout declines by 4 points when the number of parties moves from 2 to 6, but by only 2 points from 6 parties to 10 and from 10 to 15. Studies of Electoral Turnout in Africa. Another study in 2007 by Michelle Kuenzi and Gina M.S. Lambright also sought to examine the factors that influence voter turnout in sub-Saharan Africa’s multiparty regimes that have had two consecutive elections since the democratic transitions in the 1990s. The strategy adopted by the two authors was to review most of the significant research findings on voter turnout in other parts of the world before they selected from among these factors they considered applicable to Africa’s context. They therefore used an “eclectic approach” to scrutinize the influence of variables associated with several theoretical approaches on turnout. To this end, using aggregate-level data, they studied the influence of the following categories of variables on turnout in Africa at the cross-national level. Institutional variables include; concurrency of presidential and legislative elections, type of electoral formula, bicameralism, presidentialism, and multipartism. Contextual variables include; the level of democracy, media exposure, and electoral experience. Socio-economic context include; urban population, GDP per capita, and annual growth rates. |
