Why do immigrant-origin voter groups show lower turnout in established democracies? Previous studies (Spies et al. 2020) demonstrated that the causal models underlying individual voting participation are the same across immigrant-origin and native voters, i.e. lower levels on positive determinants or higher levels on negative determinants add up to lower turnout in these models. Why is that? Are immigrant-origin voters different because they grew up differently, because they have other resource levels or because they are mobilised differently by political actors? Or a combination of these explanations? This paper integrates theoretical notions of voting abstinence across both immigrant-origin and native voting groups by differentiating between:
(a) socialisation experiences (voters are less socialised into political activity when their parents are less integrated politically),
(b) resources (voters have fewer resources for voting, such as education, or knowledge about the political system) and
(c) mobilisation (political parties mobilise voters differently, depending on strategic considerations and residence patterns).
In a new novel data set of the Immigrant German Election Study 2021, the paper tests pre-registered hypotheses on representative samples from several immigrant-origin and the native groups in the 2021 Bundestag election. Path models, using temporal sequence in a panel survey structure and endogenous intermediary variables, are employed to test the expectations. The empirical findings help to explain the consistent puzzle of lower turnout among immigrant-origin voters by the integration of theoretical explanations of abstention across all voters.