17:45 - 20:00
Thursday-Panel
Chair/s:
Anna Pless
Discussant/s:
Patrick Michael Kuhn
Meeting Room R

Anna Pless, Paul Tromp, Dick Houtman
The Growing Education Gap? Secularization and Secular Cultural Voting in Western Europe (1981-2008)

Klara Dentler
Ambivalence Across the Globe: Investigating the Effects of Political Ambivalence on Vote Switching in 51 Multi-Party Systems

Fernando Feitosa
Why So Different? An Analysis of the Cross-National Differences in the Ideological Extremism-Voter Turnout Nexus

Resul Umit
Polling Station Size and Electoral Outcomes

Michal Kotnarowski
Electoral volatility – what can we learn from panel data?
Polling Station Size and Electoral Outcomes
Resul Umit
University of Oslo

The cost of voting is higher for socially and economically disadvantaged communities. We know that their crowded polling stations have longer lines, and those who vote at such stations once are less likely to vote again in the future. However, we do not know whether the implied effect of station size is causal. With an instrumental variables approach to discontinuities in station size in Turkey, this study provides the strongest causal evidence yet: station size decreases not only voter turnout but incumbent vote share. If incumbents are punished for crowded stations in the same election, then there would be strong incentives for governments to distribute the resources for electoral management more equally, increasing the participation of the disadvantaged communities in elections.