Informace o publikaci
Same rules, different importance : the impact of concurrent elections and complexity on invalid voting
| Autoři | |
|---|---|
| Rok publikování | 2025 |
| Druh | Článek v odborném periodiku |
| Časopis / Zdroj | Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties |
| Fakulta / Pracoviště MU | |
| Citace | |
| www | article - open access |
| Doi | https://doi.org/10.1080/17457289.2025.2513297 |
| Klíčová slova | Invalid voting; elections; municipalities; regions; Slovakia |
| Přiložené soubory | |
| Popis | Concurrence of elections is among the factors that contribute to invalid voting. Various countries hold multiple elections simultaneously, and in such an environment, voters may find it complicated to manage their votes. Prior research shows that this applies to mergers of elections with different rules. The literature is however underdeveloped in identifying the impact on invalid voting in cases where two elections with identical rules but varying salience are merged. We address this gap by focussing on joint local and regional elections in Slovakia that apply the same rules but differ in their importance. To identify the impact of merging these two elections, we analyse the share of invalid votes in all 2926 municipalities. We find that joining the elections had only a negligible impact on invalid voting in the more important, i.e. local elections. On the contrary, the share of invalid votes increased substantially in the less important, i.e. regional elections. Moreover, we show that this effect in regional elections is larger as their complexity increases. In sum, we find that merging two otherwise identical elections of various importance supports the turnout in the less salient contest but at the expense of the share of valid votes. |
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