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Voting at 16: Turnout and the quality of vote choice [1]

['Markus Wagner', 'Department Of Methods In The Social Sciences', 'University Of Vienna', 'Rooseveltplatz', 'Vienna', 'David Johann', 'Sylvia Kritzinger']

Date: 2012-06-26

Abstract Critics of giving citizens under 18 the right to vote argue that such teenagers lack the ability and motivation to participate effectively in elections. If this argument is true, lowering the voting age would have negative consequences for the quality of democracy. We test the argument using survey data from Austria, the only European country with a voting age of 16 in nation-wide elections. While the turnout levels of young people under 18 are relatively low, their failure to vote cannot be explained by a lower ability or motivation to participate. In addition, the quality of these citizens' choices is similar to that of older voters, so they do cast votes in ways that enable their interests to be represented equally well. These results are encouraging for supporters of a lower voting age. Keywords: Input legitimacy, Political participation, Teenage vote, Turnout, Voting age

Highlights ► Citizens under 18 may lack the motivation and ability to participate in elections. ► We examine the political motivation and ability and their impact on turnout and vote choice quality for citizens under 18. ► We use a survey from Austria, the only country with a voting age of 16. ► Their reasons for not voting are not based on a lack of political motivation and political ability. ► Their quality of vote choice is no lower than among older voter cohorts.

1. Introduction3 The level of turnout at elections is often seen as an indicator of the health of a democracy (Fieldhouse et al., 2007), yet there is a general trend towards declining rates of electoral participation in Western Europe (e.g. Aarts and Wessels, 2005; Blais and Rubenson, 2007; Franklin et al., 2004). This has led to fears that democratic legitimacy may decline as elections increasingly fail to act as the ‘institutional connection’ (Topf, 1995a) between citizens and the state. In light of these developments, it has been suggested that the minimum voting age should be lowered to 16 (e.g. Power Commission, 2006; Votes at 16, 2008; Hart and Artkins, 2011). Supporters of such a reform argue that lowering the voting age would have a positive impact on electoral participation. This is because young people under 18 are likely to still be in school and live with their families, two factors that have been shown to encourage turnout through a variety of socialisation mechanisms (Franklin, 2004; Highton and Wolfinger, 2001; Bhatti and Hansen, 2010). In the long term, this higher level of participation at a young age may then facilitate the early development of a habit of voting (e.g. Plutzer, 2002; Franklin, 2004). Of course, lowering the voting age is not only justified as a way to stop the decline in turnout. For example, it is also seen as a way to ensure that the interests of young citizens are represented in the political system (Votes at 16, 2008).4 However, the proposed reform is not without its critics. The main argument made against lowering the voting age is that young people under 18 lack the ability and motivation to participate effectively in the electoral process (Chan and Clayton, 2006). It is suggested that this will lead to low turnout rates, comparable to – if not even lower than – those observed among citizens aged 18–25 (Electoral Commission, 2004). A further consequence would be that citizens under 18 might not make use of their vote as effectively as older voters. While they might vote for the sake of voting, they would not challenge the government to respond to their interests. Thus, their vote choice would be driven more strongly by expressive instead of instrumental considerations (Tóka, 2009), and their policy views would not be well-represented by political actors. In this paper, we test whether these critics are right. Are young people under 18 less able and motivated to participate effectively in politics? And do these factors influence whether and how they use their right to vote? If the answer to these questions is yes, then lowering the voting age could indeed have negative consequences for the health of democracy. If the answer is no, then critics are arguably left with fewer arguments why we should oppose lowering the voting age. Instead, we might consider potential positive consequences of the reform, such as tying young people to the democratic process, encouraging the development of a habit of voting and ensuring the representation of their interests. We examine the choices made by young people under 18 using data from Austria, where in 2007 the voting age at national elections was lowered to 16. Specifically, we use a survey carried out in the run-up to the European Parliament (EP) elections 2009 which over-sampled young people under 26. Austria's reform allows us to examine for the first time whether the critics of lowering the minimum voting age are right. Before, the only possible empirical strategies were either to extrapolate about the behaviour of citizens under 18 from that of voters just over 18 or to study the potential electoral behaviour of young people under 18 in a context where they did not have the vote. Our survey indicates that the intention to turn out was indeed relatively low among citizens under 18 in the 2009 EP election. Using the self-assessed likelihood of voting on a scale of 0–10, under-18s have a low average intention of turning out, with a mean score of 5.91. This is lower than among respondents aged between 18 and 21 (6.24) and between those aged between 22 and 25 (6.98), while respondents over 30 have a mean score of 7.38. Is this pattern due to the fact that Austrians under 18 are particularly unable or unwilling to participate in politics? Our findings show that this is not the case. First, measures of political interest, knowledge and non-electoral participation indicate that young people under 18 are not particularly unable or unwilling to participate in political life. Second, these factors do not help to explain their lower turnout rates, so we cannot say that young citizens fail to vote for reasons that are particularly troubling for democratic legitimacy. Finally, there is no evidence that the quality of vote choices among citizens under 18 is any worse than that of older voters. We begin this paper by discussing in greater depth existing arguments regarding the political behaviour of citizens under 18 and the potential effects of lowering the voting age in terms of democratic legitimacy, focussing on turnout and the quality of vote choice. After describing the survey, we provide a brief descriptive account of young people's motivation and ability to engage in politics. We then turn to a multivariate analysis that explores the reasons behind turnout decisions of citizens under 18. Finally, we examine the quality of vote choice among these voters.

3. Data and methods Until now, empirical research on the effects of lowering the voting age has had to take one of two unsatisfactory approaches. The first method has been to assume that under-18s are little different from those just over 18, justifying the use of evidence from the voting behaviour of young citizens aged 18 and older (e.g. Electoral Commission, 2004).8 The second approach uses data on citizens under 18 before they have the right to vote (e.g. Chan and Clayton, 2006). Studying electoral participation for those who do not have the right to vote has a considerable flaw: without the right to cast a ballot, there is no rational incentive for citizens to increase their interest and knowledge in politics. Simply having voting rights may encourage people to gather information and become politically active in other ways (Rubenson et al., 2004; Hart and Artkins, 2011). To test correctly whether the electoral participation of under-18s matches the quality of that of their older peers, we therefore need a case where such young citizens have the right to vote. Austria is the only country in Europe that has a voting age of 16 for national elections.9 The reform was passed by the Austrian parliament in 2007, and since then, young people under 18 have cast ballots at a series of elections, including for the national parliament in 2008, the European Parliament in 2009 and the presidential elections in 2010. Austria thus provides the first opportunity to examine the political participation of under-18s in a nation-wide election, at least in a stable advanced industrial democracy. The specific data used in this paper are from a pre-election survey (n = 805) conducted at the end of May and the beginning of June 2009, so in the weeks directly before the European Parliament election (Kritzinger and Heinrich, 2009).10 Voters between 16 and 25 were over-sampled for this survey (n = 263), making this dataset particularly suitable to our research questions. We take advantage of the over-sampled segment of Austrian voters to compare 16- and 17-year olds to voters between 18 and 21, 22 and 25, 26 and 30 and to voters over 31.11 We assess the ability and motivation to participate effectively in politics using three measures.12 The ability to engage in politics is evaluated using political knowledge, which we measure by assessing whether respondents correctly place the Social Democrats (SPÖ) to the left of the two far-right parties (FPÖ and BZÖ) and the People's Party (ÖVP). We measure the motivation to participate effectively in politics using political interest and the willingness to consider various forms of non-electoral participation. The respondents' interest in politics is measured as the average of answers to eight questions tapping attention to politics in general and the EP campaign in particular. The variable was rescaled to range from 0 to 1, and the alpha reliability coefficient of this scale is 0.81. We measured non-electoral political participation by asking respondents to rate on a four-point scale their hypothetical willingness to engage in a series of political activities: contacting a politician, collecting signatures, working for a non-governmental organization, taking part in a legal demonstration and working on a campaign. We also create an overall index for non-electoral political participation using the average answer to the five questions. The scale ranges from 0 to 1 with an alpha reliability coefficient of 0.75. It is always difficult to measure turnout using survey questions due to the problems of over-reporting, sample selectivity, social desirability bias and the stimulus effects of pre-elections interviews (e.g. Aarts and Wessels, 2005; Bernstein et al., 2001; Karp and Brockington, 2005).13 There is evidence that the pre-election turnout intention questions are the best available predictor of whether a person is likely to vote (Bolstein, 1991). Respondents might be more honest regarding their actual intention to turn out when presented with a scale in which people can indicate uncertainty and reluctance without declaring directly that they might abstain. Therefore, we use turnout intention as our dependent variable. We measure propensity to turn out with a question asking respondents to state their certainty of voting in the upcoming EP election on a scale of 0–10. In our sample, 54.1% of respondents gave a vote intention score of 8 or higher and 41% a score of 9 or higher.14 This compares favourably to the 46% who actually voted on 7 June 2009.15 Examining the intention to turn out in an EP election gives us also the advantage of studying an election with lower overall turnout; this could reduce the social desirability bias as people might be less reluctant to declare that they will not vote when abstention is a more common phenomenon. We take into account the specific EU nature of the election by including EU-specific versions of core variables in our regression models and by including a control variable concerning views on European integration.

5. Discussion and conclusion Critics of lowering the voting age to 16 have argued that such teenage citizens are not able or motivated to participate effectively in politics and that this both drives their turnout decisions and means that their electoral choices are of lower quality. We have tested whether these criticisms have an empirical basis using evidence from Austria, the one European country where the voting age has already been lowered for nation-wide elections. Our findings prove the critics wrong. First, we do not find that citizens under 18 are particularly unable or unwilling to participate effectively in politics. Second, while turnout among this group is relatively low, we find no evidence that this is driven by a lacking ability or motivation to participate. Instead, 18- to 21-year-olds are if anything the more problematic group. Finally, we do not find that the vote choices of citizens under 18 reflect their preferences less well than those of older voters do. In sum, lowering the voting age does not appear to have a negative impact on input legitimacy and the quality of democratic decisions. This means that the potential positive consequences of this reform merit particular consideration and should also be empirically studied. Is it possible to generalise from the Austrian experience? We believe so. It is not the case that Austrian teenagers are particularly unusual in a comparative context. If anything, there are two features of the Austrian case that would indicate that young Austrians are not particularly interested or engaged in politics. For one, the general educational test scores of Austrian school-children are relatively low compared to other OECD countries (OECD, 2011). Moreover, there is evidence that it is young voters in Austria who are most likely to turn to protest parties such as those on the radical right (e.g. Wagner and Kritzinger, 2012; Schwarzer and Zeglovits, 2009). Thus, we do not think that Austrians under 18 are likely to be outliers in their political interest and knowledge compared to teenagers in other countries; if anything, Austria would be a country where we might expect citizens under 18 to be particularly unmotivated to participate in politics. It is also important to note that our study has focused on one point in time. It is therefore impossible for us to distinguish between cohort and age effects. In other words, we cannot say with certainty whether citizens under 18 compare favourably with citizens over 18 because of their age or because of their cohort. However, it is unlikely that there will be strong cohort differences between such small differences in ages, so we believe our findings should reflect general age differences rather than time-specific cohort differences. Finally, our study leaves many questions for future research. A particularly important question – especially in the light of our results of the 18–21 age group – is the existence of a habit of voting among teenage citizens (Franklin, 2004). Specifically, it may be easier to instil a habit of voting among those who are still in school and live at home. However, observing a habit requires longer-term data, and citizens under 18 have only had the vote in Austria for four years and in one national parliamentary election. We hope that future research will examine whether today's teenage citizens will be more likely to develop a habit of voting than citizens who were first able to vote at an older age. A further important topic is the nature of participation among young people today. Dalton (2009) has argued that younger generations are engaged in a variety of social and political activities beyond voting, with more direct, action-oriented participation on the increase. Several authors have found supporting evidence for this from the UK (Henn et al., 2005, 2002; O'Toole et al., 2003). Dalton's argument also fits with one our findings, namely that younger people are more likely to say that they would demonstrate in support of their political goals. Younger citizens might see voting as less essential and instead turn to non-electoral forms of participation in order to influence political outcomes. For young citizens, norms of engaged citizenship may be changing. While overall turnout rates would suggest a decrease of the bond between citizens and the democratic political system, new participation forms might mean that citizens are actually just as politically active as before, or possibly even more so. Future research should explore these other forms of political participation and assess the extent to which they are replacing voting as the primary way of engaging with politics, especially for citizens under 18. To conclude, our findings show that a key criticism of lowering the voting age to 16 does not hold: there is little evidence that these citizens are less able or less motivated to participate effectively in politics. This means that critics of lowering the voting age to 16 need to look again at the arguments they use, and that there are important reasons to consider the potential positive impact of such a reform more closely.

Contributor Information Markus Wagner, Email: [email protected]. David Johann, Email: [email protected]. Sylvia Kritzinger, Email: [email protected].

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[1] Url: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4020373/

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