Should I stay or should I go? Polling station lines, voter turnout, and democratic equality

Our project seeks to provide new knowledge about if and how long lines at polling stations discourage voters from participation.

Despite the prevalence of lines in democratic elections – and the challenge they pose to democratic equality and legitimacy if they make voting harder for certain voters – causal evidence about their effects is scarce.Our research question is how long waiting times at polling stations impact voter turnout.

We will also theorise and test whether effects are larger for potentially more susceptible groups, such as frail elderly or inexperienced voters, and during elections where less is at stake.To this end, we propose one of the first examinations of polling station lines outside the US, and the first to reap the benefits of registry data on turnout for analysing effects of waiting times.

Our registry analyses will exploit precinct-level variation in waiting times during the Swedish election of 2022, as well as subsequent elections to observe downstream effects.

To further strengthen causality and put our results in international context, we will conduct a survey experiment of voters’ reactions to lines in three countries.In addition to having general implications for research on voters’ reaction to increased costs of voting, our findings will be relevant for the debates about electoral reform in Sweden and elsewhere.Our team consists of two political scientists specialising in democracy and micro-data research, working part-time for four years.