Does Turnout Decline Matter?: Electoral Turnout and Partisan Choice in Canada.

There has been a notable secular decline in turnout in Canada in recent elections, but there has been little research to date on the partisan consequences of that decline. In this paper, we simulate various turnout rates in the 1997 Canadian national election in Quebec and the rest of Canada based on probabilities derived from multinomial logit estimates. In Quebec, higher turnout is associated with greater support for the Bloc Quebecois and weaker support for the Liberals. In the rest of Canada, higher turnout is associated with greater support for the Liberals and weaker support for Reform. Support for the NDP and the Progressive Conservatives is not significantly affected across broad ranges in turnout rates. We interpret these results as support for the conventional wisdom of turnout’s effects on partisan outcomes, and believe that our methodology offers the opportunity to investigate the probable effect of turnout on partisan outcomes in a variety of electoral contexts where survey data are available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]