Changing Patterns of Mobilization, Increasing Bias?: Trends in Participation in Established Democracies, 1960-2003.

The findings of this paper challenge the conventional wisdom of past research: socio-economic inequalities in voter turnout are no longer unique to the United States, rather these biases pervade post-industrial democracies. This research draws on individual national election study series and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems to examine both cross-temporal and cross-national differences in the relationship between voluntary organization membership, socio-economic characteristics, and voter participation. The results reveal that formal organizations such as unions and religious organizations still mobilize their members to vote. Thus, the greatest drop-off in turnout has been among non-members. However, the memberships of formal organizations are generally declining in their share of the population, and these analyses reveal that unions are increasingly comprised of those with greater educational and income resources. In addition, the findings suggest that the changing social distribution among union members is linked to rising inequality among voters. Trade unions no longer appear to be the class-based equalizers they once were, but rather reinforce existing disparities in voter turnout. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]