Understanding Voter Fatigue: Election Frequency and Electoral Abstention Approval

Abstract The existing literature shows that frequent elections depress electoral participation and contribute to the global decline in voter turnout. However, the causal mechanisms remain unclear. This paper investigates the sources of voter fatigue and hypothesizes that frequent elections make electoral abstention more acceptable to citizens. It tests the main hypothesis via an original pre-registered survey experiment fielded in five countries with a total sample size of 12,221 respondents. The results provide pioneering evidence on the psychological effects of election frequency. They confirm that high election frequency increases the social acceptability of electoral abstention and that this effect is proportional to the number of past elections. It can be equally observed among all major social groups, including politically engaged citizens and those who believe that voting is a civic duty. These findings hold major implications for our understanding of voter turnout and democratic institutional engineering.