District-level drivers of voter turnout: Evidence from a longitudinal study in Turkey

A growing body of research points to heterogeneity in the predictors of turnout and highlights the importance of longitudinal designs in exploring within-country variation as a remedy. Building on this perspective, the present study examines the determinants of district-level voter turnout in Turkey using a panel dataset covering all provinces across 18 general elections between 1950 and 2023. Leveraging the country’s unique variation in institutional and socioeconomic structure across time and space, results based on the Mundlak regression show that compulsory voting, socioeconomic development, and democratizing elections are associated with higher turnout, while political fragmentation and larger party systems are linked to lower turnout. Surprisingly, elections held under majoritarian systems experienced higher turnout than those under PR. Findings from additional analyses further suggest that higher levels of wasted votes, driven by the 10% national electoral threshold, may have dampened voter turnout in PR elections in the more recent decades, particularly in some districts. Overall, these findings suggest that voter turnout is a function of both local-level contextual factors and aggregate-level institutional features.