The Effect of Proportionality on Voter Behavior in Post-Soviet Europe

Voter turnout has been in decline worldwide for over half a century. More specifically, in Eastern European, post-Soviet democracies, voter turnout has dropped significantly and has remained consistently lower than in Western European, non-post- Soviet democracies. I investigated this problem, using an established model of voter behavior, which has shown that proportional electoral rules generate a more engaged electorate. Using this institutional model, I looked at the proportionality of the electoral rules used in every European parliamentary or presidential election since 1989, and hypothesized that the “rules of the game” themselves may be depressing voter turnout in post-Soviet democracies more than in established European democracies. Ultimately, I determined that while less proportional electoral rules seem to negatively correlate with turnout in Western Europe, they do not have a significant effect in Eastern Europe. These results show that the institutional model of voter behavior may begin to explain declining turnout in the West, but in the East, there are other non-institutional factors driving voter turnout decline.