A Contextual Analysis of Electoral Participation Sequences

Abstract

This chapter presents an ongoing research project based on a seldom-used and particularly interesting source for the longitudinal, multilevel study of electoral participation: signature lists. We have been able to observe turnout in 44 ballots in one French polling station in the Paris region, between 1982 and 2007 (ca. 30,000 acts of turnout or abstention) and to link turnout data with various attributes of voters. We used sequence analysis to emphasize the correlation of participation patterns inside “electorate households” and to study the effect on turnout of the individual position in these households. This chapter discusses the ways in which this type of data and sequence methods makes it possible to take into account not only this social context of electoral participation, but also its temporal and political contexts. More generally, it exemplifies the uses of peculiar sequence data, with a very limited set of possible states but many dimensions to analyze.