Voting at 16: Turnout and the quality of vote choice

Abstract

Critics of giving citizens under 18 the right to vote argue that such teenagers lack the ability and motivation to participate effectively in elections. If this argument is true, lowering the voting age would have negative consequences for the quality of democracy. We test the argument using survey data from Austria, the only European country with a voting age of 16 in nation-wide elections. While the turnout levels of young people under 18 are relatively low, their failure to vote cannot be explained by a lower ability or motivation to participate. In addition, the quality of these citizens' choices is similar to that of older voters, so they do cast votes in ways that enable their interests to be represented equally well. These results are encouraging for supporters of a lower voting age.

Full text

Voting at 16: Turnout and the quality of vote choice
Markus Wagner
1
, David Johann
2
, Sylvia Kritzinger
*
Department of Methods in the Social Sciences, University of Vienna, Rooseveltplatz 2/4, 1090 Vienna, Austria
article info
Article history:
Received 24 February 2011
Received in revised form 19 January 2012
Accepted 20 January 2012
Keywords:
Input legitimacy
Political participation
Teenage vote
Turnout
Voting age
abstract
Critics of giving citizens under 18 the right to vote argue that such teenagers lack the
ability and motivation to participate effectively in elections. If this argument is true,
lowering the voting age would have negative consequences for the quality of democracy.
We test the argument using survey data from Austria, the only European country with
a voting age of 16 innation-wide elections. While the turnout levels of young people under
18 are relatively low, their failure to vote cannot be explained by a lower ability or
motivation to participate. In addition, the quality of these citizens’choices is similar to that
of older voters, so they do cast votes in ways that enable their interests to be represented
equally well. These results are encouraging for supporters of a lower voting age.
Ó2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
3
The level of turnout at elections is often seen as an
indicator of the health of a democracy (Fieldhouse et al.,
2007), yet there is a general trend towards declining rates
of electoral participation in Western Europe (e.g. Aarts and
Wessels, 2005;Blais and Rubenson, 2007;Franklin et al.,
2004). This has led to fears that democratic legitimacy
may decline as elections increasingly fail to act as the
‘institutional connection’(Topf, 1995a) between citizens
and the state.
In light of these developments, it has been suggested
that the minimum voting age should be lowered to 16 (e.g.
Power Commission, 2006;Votes at 16, 2008;Hart and
Artkins, 2011). Supporters of such a reform argue that
lowering the voting age would have a positive impact on
electoral participation. This is because young people under
18 are likely to still be in school and live with their families,
two factors that have been shown to encourage turnout
through a variety of socialisation mechanisms (Franklin,
2004;Highton and Wolfinger, 2001;Bhatti and Hansen,
2010). In the long term, this higher level of participation
at a young age may then facilitate the early development of
a habit of voting (e.g. Plutzer, 2002;Franklin, 2004). Of
course, lowering the voting age is not only justified as a way
to stop the decline in turnout. For example, it is also seen as
a way to ensure that the interests of young citizens are
represented in the political system (Votes at 16, 2008).
4
However, the proposed reform is not without its critics.
The main argument made against lowering the voting age
is that young people under 18 lack the ability and motiva-
tion to participate effectively in the electoral process (Chan
and Clayton, 2006). It is suggested that this will lead to low
turnout rates, comparable to –if not even lower than –
*Corresponding author. Tel.: þ43 1 4277 49902; fax: þ43 1 4277 9499.
E-mail addresses: markus.wagner@univie.ac.at (M. Wagner), david.
johann@univie.ac.at (D. Johann), sylvia.kritzinger@univie.ac.at (S.
Kritzinger).
1
Tel.: þ43 1 4277 49912; fax: þ43 1 4277 9499.
2
Tel.: þ43 1 4277 49910; fax: þ43 1 4277 9499.
3
This research is conducted under the auspices of the Austrian
National Election Study (AUTNES), a National Research Network (NFN)
sponsored by the Austrian Research Fund (FWF) (S10903-G11). The
authors would like to thank Mark Franklin, Kasper M. Hansen, Wolfgang
C. Müller, Kaat Smets, Eva Zeglovits and the anonymous reviewer for
helpful comments on earlier versions of this article, which was also
presented at the Colloquium of the Mannheim Centre for European Social
Research (MZES) and the PSAI-Conference, Dublin.
4
In Austria the voting age was lowered to 16 for national elections in
2007. Five German Länder have also changed the minimum voting age to
16, and the reform now has official backing of all main British parties
apart from the Conservatives (Votes at 16, 2008).
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Electoral Studies
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/electstud
0261-3794/$ –see front matter Ó2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2012.01.007
Electoral Studies 31 (2012) 372–383

those observed among citizens aged 18–25 (Electoral
Commission, 2004). A further consequence would be that
citizens under 18 might not make use of their vote as
effectively as older voters. While they might vote for the
sake of voting, they would not challenge the government to
respond to their interests. Thus, their vote choice would be
driven more strongly by expressive instead of instrumental
considerations (Tóka, 2009), and their policy views would
not be well-represented by political actors.
In this paper, we test whether these critics are right. Are
young people under 18 lessable and motivated to participate
effectively inpolitics? And dothese factors influence whether
and how they use their right to vote? If the answer to these
questions is yes, then lowering the voting age could indeed
have negative consequences for the health of democracy. If
the answer is no, then critics are arguably left with fewer
arguments why we should oppose lowering the voting age.
Instead, we might consider potential positive consequences
of the reform, such as tying young people to the democratic
process, encouraging thedevelopmentof a habit of voting and
ensuring the representation of their interests.
We examine the choices made by young people under
18 using data from Austria, where in 2007 the voting age at
national elections was lowered to 16. Specifically, we use
a survey carried out in the run-up to the European Parlia-
ment (EP) elections 2009 which over-sampled young
people under 26. Austria’s reform allows us to examine for
the first time whether the critics of lowering the minimum
voting age are right. Before, the only possible empirical
strategies were either to extrapolate about the behaviour of
citizens under 18 from that of voters justover 18 or to study
the potential electoral behaviour of young people under 18
in a context where they did not have the vote.
Our survey indicates that the intention to turn out was
indeed relatively low among citizens under 18 in the 2009
EP election. Using the self-assessed likelihood of voting on
a scale of 0–10, under-18s have a low average intention of
turning out, with a mean score of 5.91. This is lower than
among respondents aged between 18 and 21 (6.24) and
between those aged between 22 and 25 (6.98), while
respondents over 30 have a mean score of 7.38.
Is this pattern due to the fact that Austrians under 18 are
particularly unable or unwilling to participate in politics?
Our findings show that this is not the case. First, measures
of political interest, knowledge and non-electoral partici-
pation indicate that young people under 18 are not
particularly unable or unwilling to participate in political
life. Second, these factors do not help to explain their lower
turnout rates, so we cannot say that young citizens fail to
vote for reasons that are particularly troubling for demo-
cratic legitimacy. Finally, there is no evidence that the
quality of vote choices among citizens under 18 is any
worse than that of older voters.
We begin this paper by discussing in greater depth
existing arguments regarding the political behaviour of
citizens under 18 and the potential effects of lowering the
voting age in terms of democratic legitimacy, focussing on
turnout and the quality of vote choice. After describing the
survey, we provide a brief descriptive account of young
people’s motivation and ability to engage in politics. We
then turn to a multivariateanalysis that explores the reasons
behind turnout decisions of citizens under 18. Finally, we
examine the quality of vote choice among these voters.
2. Citizens under 18 and the democratic process
In the scholarly debate democratic legitimacy includes
two dimensions: input and output legitimacy (Scharpf,
1999). This paper focuses on the input dimension of
democratic legitimacy. Input legitimacy refers to the idea
that “[p]olitical choices are legitimate if they reflect the
‘will of the people’–that is, if they can be derived from the
authentic preferences of the members of a community”
(Scharpf, 1999: 6). Input legitimacy requires citizens who
are motivated and competent and who engage in reasoned
arguments in collective decision-making processes. As
a result, input legitimacy may be negatively affected by
lowering the voting age if this only serves to extend
suffrage to citizens who are not motivated or able to
participate in decision-making in this way. Simply put, the
central question is whether citizens under 18 have the
ability and motivation to participate effectively in elections.
Why might we expect this not to be the case? Chan and
Clayton (2006) argue that young people under 18 are simply
not politically ‘mature’enough to take part in the electoral
process, and they define this ‘maturity’precisely as the
ability and motivation to participate. They measure the
‘political maturity’of young people under 18 using political
interest, party identification, political knowledge and atti-
tudinal consistency. According to Chan and Clayton (2006),
those under 18 fail to score high enough on any of these
indicators. They suggest that these differences cannot be
explained by the fact that in the UK those under 18 do not
yet have the vote and thereforehave no incentive to become
involved in politics. Instead, citing Dawkins and Cornwell
(2003), they argue that the teenage brain may simply not
be ready to vote at 16. However, Hart and Artkins (2011)
point out that so far no neurological evidence has been
put forward to prove this point, while Steinberget al. (2009)
show that teenage citizens possess the same cognitive
sophistication as young adults. It is perhaps more likely that
these age differences may exist due to a universal life-cycle
effect, with younger voters simply notyet having developed
the political interest, knowledge and sense of duty that
comes with age (Aarts and Wessels, 2005).
Thus, from this critical perspective young citizens under
18 lack the ability and motivation to engage effectively in
politics. Sinceour aim is to test the arguments made bycritics
of lowering the voting age, our hypotheses are as follows:
H1a: Young citizens under 18 are less able to participate in
politics effectively than older voters.
H1b: Young citizens under 18 are less motivated to partici-
pate in politics effectively than older voters.
2.1. Citizens under 18 and turnout
Enlarging suffrage to include young people under 18
may have consequences for the level of turnout. On the one
hand, some scholars argue that turnout numbers may
improve, especially in the longer term, as young people
M. Wagner et al. / Electoral Studies 31 (2012) 372–383 373

under 18 are more easily and more lastingly mobilised to
vote due to socialisation effects (e.g. Franklin, 2004). On the
other hand, critics put forward the argument that it could
also be that young people under 18 simply mirror the low
levels of turnout found among those aged between 18 and
21 (e.g. Electoral Commission, 2004).
However in this paper, we are not concerned with the
levels of turnout themselves. For one, to examine the
development of a habit of voting requires a longer-term
perspective than cannot be achieved just two years after
the voting age was lowered. Moreover, looking exclusively
at the level of turnout should not be the only way to address
whether declining electoral participation is worrying. As
pointed out, it is particularly concerning when decisions
not to vote are a reflection of disenchantment, indifference
or a lack of capabilities (Chan and Clayton, 2006).
5
Lower levels of turnout among citizens under 18 do not
automatically indicate that this pattern is due to a lower
ability and motivation to participate. Other reasons may
underlie this decision. First, young voters may privilege
new modes of political participation over traditional forms
of electoral participation (Topf, 1995b), ‘bypassing the
electoral routes’(Franklin, 2002: 165). Electoral participa-
tion is not the only way that a democratic bond between
citizens and the political system can be created (e.g. Topf,
1995b;Franklin, 2002;Fuchs and Klingemann, 1995;
Dalton, 2009). Young voters may be particularly likely to
choose other forms of participation due to longer schooling
years, exposure to other forms of informal civic education,
higher information levels, new information channels and
a decrease in party affiliation (e.g. Thomassen, 2005).
Second, young voters may simply see voting itself as less of
a civic duty (e.g. Blais, 2000;Dalton, 2009;Wattenberg,
2008). They may have a more individual calculus of the
utility of voting and rely more heavily on the assessmentof
the importance of election outcomes (Thomassen, 2005).
6
Thus, analysing only turnout rates per se is not enough to
provide a good picture of the status of input legitimacy as
we also need to take the underlying motives into account.
In other words, we need to know whether citizens under 18
fail to vote because of a lower ability and motivation to
participate effectively. If this is the case, then this under-
mines input legitimacy; if not, then lower turnout is
perhaps less worrying.
7
In sum, we argue that the quality of the electoral
participation of citizens under 18 is particularly unsatis-
factory if low turnout can be explained by a low willingness
and motivation to engage in politics. We will therefore test
the following two hypotheses:
H2a: The lower turnout of young people under 18 can be
explained by their lower ability to participate in politics.
H2b: The lower turnout of young people under 18 can be
explained by their lower motivation to participate in
politics.
2.2. Citizens under 18 and the quality of vote choice
Just because citizens go to the polls does not mean that
they will be well-represented by those they elect. As Lau
et al. argue: “[V]otes freely given are meaningless unless
they accurately reflect a citizen’s true preferences”(2008:
396). Citizens should be able to select accurately between
political actors and make a choice that is consistent with
their own views, attitudes and preferences (e.g. Lau and
Redlawsk, 1997). If voters under 18 take choices that do
not reflect their interests and attitudes, then this will limit
their substantial representation (Pitkin, 1967). The argu-
ments presented earlier that citizens under 18 may lack the
requisite ability and motivation to participate (Chan and
Clayton, 2006) would also lead them to be less inclined to
think carefully about their decision and therefore choose
parties that do not reflect their preferences. They may fail to
take choices that represent their interests well. Thus, there
would also be negative consequences for democracy if the
choices made by voters under 18 are less well-linked to their
actual preferences than those of older voters. On the other
hand, if the decisions of voters under 18 reflect their pref-
erences as well as they do in older age groups, then the
critics’arguments have no empirical basis. We would have
no reason to believe that the interests and preferences of
voters under 18 would be less well-represented.
Our final hypothesis therefore tests this last argument
by critics of lowering the voting age and reads as follows:
H3: The quality of vote choice among voters under 18 is lower
than among older voters.
3. Data and methods
Until now, empirical research on the effects of lowering
the voting age has had to take one of two unsatisfactory
approaches. The first method has been to assume that
under-18s are little different from those just over 18,
justifying the use of evidence from the voting behaviour of
young citizens aged 18 and older (e.g. Electoral
Commission, 2004).
8
The second approach uses data on
5
Low turnout is also a concern when the preferences of non-voters are
different from those of voters (Lutz and Marsh, 2007). In the case of
young people under 18, there are two potential problems. First, those
under 18 may have different preferences than those over 18, so low
turnout of citizens under 18 may mean that their interests are less well-
represented. Second, among young people under 18, there may be a bias
in who votes and who does not. This would again result in unequal
representation of interests. In both cases, this would have negative
consequences for democracy (Verba, 2001). However, examining the
problem of unequal representation goes beyond the scope of this paper.
6
Of course, it is occasionally argued that lower turnout rates are an
indication of high satisfaction with democracy (e.g. Lipset, 1959;Dittrich
and Johansen, 1983). From this perspective lower turnout rates, particu-
larly amongst young voters, do not endanger the health of democracy.
7
Instead of the expected long term positive effect, such as encouraging
voting as a habit (Franklin et al., 2004), lowering the voting age may thus
rather stimulate habitual non-voting (Electoral Commission, 2004).
8
However, the literature provides a substantial amount of reasons why
young citizens under 18 and citizens aged 18 or more are different from
each other: for example, young people under 18 are more likely to live at
home with their families and to still attend school, leading to potentially
different socialisation effects at the time of their first election (e.g.
Highton and Wolfinger, 2001).
M. Wagner et al. / Electoral Studies 31 (2012) 372–383374

citizens under 18 before they have the right to vote (e.g.
Chan and Clayton, 2006). Studying electoral participation
for those who do not have the right to vote has a consid-
erable flaw: without the right to cast a ballot, there is no
rational incentive for citizens to increase their interest and
knowledge in politics. Simply having voting rights may
encourage people to gather information and become
politically active in other ways (Rubenson et al., 2004;Hart
and Artkins, 2011). To test correctly whether the electoral
participation of under-18s matches the quality of that of
their older peers, we therefore need a case where such
young citizens have the right to vote.
Austria is the only country in Europe that has a voting
age of 16 for national elections.
9
The reform was passed by
the Austrian parliament in 2007, and since then, young
people under 18 have cast ballots at a series of elections,
including for the national parliament in 2008, the European
Parliament in 2009 and the presidential elections in 2010.
Austria thus provides the first opportunity to examine the
political participation of under-18s in a nation-wide elec-
tion, at least in a stable advanced industrial democracy. The
specific data used in this paper are from a pre-election
survey (n¼805) conducted at the end of May and the
beginning of June 2009, so in the weeks directly before the
European Parliament election (Kritzinger and Heinrich,
2009).
10
Voters between 16 and 25 were over-sampled for
this survey (n¼263), making this dataset particularly
suitable to our research questions. We take advantage of
the over-sampled segment of Austrian voters to compare
16- and 17-year olds to voters between 18 and 21, 22 and
25, 26 and 30 and to voters over 31.
11
We assess the ability and motivation to participate
effectively in politics using three measures.
12
The ability to
engage in politics is evaluated using political knowledge,
which we measure by assessing whether respondents
correctly place the Social Democrats (SPÖ) to the left of the
two far-right parties (FPÖ and BZÖ) and the People’s Party
(ÖVP). We measure the motivation to participate effectively
in politics using political interest and the willingness to
consider various forms of non-electoral participation. The
respondents’interest in politics is measured as the average
of answers to eight questions tapping attention to politics
in general and the EP campaign in particular. The variable
was rescaled to range from 0 to 1, and the alpha reliability
coefficient of this scale is 0.81. We measured non-electoral
political participation by asking respondents to rate on
a four-point scale their hypothetical willingness to engage
in a series of political activities: contacting a politician,
collecting signatures, working for a non-governmental
organization, taking part in a legal demonstration and
working on a campaign. We also create an overall index for
non-electoral political participation using the average
answer to the five questions. The scale ranges from 0 to 1
with an alpha reliability coefficient of 0.75.
It is always difficult to measure turnout using survey
questions due to the problems of over-reporting, sample
selectivity, social desirability bias and the stimulus effects of
pre-elections interviews (e.g. Aarts and Wessels, 2005;
Bernstein et al., 2001;Karp and Brockington, 2005).
13
There
is evidence that the pre-election turnout intention ques-
tions are the best available predictor of whethera person is
likely to vote (Bolstein, 1991). Respondents might be more
honest regarding their actual intention to turn out when
presented with a scale in which people can indicate
uncertainty and reluctance without declaring directly that
they might abstain. Therefore, we use turnout intention as
our dependent variable. We measure propensity to turn out
with a question asking respondents to state their certainty
of voting in the upcoming EP election on a scale of 0–10. In
our sample, 54.1%of respondents gave a vote intention score
of 8 or higher and 41% a scoreof 9 or higher.
14
This compares
favourably to the 46% who actually voted on 7 June 2009.
15
Examining the intention to turn out in an EP election
gives us also the advantage of studying an election with
lower overall turnout; this could reduce the social desir-
ability bias as people might be less reluctant to declare that
they will not vote when abstention is a more common
phenomenon. We take into account the specific EU nature
of the election by including EU-specific versions of core
variables in our regression models and by including
a control variable concerning views on European
integration.
4. Results
We present our results in three steps. First, we present
descriptive findings on the ability and motivation to
participate in politics among young people under 18. Next,
we examine the causes underlying turnout decisions before
finally examining the quality of vote choice.
4.1. The ability and motivation to participate effectively
Critics of lowering the voting age argue that citizens
under 18 have a lower motivation and ability to engage in
politics than older citizens. We test this by considering
three measures widely used in the literature to capture
9
According to the Electoral Commission (2004), the following other
countries have a voting age under 18: Iran (15); Brazil, Cuba, and
Nicaragua (16); and East Timor, Indonesia, North Korea, the Seychelles
and the Sudan (17).
10
The data can be downloaded from http://methods.univie.ac.at/.
11
Those under 25 are commonly seen as young (e.g. European
Commission, 2001); we add another group of citizens up to 30 as they
would typically still be considered as young in Austria (Bundesministerium
für Wirtschaft, Familie und Jugend, 2011) and a quarter of Austrian
university students are aged between 25 and 29 and only half under 25
(Eurostat, 2011). It may be a concern that turnout will decline in old age,
therefore obscuring differences between younger and older voters (Bhatti
and Hansen, 2010). We also ran our analysis leaving out voters over 65;
our results remain the same.
12
The texts of the key questions used in these analyses are in the
Appendix.
13
However, there is also evidence that personal traits are not correlated
with the tendency to over-report (Rubenson et al., 2004).
14
We also ran our analyses using three dichotomised versions of this
variable, with responses coded as certain to vote if they were (1) at or
over 8, (2) at or over 9 or (3) at 10; no noteworthy differences between
our results and the results from the models were found.
15
Turnout information from the Austrian Federal Ministry for the
Interior (http://www.bmi.gv.at/cms/bmi_wahlen/europawahl/2009/).
M. Wagner et al. / Electoral Studies 31 (2012) 372–383 375

these constructs (e.g. Fieldhouse et al., 2007): interest,
knowledge and non-electoral political participation.
Fig. 1 presents the age group means for political interest
and knowledge. We see, first, that interest in politics is by
no means particularly low among under-18s; indeed, it is
the second-highest average of the four age groups under
30. However, in spite of their apparent interest in politics,
political knowledge is somewhat lower among under-18s
compared to the other three groups of young voters.
However, it is worth noting that this difference is signifi-
cant in a two-tailed t-test only for the comparison with 22-
to 25-year-olds. Moreover, a cautious interpretation of
these results is required since we only have one knowledge
question. Nevertheless, there is some indication that
political knowledge might be lower among under-18s. This
may be due to the fact that young citizens do not yet have
the experience necessary to place parties correctly on
a left–right scale. There is thus some support for H1a, i.e.
that citizens under 18 are less able to participate in politics.
Citizens can also engage in politics outside of elections.
In Fig. 2, we present the average scores for each age group
across all five activities we asked about, with the top-left
panel presenting the results for the overall index. It is clear
that the youngest citizens’willingness to participate in
non-electoral politics is relatively high and no different
from the overall mean. Young citizens are particularly likely
to say that they would take part in a demonstration.
Overall, citizens under 18 are just as motivated to take part
in political life as older age groups. This preliminary result
indicates that there is little evidence in favour of H1b.
Finally, we further illustrate the attitudes of young
people under 18 using measures of democratic disaffection
and alienation, specifically the three indicators institutional
trust, satisfaction with democracy and the perceived
impact of politics on one’s life (Fig. 3).
16
These are related to
measures of the motivation to engage effectively in politics.
Surprisingly, our data show that trust in institutions among
citizens under 18 is significantly higher than the overall
mean among all citizens, so there is no indication at all of
disaffection using this classical measure. In addition,
satisfaction with national and European democracy among
citizens under 18 is actually higher (and often significantly
so) than among older citizens. Turning to the bottom-right
panel, younger citizens do not differ from older citizens in
the proportion who say that either the national parliament
or the EP has a ‘strong’impact on them personally. Given
this evidence and their satisfactory level of political
interest, there is strong descriptive evidence that the
youngest citizens in Austria are not particular ‘turned off’
by electoral politics, democracy and political institutions in
general –results which are quite contrary to those reported
in the literature (e.g. Chan and Clayton, 2006). There is
therefore so far little evidence in favour of H1b, so that
there is little indication that citizens under 18 are less
motivated to participate effectively in politics.
In sum, citizens under 18 do not differ in terms of their
democratic disaffection and their motivation to participate
in politics from older age groups. However, they do have
relatively little knowledge, indicating that they might be
less able to participate. In the next section, we will examine
whether age group differences in the motivation and ability
to participate effectively in politics can help explain lower
turnout levels among citizens under 18.
4.2. Turnout motivations of citizens under 18
We now turn to examining the causes of lower turnout
by following the approach of Rubenson et al. (2004) and
Gidengil et al. (2005). The starting point is a very basic
regression model with dummy variables for the four age
groups under 31 as well as a series of fundamental socio-
demographic controls. In the following steps, a series of
independent variables are added to the model. This allows
us to test whether different age groups decide not to vote
because they lack the ability or motivation to participate
Fig. 1. Interest and knowledge, age group differences. Note: mean values by age group shown; bars indicate 95% confidence intervals around the mean; dashed
line indicates overall mean; see Appendix for question details.
16
For coding details, see Appendix.
M. Wagner et al. / Electoral Studies 31 (2012) 372–383376

effectively in politics; if this is the case for the youngest
cohort, the age coefficient for the under-18s should
decrease (or even cease to be significant) when the relevant
variables are added to the model. Importantly, the cases
included in each model are the same, so the most basic
model only includes respondents for which all variables in
the fullest model are available. Due to a heteroscedastic
error distribution robust standard errors are used.
We present six OLS regression models predicting voter
turnout (Table 1). Model 1 includes four age dummy vari-
ables for those aged 16 and 17, 18–21, 22–25 and 26–30. The
reference group are citizens aged 31 and older. The model
also includes four socio-demographic controls: education,
gender, rural residence and migration background.
Previous research indicates that education is an important
predictor of the propensity to turn out in almost all
democracies (e.g. Wolfinger and Rosenstone, 1980;Blais
et al., 2004;Rubenson et al., 2004;Aarts and Wessels,
2005). We also include migration background as this may
be related to the level of resources and to the level of
connectedness one feels to the political system; we there-
fore expect having a migration background to have
a negative effect on turnout (Fieldhouse et al., 2007). Living
in a rural area may increase turnout as social capital and
thus the pressure to vote may be higher there (e.g. Putnam,
2000;Nevitte et al., 2009).
We can see that turnout intention is indeed predicted to
be lower for all younger age groups. The gap between these
groups and the reference group of citizens over 30 is quite
large: on average,respondents in the youngest groups assess
their intention to vote over 1 unit lower than the reference
group. The results also underline that there are only small
differences between young people under and just over 18.
Concerning the socio-demographic controls, we find that
education is significantly associated with higher levels of
voting intention. The coefficients of the othercontrols are in
the expected direction but are not significant. Importantly,
including basic, mainly socio-demographic controls does
not account for the age gap in turnout, so it is not young
citizens’place of residence or their migration background
that explains lower rates of electoral participation.
Model 2 adds two further groups of controls: first,
measures of democratic dissatisfaction and alienation; and
second, support for European integration. In general, we
expect respondents who trust institutions, believe that
they have an important influence and are satisfied with
politics to also be more likely to vote. The attitude towards
European unification is included as a control as, given that
we measure turnout in EP elections, citizens may want to
abstain because they disapprove of the EU as a whole. In the
model, the only significant effects are for the variables
measuring institutional trust and the perceived political
Fig. 2. Non-electoral political participation, age group differences. Note: mean values by age group shown; bars indicate 95% confidence intervals around the
mean; dashed line indicates overall mean; see Appendix for question details.
M. Wagner et al. / Electoral Studies 31 (2012) 372–383 377

impact of the national and European parliaments on the
respondent’s life. Moreover, these added controls do not
substantively affect the interpretation of the key age group
dummy for young people under 18.
Next, in Models 3–6 we add our main independent
variables measuring the ability and motivation to engage in
politics, first separatelyand then jointly. We start in Model 3
adding our variable measuring political knowledge; we
remove this in Model 4 and add non-electoral participation;
Model 5 tests only the effect of political interest; and finally
Model 6 includes all three controls. In each of these models,
our added variables are clearly significant, so they influence
people’s stated intention to turn out to vote. Yet, the nature
of the age gap remains. As pointed out above, if these vari-
ables did explain lower levels of turn out among citizens
under 18, then they would cause the coefficients of the
dummy variables for the youngest age group to shrink or
even cease to be significant. However, we find that the
coefficient for the 16-to-17 age group decreases only by
a very small amount (0.14 units). This means that the lower
turnout levels of citizens under 18 cannot satisfactorily be
explained by the fact that they are not motivated or able to
engage in politics.
17
Interestingly, it is if anything the age
group of young people aged 18–21 where we can observe
a decrease in the size of this group’s coefficient. Thus, citi-
zens just over 18 appear to be substantively influenced by
their lacking ability and motivation to vote, but not citizens
just under 18.
In sum, the results show while turnout among under-
18s is indeed lower than among Austrians in general, this
is not primarily due to a lack of knowledge or interest nor
due to democratic dissatisfaction and alienation. H2a and
H2b are both rejected.
Fig. 3. Alienation, indifference and impact of parliaments, age group differences. Note: mean values by age group shown; bars indicate 95% confidence intervals
around the mean; dashed line indicates overall mean; see Appendix for question details.
17
Political interest can be a problematic variable in turnout models. The
decision to turn out to vote may increase interest, reversing the causality
the model assumes, and it may be that interest and turnout intention are
in any case highly related concepts (Rubenson et al., 2004;Denny and
Doyle, 2008). The strong effect of the interest variable underlines this
possibility. Our results excluding political interest show that the inter-
pretation of the age gap does not depend on this one variable.
M. Wagner et al. / Electoral Studies 31 (2012) 372–383378

4.3. The quality of decision of voters under 18
The quality of electoral participation among citizens
under 18 goes beyond the reasons that drive abstention: it
is the concern that voters under 18 do not choose the party
that best represents their views or interests. Thus, we
analyse whether the quality of the vote decisions taken by
voters under 18 once they turn out to vote is any different
from those of older voters.
We examine vote choice quality directly, though of
course this is a concept that is difficult to estimate. We
operationalise it as the ideological congruence between
voters and the party they want to vote for: the greater the
ideological similarity between a voter and the party she
chooses, the higher the quality of vote choice. This is
a simplified approximation of the conventional oper-
ationalisation of ‘correct voting’, which uses measures of
voter preferences on a number of different issues by
which the competing candidates or parties can be
distinguished, as well as on some defensibly objective
measure (such as expert judgements) of where the
candidates actually stand on those same issues (e.g. Lau
and Redlawsk, 1997;Lau et al., 2008).
18
Although such
detailed measures are not available to us, we believe our
simplified approach provides a good indication of
whether voters choose a party that is ideologically rela-
tively close to them.
Our main comparison concerns voter-party congruence
on the left–right dimension. This dimension can be
considered a shortcut or heuristic that voters use in order
to simplify ideological competition. The left–right dimen-
sion has been found to provide an appropriate measure of
citizens’general ideological orientations (Fuchs and
Klingemann, 1990;Huber, 1989) and to influence vote
choice, also in Austria (Hellwig, 2008). Thus, we use the
left–right shortcut device to test our hypothesis.
We measure congruence on the left–right dimension as
the absolute distance of the voter from the party she voted
for. Voter positions are measured using respondent self-
assessments on a 0–10 left–right scale. Our first version of
the left–right congruence measure compares this self-
assessment with the voter’s own placement of the party
she voted for; the mean absolute left–right distances for our
five age groups are shown in the top-left graph of Fig. 4.
19
Second, we compared respondent self-placements with
expert survey scores from Hooghe et al. (2010), who asked
their respondents to place Austrian parties on a general 0–
10 left–right scales; these results are shown in the top-right
graph. We can see that there are no significant differences
between the different groups of voters for either left–right
measure. While the mean distance is slightly higher among
the younger voters, the difference is minimal.
As the survey was carried out in the context of EP
elections, it might be that voters at that time cared more
Table 1
OLS regression results.
Variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6
Basic model Basic model þcontrols Knowledge Participation Interest Full model
Age (ref: 31þ)
16–17 1.005 (0.517) 1.244** (0.458) 1.210** (0.467) 1.272** (0.438) 1.09* (0.424) 1.100** (0.419)
18–21 1.562*** (0.361) 1.138** (0.375) 1.163** (0.366) 1.201*** (0.353) 0.429 (0.347) 0.600 (0.332)
22–25 0.690* (0.329) 0.708* (0.306) 0.771* (0.306) 0.936** (0.302) 0.295 (0.294) 0.576* (0.293)
26–30 1.040** (0.354) 1.118*** (0.330) 1.109*** (0.328) 1.040*** (0.306) 0.547 (0.293) 0.565* (0.284)
Political knowledge 0.703* (0.277) 0.672** (0.253)
Non-electoral
participation
3.396*** (0.499) 2.423*** (0.511)
Political interest 6.815*** (0.689) 5.841*** (0.709)
Education 1.332*** (0.250) 1.013*** (0.251) 1.012*** (0.249) 0.659* (0.258) 0.749** (0.242) 0.533* (0.245)
Female 0.075 (0.228) 0.063 (0.216) 0.089 (0.216) 0.007 (0.208) 0.154 (0.202) 0.126 (0.197)
Rural residence 0.156 (0.229) 0.195 (0.222) 0.179 (0.221) 0.233 (0.213) 0.254 (0.208) 0.257 (0.202)
Migration background 0.392 (0.306) 0.513 (0.289) 0.521 (0.293) 0.431 (0.285) 0.432 (0.270) 0.393 (0.275)
EU attitude 0.0002 (0.474) 0.063 (0.474) 0.496 (0.461) 0.135 (0.429) 0.409 (0.427)
Trust in institutions 3.043*** (0.773) 2.964*** (0.776) 2.718*** (0.755) 1.559* (0.748) 1.464* (0.738)
Dem. satisfaction:
National
0.135 (0.281) 0.126 (0.282) 0.255 (0.276) 0.103 (0.264) 0.184 (0.263)
Dem. satisfaction: EU 0.311 (0.259) 0.302 (0.260) 0.224 (0.258) 0.479 (0.247) 0.385 (0.246)
Impact of national
parliament
1.246*** (0.265) 1.163*** (0.263) 1.011*** (0.254) 0.380 (0.253) 0.256 (0.251)
Impact of European
Parliament
0.998** (0.309) 1.024** (0.314) 0.851** (0.296) 0.419 (0.289) 0.422 (0.286)
Constant 7.217*** (0.245) 3.960*** (0.529) 3.522*** (0.553) 3.479*** (0.504) 3.044*** (0.498) 2.413*** (0.496)
R
2
0.055 0.16 0.169 0.219 0.273 0.308
N699 699 699 699 699 699
*p<0.1, **p<0.05, ***p<0.01; robust standard errors in parentheses; see Appendix for variable coding.
18
Besides, they include additional measures of correct vote decision, e.
g. by considering which of those different issues any voter believed to be
more or less important (Lau et al., 2008).
19
Of course, note that these graphs necessarily only include voters who
felt able to position parties in the first place and thus have a minimal level
of political knowledge.
M. Wagner et al. / Electoral Studies 31 (2012) 372–383 379

about congruence on the dimension of European integra-
tion rather than on the general left–right dimension. We
present these results in the bottom two graphs in Fig. 4.
Since the survey contains no assessments of party positions
on this topic, we again use the Hooghe et al. (2010) scores,
who asked experts to score parties on their ‘overall orien-
tation towards European integration’using a 1–7 scale
which we rescaled to range from 0 to 10. We carry out two
comparisons. First, we compare voter’s positions on Euro-
pean unification with rescaled party scores (bottom-left
graph). Second, we divide voters into two groups –scep-
tical and not sceptical of integration –and compare these
with Hooghe et al.’s dichotomised measure of party
positions (bottom-right graph).
20
Both measurement
approaches show that there are no significant differences
between age groups. To the extent that differences –even if
not statistically distinguishable –are present, it is the
younger voters whose vote choice is more congruent with
party positions on European integration. This is an indica-
tion that voters under 18 put some emphasis on the issues
that the election, in this case the EP election, is about.
In sum, when considering the precise choices made, we
have no convincing evidence that the voting decisions of
voters under 18 are in any way of lesser quality, that is, less
congruent, than that of older groups of voters. There is thus
no evidence in favour of H3.
5. Discussion and conclusion
Critics of lowering the voting age to 16 have argued that
such teenage citizens are not able or motivated to partici-
pate effectively in politics and that this both drives their
turnout decisions and means that their electoral choices are
Fig. 4. Quality of vote choice, age group differences. Note: mean values by age groupshown; bars indicate 95% confidence intervals around the mean; dashed line
indicates overall mean; see Appendix for question details.
20
Voters who oppose integration are those who say that membership of
the EU creates mainly disadvantages for Austria; respondents who do not
give that answer are coded as not being sceptical of integration.
M. Wagner et al. / Electoral Studies 31 (2012) 372–383380

of lower quality. We have tested whether these criticisms
have an empirical basis using evidence from Austria, the
one European country where the voting age has already
been lowered for nation-wide elections.
Our findings prove the critics wrong. First, we do not
find that citizens under 18 are particularly unable or
unwilling to participate effectively in politics. Second, while
turnout among this group is relatively low, we find no
evidence that this is driven by a lacking ability or motiva-
tion to participate. Instead, 18- to 21-year-olds are if
anything the more problematic group. Finally, we do not
find that the vote choices of citizens under 18 reflect their
preferences less well than those of older voters do. In sum,
lowering the voting age does not appear to have a negative
impact on input legitimacy and the quality of democratic
decisions. This means that the potential positive conse-
quences of this reform merit particular consideration and
should also be empirically studied.
Is it possible to generalise from the Austrian experi-
ence? We believe so. It is not the case that Austrian teen-
agers are particularly unusual in a comparative context. If
anything, there are two features of the Austrian case that
would indicate that young Austrians are not particularly
interested or engaged in politics. For one, the general
educational test scores of Austrian school-children are
relatively low compared to other OECD countries (OECD,
2011). Moreover, there is evidence that it is young voters
in Austria who are most likely to turn to protest parties
such as those on the radical right (e.g. Wagner and
Kritzinger, 2012;Schwarzer and Zeglovits, 2009). Thus,
we do not think that Austrians under 18 are likely to be
outliers in their political interest and knowledge compared
to teenagers in other countries; if anything, Austria would
be a country where we might expect citizens under 18 to be
particularly unmotivated to participate in politics.
It is also important to note that our study has focused on
one point in time. It is therefore impossible for us to distin-
guish between cohort and age effects. In other words, we
cannot saywith certainty whethercitizens under 18 compare
favourably with citizens over 18 because of their age or
because of their cohort. However, it is unlikely thatthere will
be strong cohort differences between such small differences
in ages, so we believe our findings should reflect general age
differences rather than time-specific cohort differences.
Finally, our study leaves many questions for future
research. A particularly important question –especially in
the light of our results of the 18–21 age group –is the exis-
tence of a habit of voting among teenage citizens (Franklin,
2004). Specifically, it may be easier to instil a habit of
voting among those who are still in school and live at home.
However, observing a habit requires longer-term data, and
citizens under 18 have only had the vote in Austria for four
years and in one national parliamentary election. We hope
that future research will examine whether today’s teenage
citizens will be more likely to develop a habit of voting than
citizens who were first able to vote at an older age.
A further important topic is the nature of participation
among young people today. Dalton (2009) has argued that
younger generations are engaged in a variety of social and
political activities beyond voting, with more direct, action-
oriented participation on the increase. Several authors have
found supporting evidence for this from the UK (Henn et al.,
2005,2002;O’Toole et al., 2003). Dalton’s argument also fits
with one our findings, namely that younger people are
more likely to say that they would demonstrate in support
of their political goals. Younger citizens might see voting as
less essential and instead turn to non-electoral forms of
participation in order to influence political outcomes. For
young citizens, norms of engaged citizenship may be
changing. While overall turnout rates would suggest
a decrease of the bond between citizens and the democratic
political system, new participation forms might mean that
citizens are actually just as politically active as before, or
possibly even more so. Future research should explore these
other forms of political participation and assess the extent
to which they are replacing voting as the primary way of
engaging with politics, especially for citizens under 18.
To conclude, our findings show that a key criticism of
lowering the voting age to 16 does not hold: there is little
evidence that these citizens are less able or less motivated
to participate effectively in politics. This means that critics
of lowering the voting age to 16 need to look again at the
arguments they use, and that there are important reasons
to consider the potential positive impact of such a reform
more closely.
Appendix. Variable coding
Trust in institutions
The respondents’trust in institutions was measured as
the average of four questions concerning trust in the Aus-
trian parliament and government, the EP and the European
Commission. The variable was rescaled to range from 0 to 1.
The alpha reliability coefficient of the scale is 0.86.
Satisfaction with national and EU democracy
Satisfaction with national and EU democracy are each
measured using a four-point scale, with answers rescaled to
range from 0 to 1.
Participation beyond voting
The willingness to engage in each of the five activities
was rated on a four-point scale. Overall non-electoral
political participation was measured as the average
answer to the five questions. The scale ranges from 0 to 1.
The alpha reliability coefficient of this scale is 0.75.
Interest in politics
The respondents’interest in politics is measured as the
average of answers to eight questions tapping attention to
politics in general and the EP campaign in particular. The
variable was rescaled to range from 0 to 1. The alpha reli-
ability coefficient of the scale is 0.81.
Political knowledge
Political knowledge is measured by assessing whether
respondents correctly place the Social Democrats (SPÖ) to
M. Wagner et al. / Electoral Studies 31 (2012) 372–383 381

the left of the two far-right parties (FPÖ and BZÖ) and the
People’s Party (ÖVP).
Attitude towards European integration
The attitude towards European integration is measured
using a question asking for opinions on whether the EU had
integrated too much already or should integrate more, on
a 10-point scale. This was rescaled to range from 0 to 1, with
positive values indicating a pro-integration opinion.
Impact of the national parliament
The impact of the national parliament is 1 for respon-
dents who say that the parliament has a ‘strong’impact on
them personally, 0 otherwise.
EP impact
EP impact compares the perceived influence of the
national parliament and the EP; it is 1 if the EP is not seen as
weaker than the national parliament. Specifically, it is
coded 0 if the EP is the EP is seen as having a low or no
impact and the national parliament has a strong impact,1if
not.
Education
Education is coded as 1 if the respondent is at or went to
university or is at a school leading to a degree that allows
university entrance; other respondents coded as 0.
Gender
Gender is coded 1 for women, 0 for men.
Migration background
Migration background is 1 if the respondent or one of
his/her parents was born outside of Austria, 0 if not.
Rural residence
Rural residence is coded 1 for those living in a village in
a rural area, in a village near a medium-sized or large city,
or in a small rural town and coded 0 otherwise.
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