Press release
Less than Assumed: The Influence of Non-Voters
Non-voters have less influence on the formation of government than often assumed, as a new study by WZB researcher Ulrich Kohler suggests. In this study, he shows how higher voter participation in only two German federal elections (in 1994 and 2005) could have led to a different formation of government.
The empirical sociologist at the Wissenschaftszentrum für Sozialforschung (WZB) reviewed every federal election since 1949 to find out how likely another formation of government would have been had non-voters participated in the election. Thanks to a new statistical method he was able to conduct this study and, with this new method, would like to draw even more precise conclusions about the influence of non-voters.