TORONTO - With voters in Quebec, Ontario and possibly across Canada headed to the polls this year, there's bound to be the usual election-season wringing of hands over that sure sign of democracy's imminent demise: plunging voter turnout.
But that concern may be misplaced, says new research published in the journal Electoral Studies that suggests turnout has no meaningful impact on the vote's outcome. The study also debunks prevailing wisdom that lower turnout favours right-wing parties. "The situation in Canada is that about between 60 and 70 per cent of the eligible population is turning out to vote," Daniel Rubenson, lead author of the study, said in an interview Thursday.
"The argument we're making is that doesn't affect the outcomes of the election compared to if everybody would vote."
In the 1988 general election, 75 per cent of eligible Canadians cast ballots, according to Elections Canada.
Mirroring a trend in many other democratic countries, the ratio then fell steadily to a record low of just below 61 per cent in 2004, although the close vote last year that gave Stephen Harper's Conservatives a minority government did feature a modest increase.
Jean-Pierre Kingsley, Canada's chief electoral officer, has described the declining turnout trend as a "a major challenge to contemporary Canadian democracy."
Previous studies have shown that non-voters tend to be from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and conventional wisdom was that those citizens prefer left-of-centre political parties and policies.
"The argument goes that if those people were to vote, then outcomes would be different," Rubenson said. "We find that's not the case."
The researchers compared the opinions of 3,500 voters and non-voters across a wide range of issues, from health care and welfare spending to gun control, abortion and tax cuts.
They found no differences in how those issues were viewed by those who decided to cast their ballots compared with those who didn't.
The researchers then conducted simulations of how the election standings might have looked if in fact everyone had voted. They found that even a full-on turnout would have had little impact.
Those who do vote are largely representative of the population as a whole, the study concluded.
"It's not clear to me that politicians know this," said Rubenson.
"They might assume that they should cater more to people that voted . . . if they think that people who vote like Policy X, they might try to implement that."
Richard Johnston, an expert on Canadian electoral politics, warned against assuming that election results wouldn't change with increased turnout.
"If the electorate were composed differently, parties would behave differently," said Johnston, now a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Johnston also warned that low turnout could lead to the marginalization of disenfranchised voters, who then might be susceptible to more extremist parties and policies.
Rubenson also cautioned there may be limits at which the study's findings may no longer apply.
"The argument that we're making in the paper might not hold if 10 per cent of people turn out," he said.
