A Widening Generational Divide? The Age Gap in Voter Turnout Through Time and Space
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This research departs from the observation in the literature that some countries, such as Canada, Great Britain and the United States, in recent years witness a widening of the gap in turnout between younger and older citizens. Based on election study data from ten countries this article shows that the trend toward a widening generational divide is not observed in all Western democracies and that over-time trends in the age gap as a matter of fact are decidedly varied. In an attempt to explain over-time patterns and between-country differences, this research focuses on changing societal characteristics and changes in characteristics of elections. More specifically, the idea that over-time variation in the transition to adulthood has been overlooked as an explanation of declining turnout levels among young voters takes a central place. The findings indicate that delayed transitions to adulthood lead to increased divergence in turnout levels between younger and older voters. Characteristics of elections, measured through indicators of electoral saliency, are not found to have a significant impact on trends in the age gap in voter turnout.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".