So far in this book we have focused our analyses on electoral cohorts (in Chapter 3) or on electorates (Chapters 4 and 5) as units of analysis. Yet, in the end, individuals are the ones who make decisions to vote or not vote, so we need to complete the picture with analyses conducted at the individual level using survey data.

To be sure, survey data have been used before, in Chapter 3, as a source from which to derive the electoral cohorts that were the subject of that chapter. For that chapter, however, only two variables were taken from the individual-level data: date of birth and whether the individual voted or not. Already given the country in which the data were collected and the date of the election about which respondents had been questioned, these two additional pieces of information were all that was needed to construct the electoral cohorts that were studied in that chapter. The present chapter will be employing a larger number of individual-level variables to paint a more detailed picture of the individual citizen faced with an election.

The primary research question that we set out to address in this chapter is, “How do changes in the character of elections manifest themselves at the individual level?” We now know that more competitive elections (those that are likely to result in policy change) bring more citizens to the polls. But what is it that brings these citizens to the polls?