More on Seasonal Determinants of Turnout: Holidays and French Presidential Elections

Eric Dubois (1, 2) , Christian Ben Lakhdar (3)

1 CERAPS - Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Administratives, Politiques et Sociales - UMR 8026
2 LAEP - LAboratoire d'Economie Publique
3 UMR CNRS 8179

This article aims to test a proposition widely spread among scholars and journalists according to which holidays would have an impact on electoral turnout. To our knowledge, this possibility has not been investigated in the French case yet. Our data, gathered for the last three presidential elections, strongly support a negative effect of holidays on turnout. Since turnout and left vote are linked, this negative influence helps to explain the defeat of the main left-wing candidate in 2002 even though it does not represent the single factor.

Domaines: Science politique

Eric Dubois, Christian Ben Lakhdar. More on Seasonal Determinants of Turnout: Holidays and French Presidential Elections. French Politics, 2007, 5 (2), pp.144. ⟨hal-00800667⟩