Extending National Voting Rights Raises Immigrant Turnout 10–20% in Sweden

Why This Question Matters

Many democracies allow resident non-citizens to vote in local elections but not in national ones. Non-naturalized immigrants typically vote at lower rates than citizens, a gap often attributed to socioeconomic differences or political integration challenges. Linuz Aggeborn, Henrik Andersson, Sirus Dehdari, and Karl-Oskar Lindgren ask whether the character of the election itself — local versus national — helps explain low turnout among non-citizens.

What the Authors Ask

Do restrictions that limit non-citizen residents to local elections depress their turnout, and by how much would turnout rise if these residents could vote in national elections?

How the Study Works

• The authors analyze Swedish administrative voting data and exploit a regression discontinuity design to compare otherwise similar individuals who differ in eligibility to vote in national elections.
• This design isolates the effect of being allowed to vote at the national level from compositional differences across citizens and non-citizens, using high-quality turnout records rather than surveys.

Key Findings

• Estimates imply that extending national voting rights to non-citizen residents in Sweden would raise their turnout by roughly 10–20 percentage points.
• The result indicates that the type of election — and not only socioeconomic or acculturation differences — is a major factor behind low participation among non-naturalized immigrants.

Why It Matters for Policy and Research

The findings suggest that expanding suffrage to include resident non-citizens at the national level could substantially close turnout gaps and alter how immigrant political incorporation is understood. For scholars, the study highlights the importance of election-level institutions in shaping participation and motivates comparative work on how suffrage rules affect immigrant political behavior across countries.