In political participation research, it is a well-established fact that electoral turnout is unequally distributed. More specifically, the higher politically sophisticated are more likely to turn out to vote. In addition, the evidence of a strong decline of turnout levels is accumulating. If the decline in turnout is concentrated among specific groups of the population, this would imply that the electorate becomes less representative for the population as a whole.
The question addressed in this paper, therefore, is whether this is indeed the case. While there is some scattered evidence hinting at such a pattern, upon our knowledge, no one has yet systematically addressed this question comparatively. By means of an analysis of longitudinal data of pooled election studies, we assess whether political sophistication (operationalized as education or interest) has become a stronger determinant of stratification with regard to electoral participation in the past decades.
