The Income Gap in Voting and Attitudes towards Politics: Moderating Effects of Income Inequality

We investigated whether income gaps in voting turnout and attitudes towards politics vary with country-level economic inequality, and whether patterns differ between wealthy and less-wealthy countries. Additionally, we studied whether differences can be explained by levels of clientelism. The harmonised POLPART dataset, combining crossnational surveys including 77 countries, was analysed. Against expectations, in wealthy countries income gaps in voting and political interest did not increase with levels of economic inequality, and the income gap in political trust was even found to decrease. In line with our expectations, in less-wealthy countries income gaps in voting and political trust decreased with levels of economic inequality. Clientelism could partly explain the interaction in less-wealthy countries for political trust, but not for voting. Hence, economic inequality is differently related to the income gap in voting in wealthy and less-wealthy countries, which could not be explained by levels of clientelism.