Voters in line: Explanations to and consequences of election day lines in the 2022 Swedish general election

Issues related to electoral integrity and the conduct of elections has gained increased scholarly and societal interest, also in countries with very high levels of electoral integrity. Over the last elections, Sweden’s tradition with the different parties’ ballots on display in an open space at the polling station has been criticized both externally, by international election observers, and internally, for not protecting the secrecy of the vote enough. Following this criticism, the election law has been changed and the ballot papers are now behind one protective screen while the actual voting takes place behind a different screen. The Swedish Election authority warned that this new procedure, while improving the secrecy of the vote, would cause longer lines. Media reports of long lines to polling stations on election day were also more frequent compared to previous elections. Against this backdrop, we study explanations to and consequences of Swedish voters’ perceptions of the voting process with a focus on perceived waiting time at the polling station. According to the cost of voting theory, and empirically verified in several studies mainly in the US, standing in line increases the voter’s cost of voting, thereby risking the voter to leave the line, and hence abstain from voting, but also risking reduced voter turnout and trust in the election process in subsequent elections. Further, it has been empirically shown that longer lines are more common in socioeconomic weaker districts, and that socioeconomic weaker voters tend to stand longer in line to polling stations. However, we still lack systematic knowledge about explanations to and consequences of voting process experiences in the Swedish context. Using survey data from the 2022 Swedish National Election Study (N≈4200) together register data on individual’s socioeconomic status, matched with election district data from Statistics Sweden, we aim to contribute to how perceptions of the voting process in general, and standing in line in particular, affects political behavior in a European country. This way, we can test how far findings from the US travels to countries with proportional electoral systems, high voter turnout and where gerrymandering is far less of an issue. The research questions are 1) What characteristics of election districts were all else equal associated with longer waiting lines? 2) What groups of voters stood all else equal longer in line and had more negative views of the voting process? 3) To what extent is longer waiting lines or more negative views of the voting process associated with a) lower turnout at the district level and b) lower trust in the conduct of elections at the individual level? Preliminary results suggests that voters with foreign background reports longer waiting time compared to voters with Swedish background. In addition, longer lines seem to slightly contribute to the decrease in voter turnout at the district level. Finally, although an overwhelming majority of Swedish voters report positive experiences of the voting process, having relatively worse experiences, including standing longer in line, is correlated with lower trust in the conduct of Swedish elections.