You Never Get Another First Time: How First-Time Eligibility in Regional and European Elections Influences Turnout in European and National Elections

Most European countries have become full-fledged multilevel democracies, allowing citizens to vote in subnational, national, and European elections. Yet how the introduction of multilevel democracy has influenced electoral behavior remains underexplored. This paper examines how the type of election in which voters are first eligible to vote affects their likelihood of turning out in subsequent national elections. It is expected that voters who first obtain voting rights in European or low-salience regional elections are less likely to participate in later elections, as they may develop habits of non-voting due to the second-order nature of these elections. Using a novel dataset on voting age requirements for national, regional, and European elections in 31 European countries, combined with individual-level data from the European Social Survey (ESS), the analyses show that first-time eligibility in European elections reduces the likelihood of turning out in national elections by about three percentage points compared to those first enfranchised in national elections. The effect of first-time eligibility in regional elections on turnout in both European and national elections is conditional on levels of regional authority and regional identity. These findings demonstrate that multilevel democracy can have a lasting impact on electoral behavior across electoral arenas.