How healthy is local democracy?

Voter turnout in the Nordic countries

Sources: Swedish Election Authority, Statistics Sweden, Statistics Norway, Statistics Denmark, Statistics Finland and Statistics Iceland. Finland's parliamentary election figure covers citizens resident in Finland. In Sweden the municipal election is held on the same day as the general election, which keeps turnout up, so municipal elections cannot be compared directly. For Sweden the 2022 municipal election is shown, since the final figure for 2026 had not been published at the time of writing.

1. Does democracy suffer when municipalities merge?

   In one respect, yes. When Denmark merged municipalities in 2007, residents' belief that they can understand and influence local politics fell clearly where municipalities grew larger, compared with where they were left untouched.

   Lassen and Serritzlew (2011), American Political Science Review.

2. Who becomes a politician?

   Swedish politicians, both in the municipalities and in parliament, are on average more able and better leaders than those they represent, even when family background is accounted for. At the same time they come from roughly as varied social backgrounds as the voters.

   Dal Bó, Finan, Folke, Persson and Rickne (2017), Quarterly Journal of Economics.

3. Do gender quotas make politics worse?

   No. When the Social Democrats began alternating women and men on their lists in 1993, the competence of the elected men rose most where the most women came in, because the weakest male leaders had to make way.

   Besley, Folke, Persson and Rickne (2017), American Economic Review.

4. Does door-to-door canvassing pay off?

   Yes. In a Swedish experiment before the 2014 European Parliament election, randomly selected households were visited by canvassers. Those living in a visited household voted 3.6 percentage points more often, and the effect was about twice as large among occasional voters and first-time voters.

   Nyman (2017), Electoral Studies.

5. Is voting contagious within families?

   Yes, even upwards. In Denmark parents became 2.8 percentage points more likely to vote when their child got the right to vote, but only if the child still lived at home.

   Dahlgaard (2018), American Political Science Review.

6. Do young people vote more if the voting age is lowered?

   Norway let 16 and 17 year olds in some municipalities vote in the 2011 municipal election. 57 percent of them voted, against about 65 percent of all voters. When the group was followed up to 2019, they did not vote more often than others of the same age.

   Storting, Innst. 261 S (2015–2016). Kleven (2021), SSB Rapporter 2021/22.

7. How common are threats against politicians?

   25 percent of elected representatives were subjected in 2024 to threats, harassment, violence, vandalism or theft, slightly fewer than in the election year 2022. But 28 percent say that exposure or worry affects how they carry out their role, the highest share since the surveys began in 2012. Most common is cutting back on social media, second most common is avoiding certain issues.

   Brå (2025), Politicians' Safety Survey 2025.

8. Who does not vote?

   In the 2022 general election, 93 percent of those with post-secondary education voted, 85 percent of those with upper secondary education and 74 percent of those with only compulsory schooling. Turnout fell most among those with the least education.

   Statistics Sweden (2023), Participation in the general elections 2022.