... under investigation - even though voting is compulsory in all municipalities. Figure 1: Variation in turnout rates in 307 Flemish municipalities Our dependent variable - percentage turnout in the municipality - is measured as the total number of votes cast (valid as well as invalid and blank) divided by the number of registered voters. Following Eagles and Erfle (1989) and Shachar and Nalebuff (1999), we use a logistic transformation of our dependent variable: Logistic Turnout = log (Turnout/(1-Turnout)). This is necessary as the range of turnout is limited to the 0 to 100 percent interval. It is important to realise that in our analysis we focus on the Flemish municipalities themselves. In other words, the empirical analysis provided in this work is not based on individuals, but on socio-spatial units (municipalities) using aggregate data. This holds as a direct consequence that we do not mean to answer the question 'why some ...

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