Does Election Day weather affect voter turnout? Evidence from Swedish elections

• Does rainfall during the Election Day reduce voter turnout?
• Previous research show that in the US one inch of rain reduces turnout with about one percent.
• We turn to the Swedish context in order to test whether rainfall on Election Day have the same impact in a high turnout context.
• We test the impact of GIS-interpolated rainfall on aggregate turnout data and register-based surveys on voter turnout.
• In none of the datasets do we find robust negative effects of rain.

Does rainfall during the Election Day reduce voter turnout? Previous research shows that in the US one inch of rain reduces turnout with about one percentage point. We turn to the Swedish context in order to test whether rainfall on Election Day have the same impact in a high turnout context. We move beyond previous research by testing the impact of GIS-interpolated rainfall on three different datasets that allows us to view the issue both from a wide time frame as well as with high precision as for turnout measures: (a) aggregate turnout data for Sweden's 290 municipalities, (b) individual level data from the Swedish National Election Study and (c) data from a register-based survey on voter turnout. In none of the three datasets do we find robust negative effects of rain.