645 European Journal of Political Research 44: 645–669, 2005 The effect of socioeconomic factors on voter turnout in Finland: A register-based study of 2.9 million voters PEKKA MARTIKAINEN,TUOMO MARTIKAINEN & HANNA WASS University of Helsinki, Finland Abstract. We examine the association of four socioeconomic factors with turnout in Finland in three age groups. The analyses are based on individual-level register data from electoral wards from the parliamentary elections of 1999 linked to population registration data on personal characteristics covering the whole 25 to 69 year-old Finnish electorate. The results show that income and housing tenure are more important determinants of turnout among older voters than among younger voters, whereas education has a dominant role in deter- mining young people’s turnout. Moreover, class has maintained its discriminatory power in determining turnout in all age groups even though working-class under-representation in participation can be partly attributable to previously obtained educational attainment. Fur- thermore, the lower turnout of younger voters remains unexplained even if socioeconomic factors are held constant. Lower turnout among lower social classes and among the young will affect the legitimacy of the prevalent model of party democracy. Introduction In the Finnish parliamentary elections of 1999 turnout was 65 per cent, which is the lowest rate of electoral participation in the postwar period. Although electoral participation has been somewhat lower in other recent parliamen- tary elections in Western countries (e.g., Canada in 2000 and the United Kingdom in 2001; see Leduc et al. 2002: 13–15), at least among the Scandina- vian countries, Finland is a clear exception. In the Scandinavian countries, turnout is the highest in Denmark (87 per cent in 2001), but even in Norway, where the participation is lower than in Denmark and Sweden, turnout is still around 75 per cent (Leduc et al. 2002: 13–15). However, Finland has not always had one of the lowest rates of electoral participation among Western countries; in the parliamentary elections of 1966, turnout was 85 per cent. The situation in which a large proportion of individuals experience a sense of political exclusion may in the long run challenge the basis of the democra- tic legitimacy of the political system. A degree of demobilization, such as has been observed in Finland, strikes at the very heart of ideals of representative © European Consortium for Political Research 2005 Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA