Opening of new election polling stations: the effect on turnout and diaspora voting patterns

Opening of additional polling stations in foreign countries has been brought forward as a method to raise the turnout of diaspora voters in Latvian parliamentary election, and the number of polling stations abroad during last four elections has almost doubled. In this article, the author tests the argument that the increase in the sheer number of polling stations and the expansion of territorial coverage is an election parameter in foreign countries with the potential to raise the election turnout. In sharp contrast to a popular argument and the academic debate, the results of the Latvian data analysis show that opening of new polling stations did not meet the intended goal and cannot be regarded as an effective method for raising the diaspora voter turnout; the means must be sought in other factors of election organisation and voter behaviour. To compare data of voter behaviour in foreign countries in four separate parliamentary elections and to determine tendencies in diaspora voting patterns, the deviation of the elections outcome in foreign countries from the general national results are analysed by the help of calculation model that uses the Voting Outcome Coefficient. The article outlines that the third and fourth wave of emigration have introduced a new tendency of extreme stratification in the results between the Latvian Association of Regions (2014), KPV LV (2018) and the rest of the political parties. The article also analyses the deviation of the elections outcome in the new polling stations from the vote share in particular foreign countries by the help of Polling Station Coefficient, and concludes that in the 13th Saeima election, all newly opened polling stations were beneficial for KPV LV as results in all of them were proportionally even better than the list’s overall results in a particular country.