The Ex-Factor: Examining the Gendered Effect of Divorce on Voter Turnout

The absence of a gendered analysis of the effect of marriage on voting is surprising, given researchers’ cognizance of the heterogeneous effects of marriage on a range of other social outcomes. In this paper, we shed new light on spousal dependency by studying the gendered impact of marital disruption, in the form of divorce, on voter turnout. First, drawing on Swedish population-wide registry data, we use the differential timing of divorces in relation to general elections to generate more credible estimates of the causal effect of divorce on turnout. Second, although we find that both sexes are strongly and adversely affected by divorce, we show that the effect is much more pronounced for men. Specifically, the long-term effect is almost twice as large for men. Finally, we use these, as well as a variety of additional data, to show that the gendered effect of divorce is mainly driven by asymmetrical spousal mobilization due to higher levels of voter turnout among women.