Who Turns out to Vote? A Fresh Look Into an Old Question

Exploiting an individual-level administrative dataset in a large Italian municipality, we investigate the impact of income shocks and exposure to ethnic diversity on electoral turnout. A large positive income shock increases turnout only among the poor, while both adverse income and diversity shocks tend to dampen turnout. Estimates are larger at the lower tail of the income distribution, where a large negative income shock reduces turnout by 7.9%, and among poor elderly people whose turnout drops by 13.5%. The entry of a populist party possibly induces a relative increase (decrease) in turnout among the poor (rich) who suffered an income loss.