From Political Mobilization to Electoral Participation: Turnout in Barcelona in the 1930s

This article examines the process of electoral mobilization that follows the extension of voting rights to low-income citizens. We take advantage of a historically unique panel data set of official registers that includes individual voting roll calls as well as individual demographics of almost 25,000 electors in Barcelona in the 1930s, matched with relevant precinct-level socioeconomic, political, and geographical data. We show that voting was driven by the direct mobilization strategies developed by political parties and by those social organizations, such as trade unions, that encompassed an important part of society. This was the case especially among unskilled workers and in areas with a high density of working-class voters. We also show that turnout was shaped by indirect channels, such as the social networks in which partisan ideas and organizations were embedded. To identify the mobilizing effects of organizations, we rely on a variety of strategies, including a sharp, short-term change in an anarchist trade union’s electoral strategies.