In Democracy ‘We’ Trust? : Exploring the relationship between country of upbringing, levels of trust and voter turnout in Swedish local elections

Sammanfattning: This thesis paper focuses on the association between levels of trust and voter turnout. Specifically, it examines the relationships between general and political trust and voter turnout and if these differ depending on whether a person and their mother had a foreign or Swedish upbringing. In doing so, I test the relevance of research predicting trust as positively correlated to voting, while simultaneously introducing a novel categorization. Drawing from the literature on trust, voter turnout and immigrant participation, three hypotheses are derived. Individual level survey data from the national SOM-survey from 2018 are analyzed using ordinary least square linear regression. The aim of the study is to investigate whether levels of general and political trust are associated with voter turnout, and if so, if this relationship varies depending on individuals’ country of upbringing. The findings suggest that both general and political trust are significantly associated with the probability to vote only among those with a Swedish ‘native’ background. However, the relatively small sample size in the other categories may be attributable for the insignificant relationships. The results also suggest that the relationships between both types of trust and voting differ between ‘natives’ and those belonging to the group proxying for immigrants.