European governments continue to devolve extensive competencies to subnational regions and actors. This paper examines how this process of decentralization interacts with patterns of political participation. Drawing on detailed individual and district-level data from 10 decentralized countries over the last 20 years, the paper demonstrates that the median voter in national and local/regional elections differs substantially with respect to the income cleavage. Although low-income individuals are less likely to participate in national elections than those with high-incomes, the opposite pattern holds in local/regional elections, where low-income individuals participate at substantially higher rates. This finding, which suggests that the median voter may shift substantially to the left in local contexts, has important policy implications given that levels of taxation and social benefits are determined at the regional level in an increasing number of countries.
