Is the depression-voting gap a widespread phenomenon? Evidence from longitudinal surveys on a large spectrum of mental health conditions

Scholarly interest on mental health and voting lately has significantly increased. However, most of the existing studies have focused on depression or general evaluations of self-rated mental health and report evidence of a depression-voting gap. Moreover, most of this evidence is based on cross-sectional analyses. Thus, we still know very little about the relation between other mental health conditions and voting, and whether the depression findings apply to other mental health conditions. We bridge this gap and broaden the scope to other mental health conditions, in addition to depression. We use two sets of panel data to track how changes in individual’s mental health status is related changes in their voting behaviour: the Dutch LISS survey and the British 1970 Cohort Study. Both of these data sets have indicators of multiple mental health distortions or symptoms, such as depression, anxiety, hostility, obsession-compulsion and psychoticism. Our research may have important implications for political representation, especially if we show that lower vote propensity is a widespread phenomenon across a wide spectrum of mental health conditions.