High Speed Internet Access and Voting Behaviour

Abstract: The expansion of the internet has increased steadily since its introduction in the early 1990’s. Whilst having many positive effects on many different areas of society, one area that has not been thoroughly analysed is the political. Being a source for information and communication the potential for the internet to have political implications is large. This essay analyses the possible effects high speed internet has on voting participation and behaviour. This is done by running statistical regressions on data gathered on fiber-connection data and vote results covering the last two general elections in Sweden in 2010 and 2014. There seem to be an effect on voting behaviour caused by high speed internet access. But the effect is not conclusive due to a limited data set, and further studies would be required to get a conclusive result.