Conventional wisdom among scholars of Latin American politics holds that informal workers are less participatory and less left-leaning than formal workers. Relevant empirical findings, however, are mixed and in need of synthesis. This article provides that synthesis by conducting meta-analyses on the universe of previous quantitative studies of informality and the vote. It finds that informal workers are indeed less likely to vote than formal workers, but the effect of informality is small—just four to seven percentage points. It further finds that informal workers are more likely to vote for the left, not the right, but here the effect size is even smaller. Meta-regression analyses reveal that in countries where organized professional activity among informal workers is high, gaps in turnout between the two sectors are minimal. The article concludes that the conventional wisdom over-states the individual-level political consequences of labor informality in Latin America.

拉丁美洲政治学者的传统观点认为，与正式工人相比，非正式工人的参与性和左倾性较低。然而，相关的实证结果参差不齐，需要综合。本文通过对先前关于非正式性和投票的定量研究的范围进行荟萃分析来提供这种综合。它发现，非正式工人确实比正式工人更不可能投票，但非正式的影响很小——只有四到七个百分点。它进一步发现，非正式工人更有可能投票给左派，而不是右派，但这里的影响规模更小。元回归分析表明，在非正规工人有组织的专业活动较多的国家，两个部门之间的投票率差距很小。