Early studies (e.g., Jackman, 1987) were based predominantly on information from Western countries and strongly suggested that more proportional electoral systems had higher voter turnout. ), The Sage Handbook of Electoral Behaviour. General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/unweebg.html . ", Mayshar, Joram & Moav, Omer & Neeman, Zvika, 2011. In terms of . Because this study only examines data for 381 of the roughly 800 counties once covered by Section 5, the actual number of polling places that closed after Shelby could be higher than 868. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. Wealthy and educated voters are more likely to turnout than lower-income voters. Instead, voters tend to look to other countries economies to gauge the relative conditions of their economy. In particular, Lau (1982) notes that there is a tendency for negative information to have more weight than equally extreme or equally likely positive information. (353) Much scholarship has empirically shown that there is a clear negativity bias in media as it gives much more coverage to negative economic news than positive (Soroka, 2006; Hetherington, 1996). Among white voters the only group with any significant variation are those in management, which scales a large amount of education levels. ", Dennis C. Mueller & Thomas Stratmann, 2002. Graph from the Pew Research Center/Drew DeSilver. Dassonneville and Lewis-Beck (2019: 105) find that the probability of an incumbent vote increases by about 23 percentage points when the economic evaluation of the voters moves from the extremes of worse to better. An adverse economy creates feelings of dissatisfaction with important aspects of life (Klandermans etal., 2001,p. 42) such as income and employment (Kern etal., 2015), and thus stimulates citizens to voice their grievance by heading to polling stations on election days (the mobilization hypothesis). In particular, in a cross-national time-series analysis, we are likely to employ common reference points such as global average economy if we are uninformed or misinformed about which country(ies) voters tend to benchmark in order to make a comparison. 2. European Journal of Political Research, 33(2), 239261. As already noted, increasing distance to the polls has sizable and statistically significant adverse impacts on voter turnout. In sum, through the use of better measures of economic information, this research provides strong evidence supporting the withdrawal hypothesis. For robustness, and to deal with the threat of unobservable unit specific error in the composite error term, some models include Fixed Effects estimations.Footnote 19, Table2 presents the results of OLS with Panel Corrected Standard Errors (PCSE) and Fixed Effects estimations based on the empirical strategy which Arel-Bundock etal. But the blue-collar manufacturing jobs below do not look very different from many of the other categories. For a review on turnout measurement, see Online Appendix A in Geys (2006). Article Disenchanted or discerning: Voter turnout in post-communist countries. Population size and urbanization are also included. That being said, those who lose confidence in their incumbent and would otherwise support the opposition are less likely to turn out (Radcliff, 1992), and thus the expected punishment is less delivered. Long-term vs. short-term forces. A dummy variable for presidential election is also included as the data contains both legislative and presidential elections.Footnote 15 In addition, I account for election competitiveness, following the plausible expectation that citizens tend to turn out more in competitive elections because the marginal effect of any additional vote on the outcome is going to be larger the closer the race is (Powell, 1986; Franklin, 2004). Government and Opposition, 46(2), 245273. (2009). They feel that their vote cannot possibly influence the race, so why bother? The gender gap is widest among Black voters, among whom women have reported voting at higher rates than men consistently for the past 30 years. Table1 concisely summarizes the directions of the coefficients based on four distinct hypotheses. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation. Voters are far more sensitive to relatively poor economic growth than to relatively strong economic growth, which suggests a negativity bias in voting behavior. Another study, by Ang (2019), assesses the impact of Section 5 from 1976 to 2016. Starting from here, this study will examine the particular effect education has on turnout. The authors obtain these results by comparing trends in the Black/white wage gap in pairs of counties that share a border, where one county was previously covered by Section 5 and the other was not. Expanded voting rights and voting protections have played a crucial role in enhancing voter turnout, particularly for people of color. On one hand, some evidence indicates that these laws reduce turnout. If citizens receive more accurate and useful information on incumbent competence at handling the economy by comparing their performance with others, the same way that individuals tend to compare things in their daily lives, empirical tests using the retrospective economy variable will yield biased estimations. ", Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. This paper assumes that citizens benchmark domestic economic performance with the assistance of the media, which disseminates information about the overall variances in shocks to their national economy compared to foreign economies. Riker, W. H., & Ordeshook, P. C. (1968). Another extension to this research would examine the role of the media signal directly by measuring the tone of the economic news reports. Industry is not perfect as every industry has a managerial class, but it does provide significantly more information than just income and education. How does voter turnout in Canada compare to that of its peers? As shown in Table2, the coefficient of Benchmark GDP is statistically significant, and its effect is robust across two sets of estimation strategies and two sets of benchmark. It is expected that a good relative economy increases turnout (H1b) with strong confidence in politics, or decreases turnout (H2b) as the electoral stakes diminish since the strong relative economy helps incumbents win the election. Evidence on voter ID laws is less straightforward. American voter turnout in comparative perspective. ", Vincenzo Atella & Jay Coggins & Federico Perali, 2004. With regard to competence-based accounts, the use of temporally measured economy variables, albeit useful, entails limitations for predicting how voters form opinions about incumbent performance. Eric M. Uslaner. A total of 63 percent of such funds went to education spending, with school quality particularly improving for Black children. The outcome variable is Voter Turnout, measured by the percentage of registered voters that go to the polls (Pacek etal., 2009; Powell, 1986; Blais & Dobrzynska, 1998; Franklin, 2004, Dettrey & Schwindt-Bayer, 2009) rather than the other one measured as the proportion of the voting-age population that turns out to vote. Voter turnout refers to the proportion of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election. The partial derivative with respect to Benchmark shows that \(\beta _{2}\) is the marginal effect of benchmark growth. Raymond's new study says religion still has a large impact on how people vote and helps define many of the platforms represented in the party system. Why men rebel. The coefficients of both Domestic GDP and Domestic Unemployment are statistically insignificant. (2021) present the marginal effects of domestic growth as compared to benchmark growth in Fig. American Political Science Review, 86(2), 444454. Second, this direct increase in demand and pay boosted competition for Black workers within the private sector. Overall, voter turnout among the voter-eligible population increased from 28.3% in the 2014 midterm election to 46.3% - the sixth-highest turnout increase in the United States, and higher than the turnout increase nationwide. Existing studies offer conflicting analyses of the effect of the economy on voter turnout; some studies suggest that a poor economy leads to lower turnout while other studies find the. Beck, N., & Katz, J. N. (1995). If the Relative GDP line falls below the zero line in the figure, it indicates that the domestic GDP underperforms compared to the benchmark GDP. Thus, the first step that voters should take is to evaluate whether the current state of their economy is due more to an exogenous shock or incumbent competency. how does income affect voter turnout. Electoral Studies, 34, 3953. Esposito, Focanti, and Hastings (2019) find that a voter ID law in Rhode Island decreased voter registration and turnout for people without drivers licenses by 7.6 and 2.7 percentage points, respectively. The Democratic Party does not understand the white working class, but needs to win them back as theyve been losing them for decades now. Employing relative economy variables measured by media-identified spatial reference points across elections and countries from 29 democracies since the 1980s, this paper finds that a poor relative economy leads to lower turnout, while a good relative economy appears to have no effect. Voter turnout in the United States could be best described as underwhelming. Closeness and turnout: A methodological note. American Political Science Review, 89(3), 634647. Conversely, states with the most restrictive vote-by-mail policies averaged much lower youth turnout: 42%. Voter turnout tends to be lowest among youth, those who are less educated, and those in lower income brackets. (1986). Women, who constitute more than half the population, have cast almost 10 million more votes . (2001). Oxford University Press chapter, 25, 599616. Kriesi, H. (2012). Next CEA Post: The Cost of Living in America: Helping Families Move Ahead, The Cost of Living in America: Helping Families Move, https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/08/16/the-importance-of-protecting-voting-rights-for-voter-turnout-and-economic-well-being/?utm_source=link, Office of the United States Trade Representative, nine states, 53 counties across five states, and two townships, research suggests a few potential pathways. Forty-seven percent of whites working in professional jobs support Democrats, along with 50 percent of educators. Research has yet to decisively explore the causes of these changes, but there are at least three plausible and nonmutually exclusive explanations for this lower turnout in previously covered counties. Wass, H. M., & Blais, A. Measuring strategic voting in multiparty plurality elections. (2006). This is because citizens extract competence signals not only from the retrospective economy, but also, and more importantly, from the relative economy. Common Mkt. It is measured as the absolute value of the percentage point difference in seat share between all governing parties and the opposition at a given election (Franklin, 2004).Footnote 16. Historically, voter turnout has varied significantly by race and ethnicity, with White and Black voters more likely to report they voted than Hispanic and Asian American voters. In Texas, it was even worse, at 51%. Higher socioeconomic status more likely to vote, older citizens more likely to vote. Given the close link between distance to a polling place and ones ability to vote, Shelbys adverse impact on voter turnout may have been at least partially due to these closures. Being exposed to this one-sided media, citizens appear to react asymmetrically to the economy itself. Figure4, which plots each of the coefficients, further highlights the difference in the effects between under-performance and out-performance. Estimating the electoral effects of voter turnout. Insidiously, these laws disproportionately undermine the ability of people of color to vote. Determinants of voter turnout have been extensively researched for years. Comparative Political Studies, 41(9), 12901309. Wolfinger and Rosenstone (1980) address this question by looking at turnout rates dividing people by components of socioeconomic status (SES) 5 such as education, occupation or income. However, a part of the underlying mechanisms of this paper relies more or less on micro-level understanding, with issues related to the potential ecological fallacy, in that the relative economy either mobilizes or dampens motivations of voters, not of countries. The Journal of Politics, 71(2), 473491. The absolute education model posits that education has a direct effect on political participation. For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: . Multiple studies find that an enhanced ability to vote leads to improved economic status. The inner y-axis and solid line indicate the linear predicted values of turnout (%). According to Arel-Bundock et al.s specification (2021), this indicates the marginal effect of the benchmark economy holding the domestic economy constant, so represents the scenario that the domestic economy underperforms the benchmark(s). Evidence further indicates that expansions of early voting and switching to all-mail elections expand turnout. Pacek etal. Radcliff (1992) points out that In part, the confusion may result from measurement and methodological shortcomings. (444) Palmer and Whitten (1999) provide a first insight on the measurement of the economy when observing that voters primarily concerned with unexpected growth and inflation since unexpected economic changes have real income effects and serve as more reliable indicators of government competence. (Palmer & Whitten, 1999),p. 625) Building on this line of research, and in response to Radcliffs observation, this paper raises the question of whether economy variables are being properly introduced in the turnout models. Fornos, C. A., Power, T. J., & Garand, J. C. (2004). ", Ayse Imrohoroglu & Antonio Merlo & Peter Rupert, 1996. An over-performing economy can cause demobilization because voters assume that the incumbent parties are likely to win the election easily. How does age affect voter turnout? Voter turnout, as well as election results, depend upon and are effected by several different factors. Kern etal. Distrust in and dissatisfaction with politics are indeed often cited as strong predictors for low turnout (Karp & Milazzo 2015; Hooghe etal., 2011), and distrust in and dissatisfaction with politics among citizens have been shown to depend largely upon their evaluation of policy performance. Overall, the mechanism presented in this study suggests a significant connection between relative macroeconomic conditions and voter motivation to turn out, but it is important to note that testing the above-stated hypotheses were performed at the aggregate level. Before the Shelby decision, each of these counties would have needed to obtain approval before closing a polling place. Where do distrusting voters turn if there is no viable exit or voice option? The other four models incorporate international benchmark(s) economy. Lau, R. R. (1982). Hooghe, M., Marien, S., & Pauwels, T. (2011). We know that income is not the only cause for voter turnout. Recent evidence shows this is indeed what occurred. In J. Evans, K. Arzheimer, & M. Lewis-Beck (Eds. Armingeon, K., Isler, C., Knopfel, L., Weisstanner, D., & Engler, S. (2016). As such, the study compares voter turnout in counties that, apart from variations in Section 5 coverage, were very similar. Constructing relative economy based on media-guided spatial benchmark(s) seems not only the appropriate approach, but crucial to ensure empirical accuracy. Thus, turnout will decreases as H2b predicts. In sum, the relative economy affects certain levels and portions of citizens who gain or lose motivation to turn out, which eventually impacts the aggregate levels of turnout in an election. Some quick calculations suggest that the effect is potentially quite large: The five most restrictive states had turnouts in 2016 that were, on average, nearly nine percentage points lower than. Dissatisfied democrats or retrospective voters? Thorough research Our team of professional writers conduct in-depth research on the topic to extract information from relevant sources. With regard to using media as the source of finding spatial benchmark(s), Park (2019) highlights two main channels of media, priming and framing, which assist citizens to form relative evaluations. Using these we can start looking at support for a generic Congressional Democrat. In 2013, however, the Supreme Court held in Shelby County v. Holder that Section 4(b) was unconstitutional because the data used to justify Section 4(b) were outdated, thus rendering Section 5 toothless in all the jurisdictions it had once covered. Second, the ambiguity may come in part from poor measures of the economic variable. 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