Residential Concentration, Political Socialization, and Voter Turnout
نویسندگان
چکیده
Although many have hypothesized that neighborhoods and social context are important influences on the decision to vote, the data to study these phenomenon have often been inadequate. We examine a unique source of data, registered voter lists, from a rich variety of locations that allow us to tap into this social participation dynamic using a multilevel research design. We find that neighborhood context does have a socializing influence on voters, sometimes mobilizing them while at other times demobilizing them. Notably, this effect is separate from the effect of individual-level sociodemographic influences on participation and is manifest over and above these longstanding explanations.
منابع مشابه
Structure versus Culture: A Comparative Study of the Influence of Political Institutions and Cultural Modernization Factors on Voter Turnout in Swiss Sub-national Parliamentary Elections
How can the differing levels of voter participation in sub-national parliamentary elections be explained? To answer this question I start from the current literature on cross-national comparative research, and apply explanatory approaches from this literature to the analysis of electoral turnout in sub-national units. I focus on two competing influential assessments in the literature, instituti...
متن کاملSmall Turnout, Large Problems: An Analysis of Political Participation in American Large City Mayor Elections
Voter turnout statistics in elections across the United States reveal that political participation is too low. The United States Constitution was designed in a way to give the American people effective, elected representation at multiple levels. This can only be fulfilled if people actually turn out to vote. This study seeks to explain political participation at the city level. In city level po...
متن کاملGet Out the Vote: How Encouraging Voting Changes Political Outcomes
Some US states have introduced measures to increase voter participation. I develop a formal model of elections to study how these measures affect political outcomes. I find that at high enough levels, measures to increase turnout lead to candidates converging at the median voter’s ideal point, as candidates switch from choosing policies that motivate their partisan base to competing over centri...
متن کاملWhy Does Sweden Have Higher Levels of Voter Turnout Than Finland?
Voter turnout is considered the “canary in the coal mine” when it comes to assessing the health of civic participation in a democracy; low turnout in particular is indicative of broader problems. Although voter turnout is quite high in both Sweden and Finland, turnout is notably higher in Sweden despite a long list of similarities between the two countries. Why is there this puzzling discrepanc...
متن کاملUnderstanding the Effect of Political Advertising on Voter Turnout: A Response to Krasno and Green
Krasno and Green have argued that political advertising has no impact on voter turnout. We remain unconvinced by their evidence, given concerns about how they measure the advertising environment, how they measure advertising tone, their choice of modeling techniques and the generalizability of their findings. These differences aside, we strongly agree that political advertising does little to u...
متن کامل