Nearly two million more young Americans under the age of 30 voted in the 2008 presidential elections as compared to the 2004 elections, according to new Census data analyzed and released by CIRCLE. The increase is a continuation of the trend observed in the 2004 and 2006 elections. Youth turnout was 11 percentage points higher than in 1996, which was the low point after decades of decline. Whil...

Do better informed people vote more? Recent theories of voter turnout emphasize a positive effect of being informed on the propensity to vote, but the possibility of endogenous information acquisition makes estimation of causal effects difficult. I estimate the causal effects of being informed on voter turnout using unique data from a natural experiment Copenhagen referendum on decentralization...

We present a model of participation in large elections in which the formation of voter groups is endogenous. Partisan citizens decide whether to become leaders (activists) and try to persuade impressionable citizens to vote for the leaders’ preferred party. In the (unique) pure strategy equilibrium, the number of leaders favoring each party depends on the cost of activism and the importance of ...

This exploratory study examines the impact of ending the military draft on U.S. voter turnout from 1960 through 2006. After allowing for a number of variables, including the unemployment rate, unionization, the female labor force participation rate, per capita real GDP, and Presidential approval ratings, compelling evidence is found that ending the military draft in the U.S. may have acted in a...

What are the political consequences of democratization assistance to regimes transitioning from authoritarian rule? By exploiting the downstream effects of a field experiment designed to encourage citizen monitoring of Georgia’s 2008 parliamentary elections, we evaluate the political consequences of one type of democracy promotion aid. The intervention increased citizen activism, but it also ha...

In most countries health policy is an important part of the political agenda. Yet few studies have examined the relationship between the two. This study investigates the association between health and voter turnout in Britain using the National Child Development Study. Self-rated general health, the Malaise Inventory score and indicators of smoking and alcohol consumption, as measured at ages 2...

Does partisan and racial context have an effect on the likelihood that states will adopt stringent requirements for voting? Our duration analysis shows that Republican governments increase the likelihood that a new law requiring citizens to have a photo ID to vote will be passed. This effect is weakened by minority group size. We then examine whether the adoption of voter ID regulations affects...

This paper uses prefecture-level panel data from Japan, spanning the period 1989–2003, to examine the influence of social norms and fractionalization on voting behavior. The key findings obtained from analysis via the fixed effects estimation, which controls for unobserved prefecture-specific fixed effects, are as follows: (1) the voter turnout is higher in close-knit communities, indicating th...