The Effect of Education on Voter Turnout

e-mail: stenn{at}ftc.gov Numerous studies demonstrate that the highly educated are morelikely to vote. The literature has not determined, however,why this is the case. The panel structure of the Current PopulationSurvey allows us to exploit exogenous life cycle differencesacross otherwise similar cohorts, so that the marginal effectof education can be isolated from unobserved correlated factors.We find that an additional year of schooling has very littleimpact on voter turnout. Author's note: Helpful comments from two anonymous referees,Sharmi Dasgupta, George Deltas, Steve Levitt, Rob McMillan,Casey Mulligan, Norman Nie, Sam Peltzman, Shawn Ulrick, BrettWendling, John Whitley, and John Yun are greatly appreciated.Data were provided by the Inter-University Consortium for Politicaland Social Research. The views expressed in this paper are thoseof the author and do not necessarily represent the views ofthe Federal Trade Commission or any individual Commissioner.     

The Introduction of Voter Registration and Its Effect on Turnout

David M. Konisky Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room E53-386, Cambridge, MA 02139 e-mail: sda{at}mit.edu e-mail: konisky{at}mit.edu (corresponding author) Studies of voter turnout across states find that those withmore facilitative registration laws have higher turnout rates.Eliminating registration barriers altogether is estimated toraise voter participation rates by up to 10%. This article presentspanel estimates of the effects of introducing registration thatexploits changes in registration laws and turnout within states.New York and Ohio imposed registration requirements on all oftheir counties in 1965 and 1977, respectively. We find thatthe introduction of registration to counties that did not previouslyrequire registration decreased participation over the long termby three to five percentage points. Though significant, thisis lower than estimates of the effects of registration fromcross-sectional studies and suggests that expectations aboutthe effects of registration reforms on turnout may be overstated.     

The Impact of Procedural Information Costs on Voting: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Chile

This paper uses a natural experiment to identify the effect of a procedural information cost on the electoral registration of young first-time voters. We exploit the fact that information about when the minimum age eligibility requirement is due, either at registration or election-day, is only meaningful for those turning 18 after registration closing day. Using a national dataset on Chilean registration over four elections, we provide evidence of a sharp discontinuity in the registration rate of those youngsters turning 18 at closing date. The effect is both sizable and robust, persists over time, and is similar across income groups.     

The Impact of Petition Signing on Voter Turnout

Generally speaking, campaign-related contact motivates voters. One form of such contact not much explored in the voter mobilization literature is the petitioning for ballot initiatives that occurs with considerable frequency in about half the states and even more localities. Using newly-available data that allow us to match individual petition signers with their subsequent election behavior, we explore the role of having had a hand in a ballot measure’s qualifying stage in propelling individual voters to the polls. Specifically, we perform multivariate analysis on a random sample of 1,000 registered Arkansas voters, 1,100 registered Florida voters, and all 71,119 registered voters in Gainesville, Florida to measure the influence of petition-signing in spurring voter turnout. We find marginal effects in the statewide samples, but substantial and significant turnout effects in the Gainesville municipal election—an off-cycle, low-profile election. Furthermore, the effect of petition-signing—across all of our samples—is strongest among irregular, as compared to habitual, voters. These findings are in keeping with recent campaign mobilization experimental research and comport with previous findings on the “educative effects” of ballot measures on voter turnout.     

Political Socialization in Context: The Effect of Political Competition on Youth Voter Turnout

Adolescence is an important time for political development. Researchers have concentrated on the family as the sole socializing agent of youths; however, as Campbell, Gimpel, and others have shown, political contexts also matter for young citizens. Using the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, the Record of American Democracy, and election outcomes data, I find that adolescents who resided in politically competitive locales or states have higher turnout years later compared to those who lived in uncompetitive contexts. These effects are not mediated by the home political environment and act through political socialization. This research adds to a growing literature on the influence of political contexts on political behavior and is the first to explore how political competition during adolescence influences voter turnout in young adulthood.

The Effect of Voting Technology on Voter Turnout: Do Computers Scare the Elderly?

In the aftermath of the Florida debacle in the 2000 Presidential election, there has been an emphasis on replacing voting equipment perceived as inferior (e.g., punch card ballots) with more technologically advanced voting methods. It is possible, however, that not all voters will be comfortable with high-tech voting devices. Elderly voters, for example, might be familiar with the old voting machines but apprehensive about computerized voting. If this is the case, the fear of new voting technology might cause the turnout of elderly voters to decrease. We test for this effect by analyzing the change in voter turnout across Georgia counties in the two most recent gubernatorial elections, as it relates to the share of the counties’ populations that is over the age of 65 years. Consistent with the hypothesis that computers scare the elderly, we find a significantly negative relationship between the change in voter turnout and the elderly share of the population. An additional 1% of the population that is elderly is associated with a 0.3–0.4% decrease in turnout. The hypothesis that elderly voters were apprehensive about the change in voting technology is also supported by the increase in absentee balloting.     

'Rational' Theories of Voter Turnout: A Review

The paradox between an individual's decisions to head to the polls and the absence of strictly rational arguments for this action has intrigued – and troubled – many scholars. The present article surveys various theoretical contributions to resolve this paradox of (not) voting. We assess these approaches based on their ability to explain a number of 'stylised facts' with respect to voter turnout. The main conclusion is that straying away from the behavioural assumptions of the Downsian model provides more realistic models and leads to promising predictions as to the individual's decision to head to the polls. Incorporating the role of (social) groups and learning in particular can be regarded as important strides towards understanding the individual's decision to cast a vote.     

The Bipolar Voter: On the Effects of Actual and Perceived Party Polarization on Voter Turnout in European Multiparty Democracies

Despite the growing literature on polarization, students of comparative politics have not yet been able to reach much assured understanding of how party polarization influences voter turnout in multiparty settings, which often put on offer both centrist, and divergent mainstream and niche party policies. I evaluate how politically sophisticated and unsophisticated citizens with different ideological preferences respond to high and increasing party polarization by employing individual- and party system-level data from 17 European multiparty democracies. I hypothesize that high levels of actual and perceived party polarization increase voter turnout, and policy seeking, sophisticated citizens are more likely to turn out when polarization in party policy offerings in the short run increases their utility from voting. The empirical analyses show that high party polarization increases both politically sophisticated and unsophisticated citizens’ propensities to turn out. However, such positive effect for the most part comes from the between- and within-party systems differences in actual party polarization, rather than how individual citizens perceive that. The implications of these findings with respect to strategic position taking incentives of political parties and the effects of the knowledge gap between sophisticated and unsophisticated citizens on political participation and democratic representation are discussed in the concluding section.     

Field Experiments and the Study of Voter Turnout

Although field experiments have long been used to study voter turnout, only recently has this research method generated widespread scholarly interest. This article reviews the substantive contributions of the field experimental literature on voter turnout. This literature may be divided into two strands, one that focuses on the question of which campaign tactics do or do not increase turnout and another that uses voter mobilization campaigns to test social psychological theories. Both strands have generated stubborn facts with which theories of cognition, persuasion and motivation must contend.     

The Limits of Mobilization: Turnout Evidence from State House Primaries

Many analysts have lamented the decline of political mobilization efforts. They suggest that the cause of worsening voter turnout may be traceable to the failure of political candidates and political parties to target and activate nonvoters. This research explores the effects of face-to-face mobilization efforts in a sample of September 5, 2000, Florida state house primary races. Controlling for their voting history, the face-to-face mobilization effort did increase turnout by about 8% among those contacted. However, the effects were weakest among those who voted least regularly. The results suggest that implementing more face-to-face mobilization efforts would increase turnout—mostly by encouraging occasional voters to go to the polls. However, those same mobilization efforts would not substantially affect the turnout of chronic nonvoters.     

When Threat Mobilizes: Immigration Enforcement and Latino Voter Turnout

Immigration enforcement, and deportation in particular, has been shown to have social and psychological effects on the non-deported as well, but its political effects have gone largely unexamined. I use the staggered implementation of Secure Communities, an information-sharing program between the federal government and local law enforcement, to estimate the short-term effects of stricter immigration enforcement on Latino voter turnout. A difference-in-differences analysis indicates that enrollment in Secure Communities led to an increase in county-level Latino voter turnout of 2–3 percentage points. This relatively large effect appears due to greater Latino activism in the wake of program implementation, rather than individuals responding to particular police interactions. These results extend the existing literature on mobilization in response to threat, demonstrate that policies can have far-reaching and unexpected political implications, and suggest that the current immigration debate may have major consequences for the future makeup of the American electorate.     

Explaining Social Class Inequality in Voter Turnout: The Contribution of Income and Health

Occupation‐based social class is an important, yet under‐explored, factor in electoral participation. In this article, social class differences in voter turnout over time are measured, and how two other resources – namely income and health – mediate or modify this relationship is analysed. The analysis is based on an individual‐level register‐based 11 percent sample of the entire electorate in the 1999 Finnish parliamentary elections, and secondarily on smaller register‐based samples in the 2012 presidential and municipal elections. Results show that income mediates part of the effects of social class on voting, while social class and utilised health indicators exert mainly independent effects on turnout. Social class differences remain largely stable in all income and hospital care groups, except that no differences between classes are observed among those most severely affected by health problems. Results are also mostly similar between those of working age and the older population, and between men and women, and remain stable over time and in different types of elections. The findings imply that social class should be taken account in theoretical and empirical models of turnout.     

Voter Turnout in Norway: Time, Space, and Causality

This article focuses on diachronic and synchronic variation in Norwegian electoral turnout from 1945 to 1991. The model contains aggregate data divided into two-year intervals with regions as cross-sections. The impact of both socio-economic and political variables is tested. The two-dimensional view on turnout variation makes it possible to distinguish between short-term and long-term effects, as well as between national versus local factors. In contrast to related studies, this analysis actually tests for causality relationships between different political variables. The empirical results indicate that an increase in either national unemployment or regional income contributes to an increase in turnout rates. Electoral participation is also positively related to Labour support, industrial employment and strike activity.     

Using Experiments to Estimate the Effects of Education on Voter Turnout

The powerful relationship between education and voter turnout is arguably the most well-documented and robust finding in American survey research. Yet the causal interpretation of this relationship remains controversial, with many authors suggesting that the apparent link between education and turnout is spurious. In contrast to previous work, which has relied on observational data to assess the effect of education on voter turnout, this article analyzes two randomized experiments and one quasi-experiment in which educational attainment was altered exogenously. We track the children in these experiments over the long term, examining their voting rates as adults. In all three studies, we find that exogenously induced changes in high school graduation rates have powerful effects on voter turnout rates. These results imply that the correlation between education and turnout is indeed causal. We discuss some of the pathways by which education may transmit its influence.     

Death and Turnout: The Human Costs of War and Voter Participation in Democracies

War heightens public interest in politics, especially when human lives are lost. We examine whether, and how, combat casualties affect the decision to vote in established democracies. Drawing from social psychology research on mortality salience, we expect increasing casualties to increase the salience of death, information that moves people to defend their worldview, especially nationalistic and ideological values. By heightening the importance of values, we propose that combat casualties increase the benefits of voting. In particular, we expect the effect of combat casualties to be pronounced among the least politically engaged. Using both cross‐national data of elections in 23 democracies over a 50‐year period and survey data from the United States and United Kingdom during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, we found that mounting casualties increase turnout. Furthermore, as expected, we found the effect of casualties to be most pronounced among those least interested in politics.     

Big Five Personality Traits and Responses to Persuasive Appeals: Results from Voter Turnout Experiments

We examine whether Big Five personality traits are associated with heterogeneous responses to commonly used Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) appeals in both a survey and a field experiment. The results suggest that Big Five personality traits affect how people respond to the costs and benefits of voting highlighted in GOTV appeals. Our evidence also suggests that one trait—Openness—is associated with broad persuasibility, while others shape responses to particular types of messages. In some cases the conditioning effects of Big Five traits are substantial. For example, in the one-voter households (HHs) included in our field experiment, we find that a mailer that raised the specter of social sanctions increased the likelihood of voting by a statistically greater amount among those scoring high on Openness. The findings constitute an important step forward in understanding how core personality traits shape responses to various aspects of the act of voting.     

A Comparative Analysis of Political Communication Systems and Voter Turnout

This article explores how political communication institutions affect cross-national differences in voter turnout in democratic elections. It demonstrates how the structure and means of conveying political messages—gauged by media systems, access to paid political television advertising, and campaign finance laws—explain variations in turnout across 74 countries. Relying on a "mobilization" perspective, I argue that institutional settings that reduce information costs for voters will increase turnout. The major empirical findings are twofold. First, campaign finance systems that allow more money (and electioneering communication) to enter election campaigns are associated with higher levels of voter turnout. Second, broadcasting systems and access to paid political television advertising explain cross-national variation in turnout, but their effects are more complex than initially expected. While public broadcasting clearly promotes higher levels of turnout, it also modifies the effect of paid advertising access on turnout.     

The 2003 and 2015 Constitutional Referenda in Rwanda: A Significant Change in Voter Turnout

Data on voter turnout and choice at the Rwanda’s 2003 and 2015 constitutional referenda were acquired and analyzed. The results revealed contrasting changes in voter turnout between diaspora and in-country electorate. Arguably, at home, lack of freedom on the part of registered voters to make independent choices may explain the 9.3 percent and 5.2 percent increase in voter turnout and “yes” vote, respectively. On the other hand, while the repressive arm of the regime can reach Rwandan citizens both at home and abroad so as to compel them not oppose its political agenda, voters in diaspora enjoy some level of relaxation, especially those staying in Western democracies, which could explain the 37.8 percent drop in voter turnout. The article further argues that the results of the 2003 and 2015 referenda could be used to support suggestions that the Tutsi electorate indeed stands more divided than it was a decade ago.