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Verba, Schlozman and Brady (1995) propose a model of political participation that moves beyond socioeconomic status and highlights the importance of civic skills, engagement and recruitment. In addition to developing a set of civic skills that make it easier to write letters to Congress, volunteer for campaigns, and attend demonstrations, engagement and recruitment are important explanatory factors in political participation. While the Voice and Equality data extensively tests the impact of this model in self-reported acts of political participation, little work has extended the theory to official validated records of voter participation, especially among Latino and Asian American voters. This paper argues that Latinos and Asians will be more likely to be psychologically engaged and recruited where more Latino and Asian candidates are on the ballot, which in turn will result in a greater likelihood of voting. Using individual level data for the universe of more than 5 million registered voters in Los Angeles and Orange counties, we estimate probit models for voter turnout in the November 2002 general election. We introduce a unique measure for engagement and recruitment: the number of Latino and Asian candidates that appear on the ballot for all levels of office in the two counties, providing a unique count of the number of Latinos and Asians each voter had the opportunity to elect (engagement) and be contacted by (recruitment). Using these variables as proxies for engagement and recruitment, we find that the probability of Latino and Asian voting increases as the number of co-ethnic candidates on the ballot increases. For both Asians and Latinos, the effect is stronger among foreign-born naturalized voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 2000 Presidential election voter education and mobilization has witnessed a renaissance in targeted contact and segmented messaging. Candidates, political parties, and interest groups have taken advantage of advances in electronic databases to divide and subdivide the electorate into different groups, and have different messages and messengers for each subgroup of voters. For decades, scholars and practitioners have known that personalized campaign appeals are more effective. Labor unions, religious leaders, military veterans, and racial and ethnic community leaders have typically been used by campaigns to make a stronger, more personalized, and perhaps more trusting connection with voters. While nationwide and one-size-fits-all campaigns can be cheaper and easier to implement, smaller, targeted campaigns might be more effective in winning the hearts and minds of voters. This paper takes up the question of whether or not personalized or segmented contact during a campaign is more successful at convincing voters than "generic" contact, or no contact at all.Using data from a national survey of Latino registered voters in 2004, we examine the impact of being contacted by a co-ethnic messenger on support for the Republican and Democratic parties. While some previous studies have examined just voter turnout or vote choice, this paper examines the deeper implications of co-ethnic contact, including support for public policy, candidate favorability, and strength of partisanship. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]