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We examine the relative performance of voting technologies by studying presidential, gubernatorial, and senatorial election returns across hundreds of counties in the United States from 1988 to 2000. Relying on a fixed-effects regression applied to an unbalanced panel of counties, we find that in presidential elections, traditional paper ballots produce the lowest rates of uncounted votes (i.e.,“residual votes”), followed by optically scanned ballots, mechanical lever machines, direct register electronic machines (DREs), and punch cards. In gubernatorial and senatorial races, paper, optical scan ballots, and DREs are significantly better in minimizing the residual vote rate than mechanical lever machines and punch cards. If all jurisdictions in the United States that used punch cards in 2000 had used optically scanned ballots instead, we estimate that approximately 500,000 more votes would have been attributed to presidential candidates nationwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The timing of message delivery in political campaigns is a key component of strategy. Yet studies that examine the impact of message timing on political behavior are surprisingly rare. Although one recent study finds that appeals delivered closer to Election Day will be most effective (Nickerson, American Journal of Political Science 51(2):269-282, ), methodological considerations render this conclusion tentative and suggest the impact of message timing remains an open question. In this paper I report the results of a randomized field experiment designed to compare the mobilization effects of nonpartisan messages delivered via commercial phone banks at different points during a campaign cycle. The results of the experiment, conducted during the November 2005 municipal elections in Rochester, New York, suggest calls delivered early on during a campaign cycle can also be effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates when a runoff election is desirable and when a plurality result is good enough. A runoff election increases the likelihood that the Condorcet winner will be elected but also entails additional costs. The metric for determining whether a runoff election is desirable will be the probability that the winner of the plurality election would win an ensuing runoff. Statistical models of voter behavior are developed that estimate this probability, which are verified with runoff-election data from United States elections. The models allow governments to make more informed choices in creating rules to decide when to hold runoff elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses an econometric model to analyze the political and economic factors affecting the Senate voting patterns on the 1993 Brady Bill and the assault weapons ban. Results of a logit estimation procedure support the hypothesis that the political activities and presence of the National Rifle Association (measured as relative campaign contributions and membership) had a significant impact on the voting patterns by Senators on both bills. (JEL D72, Z10) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a graphical model to explain the relationship between majority voting and government growth in the U.S. Total government expenditure and GNP from 1929 to 1982; Assumption that government sets agendas to maximize expenditure; Numerical example of migration between two jurisdictions.

This paper focuses on the effect of disgruntlement among those primary voters who supported U.S. presidential nomination losers. It analyzes the general election voting behavior of primary voters in the last five presidential elections in order to determine if differences exist between those supporters of the winning nominee in each party and backers of other candidates who also sought the nomination. A multivariate analysis of the determinants of voter turnout shows significant results only for the Democrats in 1972, when primary voters who supported candidates other than George McGovern were more likely to abstain in the general election. Taking into account the option of defecting to another party in November, both parties appear to have been plagued by a considerable amount of disloyalty on the part of supporters of candidates who failed to win the nomination, although for the Republicans this type of response is confined to the 1980 election. The existence of a third party or independent candidacy may be an important variable influencing the behavior of these disgruntled primary voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the sources of the widely available standard figures for Jewish voting in American presidential elections, which have previously been only vaguely identified. The pre-polling results for 1916-1932 data turn out to be only for Manhattan, and do not take sufficient account of voting patterns in other cities and of voting for the Socialist Party. The standard figures for the 1936-1968 period do not generally correspond to national surveys taken for those elections. The figures starting in 1972 are based on one set of exit polls, but should instead combine all of the exit polls. The 1924, 1952, and 1984 data are given particular attention because the Jewish vote was thought to be realigning in those years. Revised estimates find large differences for 1924 and 1948 and provide a firmer basis for tracing trends in Jewish voting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While scholars disagree about whether and how much campaigns persuade voters, they increasingly agree that campaigns inform voters about the candidates and help voters bring their votes in line with their interests. Some argue that campaigns serve mostly to help voters bring their choices in line with preexisting political predispositions. This paper examines the crystallization of voter preferences during the 2008 presidential election campaign. The authors rely on polls from each month of the election year campaign to assess whether and how the structure of vote choice changed. The results show that certain election day predictors of the vote—especially party identification—became increasingly important predictors of preferences during the election cycle. Even the increase in party effects is mostly confined to the period leading up to the party conventions, well before the general election campaign even began. The structure of preferences evolved over the course of the long campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One mystery of U.S. politics is why the president's party regularly loses congressional seats at midterm. Although presidential coattails and their withdrawal provide a partial explanation, coattails cannot account for the fact that the presidential party typically performs worse than normal at midterm. This paper addresses the midterm vote separate from the presidential year vote, with evidence from generic congressional polls conducted during midterm election years. Polls early in the midterm year project a normal vote result in November. But as the campaign progresses, vote preferences almost always move toward the out party. This shift is not a negative referendum on the president, as midterms do not show a pattern of declining presidential popularity or increasing salience of presidential performance. The shift accords with ''balance'' theory, where the midterm campaign motivates some to vote against the party of the president in order to achieve policy moderation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For too long, research on retrospective voting has fixated on how economic trends affect incumbents' electoral prospects in national and state elections. Hundreds of thousands of elections in the United States occur at the local level and have little to do with unemployment or inflation rates. This paper focuses on the most prevalent: school boards. Specifically, it examines whether voters hold school board members accountable for the performance of their schools. The 2000 elections reveal considerable evidence that voters evaluate school board members on the basis of student learning trends. During the 2002 and 2004 school board elections, however, when media (and by extension public) attention to testing and accountability systems drifted, measures of achievement did not influence incumbents' electoral fortunes. These findings, we suggest, raise important questions about both the scope conditions of retrospective voting models and the information voters rely upon when evaluating incumbents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses a very important question for media researchers, political campaigners, and democratic theorists alike: Does negative campaigning demobilize the electorate? Using both aggregate-and individual-level turnout data and evidence on the nature or "tone" of virtually every U.S. Senate campaign between 1988 and 1998, we find that campaign negativism has a curvilinear effect on turnout, with most observed levels of negativism actually stimulating turnout. Only at extremely high levels does negativism in political campaigns generally suppress turnout. We find no consistent evidence that person-based criticisms of the opponent have any different effect than policy-based criticisms. However, we do find support for the hypothesis that partisans tend to be stimulated by campaign negativism while independents are more likely to be discouraged by such campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to offer an explanation as to why Eucidean distance serves as a reasonably good approximation of reality when it does not incorporate explicitly a consideration of the sides of the issue taken by the voter and candidate. The empirical evidence indicates quite clearly that Eucidean distance and side of issue are extremely highly correlated. Two general classes of explanation are offered. First, this powerful association can be seen as a function of the mathematical difficulty of actually being in close proximity to a preferred party while being on the opposite side of an issue on a 7-point scale. Second, even after this mathematical artifact is taken into account, the combined effects of assimilation, contrast, and negativity may bring favored candidates closer to the voter and drive the opposition further away, resulting in a strong correlation of Euclidean distance and side of the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Geraldine Ferraro was selected to be the Democratic Party's vice-presidential candidate, questions were raised about why she was chosen. Was her selection an outcome of affirmative action in the political arena? The research reported in this paper investigates whether the effect of Ferraro's candidacy on voting inclinations and behavior among college students was mediated by conceptions of the procedure of affirmative action. As predicted, conceptions of affirmative action (the difference between actual and threshold ratios) influenced changes in inclination to vote Democratic in response to the Ferraro candidacy. In turn, those inclinations affected voting behavior in the 1984 presidential election. The discussion focuses on the theoretical and practical importance of perceived procedural fairness in the political arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the history of popular participation in U.S. partisan politics between 1787 and 1825, arguing that political participation began with the Jeffersonian political revolution and not with the Jacksonian model of democracy. The author examines the electoral history of Jeffersonian New York and the Columbia County Republicans of 1806, discusses how the democracy of the era was linked to property rights and land tenure, and analyzes the political actions of attorney Martin Van Buren.

Examines the differences in economic outcomes delivered by partisan governments, and the way in which voters take this into account. Estimation of autoregressive models of output growth, unemployment and inflation for U.S. post-war data; Confirmation that partisan differences in economic outcomes are actually observed in the data; Partisan cycle exhibited by the U.S. unemployment rate; Evidence that U.S. citizens tend to vote for the left party when high unemployment is expected and for the right party when high inflation is expected.

Presents a study on whether voting participation for third parties in presidential elections can be explained by a rational voter model. Definition of voting participation rate; Information on the empirical model used in the study; Effect of unemployment on voting; Implications of the rational model to thir party voting; Conclusions.

This research considers whether there is evidence of legislators' issue avoidance, or un- willingness to reveal one's position. It links, for the first time, two important areas of inquiry: legislative decision making and issue avoidance. The data describe senatorial behavior over eighteen years, involving approximately 200,000 individual voting decisions. During that time, senators were polled by CQ after each missed roll call, and asked to indicate their positions. Issue avoidance is a subset of the nonresponses to that poll. A conceptual model of voting and position taking is presented, incorporating both behaviors and intentions. It defines two kinds of issue avoidance: "proactive," deliberate avoidance at the time of the roll call, and "reactive," avoidance decided on after votes missed inadvertently. Application of the model permits inferences about intent. Proactive avoidance accounts for 12% of nonvoting during the terms' first five years. It also represents 40% of failures to reveal positions. As much as another 19% of nonvoting results in reactive avoidance. A sixth-year increase in issue avoidance is indicated, although not conclusively. The findings strongly suggest that models of legislative voting should he amended to account for both proactive and reactive avoidance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to explain better the linkages between constituency opinion and the voting records of senators. A hybrid explanation--the modified two-constituency thesis--is presented here, and the analyses provide evidence in support of the explanation. Senators' voting scores are most strongly related to the weighted position of their party's constituents. The extent to which senators' voting scores diverge from the preferences of constituents of their own party depends on the weighted positions of independents and constituents of the other party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The level of competition in House elections has been shown to result primarily from the quality of the challenger. In this paper. I demonstrate that the same dynamic functions in Senate elections. The quality of Senate challengers varies, and the higher the quality of a challenger the more votes he or she receives and the more likely the challenger is to defeat an incumbent. Higher quality challengers are more likely to run in states where the pool of such candidates is large; their appearance in a contest is not due to any personal or political characteristics of the incumbent. Challenger quality matters, in part, because higher levels translate into more campaign money, but quality also indicates other skills that produce additional votes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we describe patterns of party voting, party cohesion and party strength in the U.S. Senate from 1877 through 1986, and repIicate, for the Senate, earlier explanatory models developed for the House of Representatives. We then refine and extend these models to correct for autocorrelation and measurement problems in the replicated analysis. The new analysis demonstrates that cohesion and strength for the two parties in the Senate are driven by different forces. For Democrats, cohesion and strength have been a function of the size of the Southern Democratic contingent. For Republicans, cohesion and strength are a product of membership turnover and presidential partisanship. Finally, we note the close correspondence between the overall patterns of party voting in the Senate and the House and discuss potential causes and implications of this relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the model of congressional elections proposed by Jacobson and Kernel! has been the subject of some controversy, to date there has been no attempt to investigate one of their central claims: that potential candidates decide whether to run in the spring of the election year. This paper uses previously unanalyzed data from the Federal Election Commission to test this claim. The results suggest that most serious candidates do indeed decide by the spring, but that in 1982 and 1984 over half of serious nonincumbent candidates made their candidacy decisions before March of the election year. This suggests that models of congressional elections may have to incorporate even earlier measures of economic conditions and presidential popularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the decline of party voting in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1887 to 1968 is analyzed. The levels of party voting (by Congress) are fitted to a regression line, with the results showing a high period of party voting (1890-1910), an intermediate period (1911-1940), and a low period (1941-1968). A model is developed to measure the effects on party voting of external variables-party homogeneity, party conflict, presidential partisanship, and turnover; and internal variables-centralized leadership and mucus strength. Both types of variables are shown to have some effect, but external-and particularly electoral-variables are more important. Since these variables are culled from contemporary research, the results demonstrate that contemporary hypotheses and findings regarding legislative parties are generalizable over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the voting behavior of freshmen Congressmen of the United States. The writers on Congress have commented on the special position occupied by the freshman Senator or Representative. The freshman Congressman, they suggest, is baffled and handicapped by the rules of procedure, more subject to the social lobby, forbidden by powerful custom from speaking freely, easily controllable through party discipline by the apportionment of committee assignments, and so forth. There have been suggestions that the first-term Representative may be more subject to party discipline, but no systematic analysis has been employed to verify or disprove the proposition. That some practicing politicians believe such a difference does exist. This paper is an attempt to determine whether freshman status had a significant influence upon voting in the House of Representatives on major policy questions during the Eighty-third and Eighty-fourth Congresses.

The article offers the author's views related to the articles from scientists published in "New York Times." It is said that some scientists proclaimed that based on analysis of brain-imaging data from just a handful of swing voters, they had divined what the rest of undecided masses truly think on the upcoming presidential election in the U.S. It is said that the scientist used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the subject's brain while viewing the images of political candidates. The author claimed that the articles published are questionable scientific research and too insubstantial in scientific detail to assess the strength of either the methods or the data.

The article presents a study pertaining to the relationship between selected demographic and attitudinal variables and employee voting behavior in a union decertification election. The study was conducted at a public university in the southeastern U.S. The study results revealed that a positive attitude toward unions is strongly correlated with pro-union voting behavior. These findings support previous studies concerning voting behavior. No significant relationship was evident between salary and reported voting behavior.

We outline a new voting procedure for representative democracies. This procedure should be used for important decisions only and consists of two voting rounds: a randomly-selected subset of the citizens is awarded a one-time voting right. The parliament also votes, and the two decisions are weighted according to a pre-defined key. The final decision is implemented. As this procedure gives the society-represented by the randomly-chosen subset-a better say for important decisions, the citizens might be more willing to accept the consequences of these decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a reply to the commentary of Douglas H. Blair on the article "The Electoral College and Voter Participation Rates: An Explanatory Note," which appeared in a 1980 issue of "Public Choice." Effect of the electoral college on voter participation rates in the U.S.; Circumstance in which the small differences in the political power structure will tend to result in a higher voter participation rate; Distortion of the geographic pattern of voter participation due to the existence of the Electoral College.

Comments on the reduction of voter participation rates in the U.S. due to the existence of the Electoral College. Details of the study on the distribution of power under the Electoral College; Probability that a randomly-selected voter could reverse the Electoral College choice by reversing his or her vote; Model under which the popular-vote plurality of the Democratic candidate is a normally-distributed random variable.

Is social media a valid indicator of political behavior? There is considerable debate about the validity of data extracted from social media for studying offline behavior. To address this issue, we show that there is a statistically significant association between tweets that mention a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives and his or her subsequent electoral performance. We demonstrate this result with an analysis of 542,969 tweets mentioning candidates selected from a random sample of 3,570,054,618, as well as Federal Election Commission data from 795 competitive races in the 2010 and 2012 U.S. congressional elections. This finding persists even when controlling for incumbency, district partisanship, media coverage of the race, time, and demographic variables such as the district's racial and gender composition. Our findings show that reliable data about political behavior can be extracted from social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the political history of democracy in the U.S. between 1787 and 1828, including popular participation and the right to vote for adult, white males. The author discusses the freehold property qualifications that restricted suffrage and political rights, explores how radicals insisted every adult male should be allowed to vote, and analyzes the voting rules of each state.

Political scientists are increasingly exploring the psychological underpinnings of voting behavior using field experimental techniques. Research in psychology demonstrates that positive reinforcement-what I describe as positive social pressure-motivates prosocial behavior. A distinctive feature of the current study is the focus on key subgroups of voters, namely unmarried women and minorities. Attention to these voter subgroups allows us to build upon findings reported in previous studies that leave questions about the generalizability of the reported effects of positive social pressure to key demographic subgroups of voters largely unanswered. This article reports the results of a large-scale randomized field experiment designed to investigate the impact of positive social pressure on voter turnout. The experiment was conducted during the November 2009 gubernatorial election in New Jersey, and the results suggest positive social pressure mobilizes voters. Moreover, the effects appear to be robust across subgroups of voters, including minorities and unmarried women, and both lower- and higher-propensity voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the political implications of the changing demographics of the Cuban American community. Over the past decade, pundits have predicted a massive shift in Cuban American voting behavior owing to demographic changes in the community. The authors find evidence that the attitudes of Cuban Americans have undergone significant changes, driven largely by the increased number of post-Mariel (1980) immigrants. The authors also find, however, that these dramatic changes have not yet been reflected at the ballot box, nor are they likely to be soon, owing to the slow process of immigrant political incorporation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Few scholars have examined perceptions of electoral competition, and those who have (Ferejohn and Fiorina 1974) find no link between perceptions and voting behavior. We find that individuals’ perceptions of electoral competition are related to exposure to a close race in their U.S. House district but do not match reality. This is because perceptions are colored by “wishful thinking” in that individuals believe their favored candidate will win a close election (Uhlaner and Grofman 1986). Once we control for wishful thinking, we find that perceptions of electoral competition are associated with political participation, while actual levels of competition in one’s House district are not. Although numerous studies find that higher levels of actual electoral competition are associated with increased turnout, this is the first to find evidence of links between actual electoral competition, perceived electoral competition, and voting behavior. Measuring perceptions—and understanding how they differ from reality—may be important for scholars of public opinion and political behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article investigates the impact of one election procedure designed to enfranchise immigrants: foreign-language election materials. Specifically, it uses regression discontinuity design to estimate the turnout and election impacts of Spanish-language assistance provided under Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act. Analyses of two different data sets-the Latino National Survey and California 1998 primary election returns-show that Spanish-language assistance increased turnout for citizens who speak little English. The California results also demonstrate that election procedures can influence outcomes, as support for ending bilingual education dropped markedly in heavily Spanish-speaking neighborhoods with Spanish-language assistance. Small changes in election procedures can influence who votes as well as what wins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most consistently documented relationships in the field of political behavior is the close association between educational attainment and political participation. Although most research assumes that this association arises because education causes participation, it could also arise because education proxies for the factors that lead to political engagement: the kinds of people who participate in politics may be the kinds of people who tend to stay in school. To test for a causal effect of education, we exploit the rise in education levels among males induced by the Vietnam draft. We find little reliable evidence that education induced by the draft significantly increases participation rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latinos are commonly referred to as the “sleeping giant” in American politics, and interest in the political potential of this fastest-growing American ethnic group has risen in recent years. This article examines the influence of Latino political identity on voting preferences in the 2006 California gubernatorial election. A survey experiment linking Latino identity to support for either the Democratic or Republican candidate finds that vote preferences were influenced by group cues and that this effect was strongest in increasing support for the Democratic candidate among Latino Republicans and independents. The influence of Latino political identity is modeled as a two-step process of social identification and group influence, both of which are found to interact with prior partisanship. These findings support a model of political identity that views identity as malleable and subject to contextual influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information about potential electoral reform in the U.S. towards an opt-out voting process. Topics include the theoretical benefits of opt-out voting, the increase in political participation through the voting process, and arguments against changes to the election process. It is suggested that jurisdictions in the U.S. should conduct experiments about the effectiveness of opt-out voting.

Many economic voting models assume that individual voters' reactions to incumbents are strongly conditioned by their perceptions of the performance of the macroeconomy. However, the direction of causality between economic perceptions and political preferences is unclear: economic perceptions can be a consequence of incumbent support rather than an influence on it. We develop the latter thesis by examining the dynamic relationship between retrospective economic perceptions and several measures of political preferences—approval, partisanship, and vote—in the 2000-2004 U.S. presidential election cycle using the ANES 2000-2002-2004 panel study to estimate structural equation model extensions of the Anderson and Hsiao estimator for panel data. Our findings confirm that the conventional wisdom misrepresents the relationship between retrospective economic perceptions and incumbent partisanship: economic perceptions are consistently and robustly conditioned by political preferences. Individuals' economic perceptions are influenced by their political preferences rather than vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent campaigns, candidates have sought to attract votes from the growing Latino electorate through ethnic cues. Yet, we know very little about the impact of appeals to ethnicity. This article examines the role that ethnic cues play in shaping the political opinions and choices of Latinos, as well as the response of non-Hispanic White Americans (Anglos). We take up the simplest of group cues, the ethnicity of the candidate. We argue that candidate ethnicity is an explicit ethnic cue that alters the political choices of Latinos through priming of their ethnic linked fate, but only affects Anglos through spreading activation of primed ethnic attitudes to national identity considerations. Evidence from an experiment that manipulated exposure to candidate ethnicity information provides evidence for these claims. Our results help to explain coethnic voting among Latinos and resistance to Latino candidates among Anglos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. This article uses a data set of California State legislators to determine the effect of tobacco contributions on legislative behavior. Methods. Although many previous studies have analyzed the effect of campaign contributions on legislative behavior, this study makes a number of improvements to previous studies, including the use of panel data and improved instruments. Results. I find that contrary to prior research on tobacco industry contributions, campaign contributions from the tobacco industry do not influence legislative support for the tobacco industry. Conclusion. This suggests that the tobacco industry is not an exception to the literature on the influence of campaign contributions, which has shown that campaign contributions generally do not influence legislative voting and other behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the central questions surrounding the 2008 presidential election is the role of race in shaping electoral choice among non-Hispanic whites, and whether race played an equivalent role among Hispanics, whose willingness to vote for an African American candidate was raised as an uncertainty during the primary campaign. The authors argue that, beyond the usual association of racial sentiment with party preference, the effect of Obama's race on the 2008 election is significant, but substantially smaller among Latinos than among non-Hispanic whites. Although Latino voters often express racial sentiments that are indistinguishable from whites, there was a significant disconnect between those racial sentiments and Latinos' vote choice and evaluations of candidate Obama. The authors explore the explanatory power of explicit, indirect, and implicit measures of racial sentiment and find that an indirect measurement—the Racial Resentment Index—retains the greatest predictive validity, notwithstanding its conceptual challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in deliberative theories of democracy has grown tremendously among political theorists, political scientists, activists, and even government officials. Many scholars, however, are skeptical that it is a practically viable theory, even on its own terms. They argue (inter alia) that most people dislike politics and that deliberative initiatives would amount to a paternalistic imposition. Using two large national samples investigating people's hypothetical willingness to deliberate and their actual participation in response to a real invitation to deliberate with their member of Congress, we find that (1) willingness to deliberate in the United States is much more widespread than expected, and (2) it is precisely those people less likely to participate in traditional partisan politics who are most interested in deliberative participation. They are attracted to such participation as a partial alternative to "politics as usual." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. Traditional theories of turnout are of limited applicability to college students: the concepts and measures associated with these theories were not designed with students in mind, and factors not considered by the traditional theories are relevant. We offer a new theoretical perspective for understanding college student turnout and test it using a new data set. Methods. We conducted a phone survey of college students following the November 2004 U.S. presidential election. We test our theoretical expectations using descriptive statistics and logistic regression models. Results. We find that the usual demographic factors are of little relevance. Turnout is, however, related to the same motivational factors that stimulate older voters, as well as to mobilization by parties. College-specific factors, such as distance between home and college, are also relevant. Turnout was also higher for students whose hometown or college town was in a battleground state. Conclusion. The results suggest new approaches to the study of young people and how and when they become part of the voting public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]