Does party ambivalence decrease voter turnout? A global analysis

The Dynamics of Voter Turnout and Party Choice

A considerable body of research focuses on why voter turnout changed — specifically, why it declined — in the 1960s and 1970s. Most models of the change focus on factors such as a decline in civic involvement or a shift in the age distribution toward younger citizens who vote less frequently. While these approaches have taught us much about voter turnout, they are puzzling in that none actually...

Does canvassing increase voter turnout? A field experiment.

This paper reports the results of a randomized field experiment involving registered voters in the city of New Haven. Nonpartisan get-out-the-vote messages were delivered through personal canvassing shortly before the November 1998 election. We find that personal canvassing increased voter turnout by approximately 6. The effect of personal contact seems to be slightly smaller for voters registe...

Contest with attack and defense: does negative campaigning increase or decrease voter turnout?

Television and Voter Turnout

I use variation across markets in the timing of television’s introduction to identify its impact on voter turnout. The estimated e¤ect is signi…cantly negative, accounting for between a quarter and a half of the total decline in turnout since the 1950s. It is robust to a range of controls and alternative speci…cations, and interacts intuitively with county characteristics. I argue that substitu...

Two Genes Predict Voter Turnout

Fowler, Baker, and Dawes (2008) recently showed in two independent studies of twins that voter turnout has very high heritability. Here we investigate two specific genes that may contribute to variation in voting behavior. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we show that individuals with a polymorphism of the MAOA gene are significantly more likely to have vote...