Informatization, voter turnout and income inequality

In recent years, voter turnout has been decreasing in most industrial countries, and about 40% of all electors abstain from voting. This may affect income inequality and the GDP growth rate through a redistribution policy determined by majority voting. In this paper, we explore the reasons for this continuing decrease in voter turnout and assess its social costs. We conclude that informatization lowers voter turnout by generating an information overload, and that a decrease in voter turnout lowers GDP growth by limiting income redistribution.      

Gender and social conformity: Do men and women respond differently to social pressure to vote?

In this paper, we re-analyze data from a large-scale field experiment (N = 344,084) on voter turnout in order to determine whether men and women respond differently to social pressure aimed at voter mobilization. To date, there have been mixed results regarding the interaction between a person’s gender and receptivity to social influence. On the whole, our analyses confirm prior findings that social pressure increases voter turnout but uncover little to no evidence of gender differences in receptivity to social pressure cues in the context of political participation.     

The True Electorate: A Cross-Validation of Voter Registration Files and Election Survey Demographics

I cross-validate the 2004 general election electorate's demographicprofile available from voter registration files, the media consortium'sNational Election Poll or exit poll, and the Current PopulationSurvey within selected states. I find voter files and CurrentPopulation Survey to be in general agreement, but the exit pollreports an electorate that is younger and composed of more minorities.All three confirm a pronounced pro-woman turnout gap.     

Wahlbeteiligung im Lebensverlauf

This empirical investigation attempts to answer the question whether the change in voter turnout at the German general elections is related to cohort specific voting behavior of political generations, also taking into account age and period effects. Furthermore, it is asked whether the decline of voter turnout after the 1972 German general election is a statistical artefact of official statistics. Both questions are investigated with retrospective life history data about voting behavior of individuals from several birth cohorts. It is analyzed that the voter turnout has really declined in the 1980s because of the increased number of determined non-voters. There is evidence that the changes of the voting behavior of younger individuals in successive political generations results in the social change of the general voter turnout. While the effects of the citizens’ age on the voter turnout are minimal for the whole period between 1953 and 1987, the impact of period effects are less important for the historical change of voter turnout as often assumed.     

Beliefs about unions and what they should do: A survey of employed canadians

I use IR theory to identify five roles that have been associated with unions in North America and then report the findings from a 1995 survey of employed Canadians, asking them their beliefs about the amount of effort unions place on each of twenty-four activities associated with these roles, the amount of effort unions should place on each, and the amount of success unions have on each. Basically, Canadians want unions to continue to perform their traditional activities, and they view unions as having an important conflict role, but they also want unions to place more effort into more consensual workplace democratization and participation activities. These results are consistent with the notion of “adversary participation,” and are interpreted as suggesting a new “model” of unions, one which enables workers to have greater control over their working lives. Jack Fiorito, Joe Rose, and Corliss Olson made valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Toni Ostroman was primarily responsible for the data collection.     

EFFECTS OF WELFARE REFORM ON WOMEN'S VOTING PARTICIPATION

This study investigates the effects of welfare reform in the United States in the 1990s on voting among low‐income women. Using the November Current Population Surveys with the added Voting and Registration Supplement for the years 1990 through 2004 and exploiting changes in welfare policy across states and over time, we estimate the causal effects of welfare reform on women's voting registration and voting participation during the period in which welfare reform unfolded. During this time period, voter turnout was decreasing in the United States. We find robust evidence that welfare reform led to smaller declines in voting (about 3 to 4 percentage points, which translates to about 10% relative to the baseline mean) for women who were exposed to welfare reform compared to several different comparison groups of similar women who were much less exposed. The robust findings suggest that welfare reform had prosocial effects on civic participation, as characterized by voting. The effects were largely confined to presidential elections, were stronger in Democratic than Republican states, were stronger in states with stronger work incentive policies, and appeared to operate through employment, education, and income. (JEL D72, H53, I38, J21)     

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

There are two ways of winning a competition, by increasing one’s own chances of winning or by decreasing those of one’s opponents. I consider a model of contest with attack and defense and propose an application to negative political campaigns, where two candidates choose between disparaging their opponent or valorizing their own image. I provide sufficient conditions for the existence and uniqueness of the symmetric Nash equilibrium of the contest game. Through this model, I then contribute to the controversy concerning the effect of negative campaigning on voter turnout.     

A TEST FOR THE EFFECT OF CONFORMITY ON CRIME RATES USING VOTER TURNOUT

Using voter turnout to measure conformity, this article examines whether conformity with social norms moderates the crime rate in the United States at the state and county levels. If people are fairly consistent in their response to the perceived local degree of conformity with norms about voting and against crime, analysis predicts a unique quadratic relationship between reported crime rates and voter turnout. A pooled multivariate regression analysis of state crime rates for several index crimes in 1960, 1970, and 1980 confirms the predicted relationship, as do county-level analyses of the violent crime rate in 1985 and 1991. This method might also be used to assess the effect of social conformity on other social choices.     

Reconsidering Explanations for Regional Convergence in Voter Registration and Turnout in the United States, 1956–20001

In the United States, voter turnout rates have been declining for the last 4 decades; however, this pattern differs substantially by region. Southern states have actually seen a fairly dramatic increase in turnout since the 1950s and currently the South and non‐South have almost identical rates of voter registration and turnout. Using a series of Heckman probit models, which examine voting as a two‐step process of registering and casting a vote, we systematically investigate differences in rates of registering and voting across regions and test explanations for regional convergence over time. Using data from the American National Election Studies (1956–2000), we find that regional convergence in voter registration is primarily due to the removal of formal and informal barriers to registration and voting in the South and declining efforts to mobilize potential voters in the non‐South. In addition, we find some fairly distinct differences in which predictors are important to each stage of the voting process; for example, race is a better predictor of registering to vote than voting. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these results.     

The Effect of Residential Concentration on Voter Turnout among Ethnic Minorities

Utilizing a large and unique dataset composed of government records, we study the widely contested effect of co‐ethnic residential concentrations on voter turnout. Non‐Western immigrants are moderately affected by the concentration of co‐ethnic voters in their neighborhoods. As the local concentration of same‐ethnicity voters increases, so does the individual's propensity to turn out for the election. In general, the concentration of non‐Western immigrants in the neighborhood has only a very limited impact on an immigrant's propensity to vote. Finally, we investigate the possible mobilizing effect of local candidates and, in particular, local co‐ethnic candidates on voter turnout. We find that the presence of candidates in general and co‐ethnic candidates running for office in a neighborhood has a moderate positive mobilization effect. However, taking this factor into account, the effect of residential concentrations was not eliminated.     

Grassroots Mobilization and Voter Turnout in 2004

Voter turnout increased sharply in 2004. At the same time, 2004marked a change in campaign strategy, as both presidential campaignsand allied organizations placed unprecedented emphasis on votermobilization. This article attempts to assess the degree towhich grassroots mobilization efforts contributed to the surgein voter turnout. We conclude that although grassroots effortsgenerated millions of additional votes, they probably accountfor less than one-third of the observed increase in turnout.Increased turnout in 2004 primarily reflects the importancethat voters accorded the presidential contest.     

Voting in professional associations: The case of the American sociological association revisited

Who votes in ASA elections? This article examines data on voter turnout from two recent presidential contests of the American Sociological Association in an analysis of the determinants of election participation. Extending the 1981 Ridgeway and Moore study of voting dynamics in the ASA, we hypothesize that intraorganizational networks and particular demongraphic characteristics link ASA members to the discipline in a manner analogous to the way such factors operate in the national electorate. On the basis of data compiled from 1985 and 1986 ASA election returns, we find that network factors are the most salient determinants of voting behavior. We conclude that those organizational ties that effectively link members, however directly or indirectly, to the larger Association are the most predictive of propensity to vote.     

Becoming independent: political participation and youth transitions in the Scottish referendum

Sociological debates on youth engagement with electoral politics play out against a backdrop of supposed ‘decline’ in civic participation (e.g. Putnam 2000 , Norris, 2011 ), in turn contextualized by theories of individualization in ‘late’ or ‘reflexive’ modernity (Beck, Giddens). However, the enfranchisement of 16 and 17 year olds in the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum catalysed remarkably high levels of voter turnout among this youngest group, and was accompanied by apparently ongoing political engagement. We explored this engagement among a strategic sample of young ‘Yes’ voters, in the immediate aftermath of this exceptional political event. Analysis of qualitative interview data generated an unanticipated finding; that interviewees narrated their political engagement biographically, articulated their referendum participation reflexively, and located their new political ideas, allegiances and actions in the context of their own transitions to ‘independent’ adulthood. This inspired us to rethink young people's political engagement in relation to youth transitions. Doing so enables a synthesis of divergent strands in the sociology of youth, and offers new insights into the combinations of ‘personal’ agentic and ‘political’ structural factors involved in young people's politicization.     

UNIONS, PLANTS, JOBS, AND WORKERS

The relationship between unions and their members is an important, yet neglected, subject in recent studies of the sociology of work. This study develops and tests a theory of union satisfaction and participation that combines recent research in the sociology of work with previous explanations of union satisfaction and participation provided by industrial relations researchers, in an attempt to understand the relationship between unions, plants, jobs, and workers in U.S. manufacturing industries. This theory predicts that union members will be satisfied with their unions and participate more in them if there are extensive ties between workers, employers, and unions. These ties stem from the focus of labor/management relations in particular, and class struggles in general, on market outcomes and the historical linkage of union membership with employment in the United States. The theory also predicts that unions them-selves act as ties to specific work settings and that union participation is a forum for voicing dissatisfaction with specific characteristics of workers' jobs. Testing these predictions is complicated by contradictory nature of the structure and organization of work in advanced industrial societies. The analysis provides qualified support for this theory, with data drawn from more unions, plants, and union members than have been used to date. In addition to discussing modifications to the theory and analysis presented here, the study includes a discussion of its implications for the future of unionization and the organization of work, in light of declines in union membership, increased efforts to decertify unions and resist union organizing efforts, and deindustrialization in the United States.     

Student union ‘political anti-politics’ in post-conflict Nepal

In contrast to rhizomatic youth movements that inspired the ‘Arab spring’ uprisings and the ‘Occupy’ movements, youth political activism in Nepal was orchestrated by hierarchical political parties in part through political student unions. The ability of parties to deploy youth into the streets to enforce general strikes and force election participation has been critical to their success, but focus groups conducted with Nepali students in the spring of 2013 suggest that many youth are withdrawing from party activism. Youth disengagement in Nepal is the product of years of political instability and conflict that has impeded peace and development, rather than a globalizing individualism that is fragmenting traditional institutions. In this paper, I argue that the ability of political parties to mobilize youth in post-conflict Nepal is being challenged by two related conditions. First, the demands of political parties on students for personal sacrifice are weighed by students against their own personal aspirations and, secondly, the inability of the party hierarchies to sacrifice their priorities for greater political stability, development and peace – exemplified by the repeated failure to resolve constitutional issues – made this commitment to personal sacrifice harder to justify.     

‘Them that runs the country don't know what they're doing’: political dissatisfaction amongst members of the white working class

There are signs that a significant number of British people do not feel that their concerns are being addressed by the mainstream parties or the political system. This paper attends to the quality of that political dissatisfaction amongst members of ‘the white working classes’. There is a need to extend typical concerns about youth disengagement to adults and to consider the role that class plays. Lower participation in formal democratic processes may not mean disengagement from all forms of politics, but could have considerable consequences for who gains power and for the tone and focus of political debates and policies. Our project contributes to exploring political dissatisfaction by engaging with low wage workers in Yorkshire and the North West, where high support for the far‐right BNP and low voter turnout are signs that mainstream politics and politicians are failing to impress. We asked people about their feelings in relation to mainstream politics and their concerns. These participants feel distanced from governing elites, formal political processes and old ideologies. They are searching for ways to make sense of their struggles to live a decent life, and in doing so must contend with the dominance of racist discourses.     

BUILDING A PROBABLE ELECTORATE FROM PREELECTION POLLS: A TWO-STAGE APPROACH

Prominent among sources of nonsampling error in preelectionpolls are different methods of screening likely voters. Buildingon past research, we use National Election Studies data to constructa simple, practical, two-stage model of voter turnout. We comparethe performance of this model to alternative estimators, usingdata from the 1988 and 1992 presidential elections. By allowingfor truncated interviews with up to 20 percent of respondents,our two-stage model provides turnout estimates that are slightlymore accurate and significantly less expensive than traditionalmethods for screening likely voters.     

Attitudinal and behavioral variables related to participation in union activities

A questionnaire was administered to 500 union members. A multiple regression equation was developed using a multi-faceted index of union participation as the criterion with 25 predictor variables: 14 factor scores developed through factor analysis, 9 demographic variables, and 2 measures of perceived control within local unions. There was little shrinkage in the multiple R after double cross-validation. Community-political activities, liberal political beliefs, pro-unionism philosophies, high standards of involvement with unions, and high general job satisfaction-involvement were the five best predictors of union participation. Active union members may view unions as part of a socio-political movement above and beyond their economic and protective functions.     

Why Is Turnout Down?

The monotonic decline in turnout in presidential elections since1960 is the subject of this analysis of survey data. After somecommon explanations for this decline were rejected, it was discoveredthat the decline occurred mainly among low-income and low-educationwhites. Two explanatory hypotheses were examined, but appropriatedata for testing themwere unavailable; however, in the 1970snonvoters were more likely than voters at all income levelsto express dissatisfaction with the political system. Nonvotingwhites are not always a Democratic group, and their voting behavioris unpredictable over time. Their failure to vote may have anespecially significant impact on Democratic party policies,and implies that palliatives like reform of voter registrationlaws may not have the desired effect.