Suchergebnisse

In The Turnout Gap, Bernard L. Fraga offers the most comprehensive analysis to date of the causes and consequences of racial and ethnic disparities in voter turnout. Examining voting for Whites, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans from the 1800s to the present, Fraga documents persistent gaps in turnout and shows that elections are increasingly unrepresentative of the wishes of all Americans. These gaps persist not because of socioeconomics or voter suppression, but because minority voters have limited influence in shaping election outcomes. As Fraga demonstrates, voters turn out at higher rates when their votes matter; despite demographic change, in most elections and most places, minorities are less electorally relevant than Whites. The Turnout Gap shows that when politicians engage the minority electorate, the power of the vote can win. However, demography is not destiny. It is up to politicians, parties, and citizens themselves to mobilize the potential of all Americans

Leading theories of race and participation posit that minority voters are mobilized by co‐ethnic candidates. However, past studies are unable to disentangle candidate effects from factors associated with the places from which candidates emerge. I reevaluate the links between candidate race, district composition, and turnout by leveraging a nationwide database of over 185 million individual registration records, including estimates for the race of every voter. Combining these records with detailed information about 3,000 recent congressional primary and general election candidates, I find that minority turnout is not higher in districts with minority candidates, after accounting for the relative size of the ethnic group within a district. Instead, Black and Latino citizens are more likely to vote in both primary and general elections as their share of the population increases, regardless of candidate race.

AbstractThe following study investigates the causal impact of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) language minority provisions, which mandate multilingual election assistance if certain population thresholds are met. While lower rates of Latino and Asian American political participation are often attributed to language barriers, scholars have yet to establish a direct impact of the provisions on electoral behavior. Building off of previous state- and county-level analyses, we leverage an individual-level voter file database to focus on participation by Latino and Asian American citizens in 1,465 counties and municipalities nationwide. Utilizing a regression discontinuity design, we examine rates of voter registration and turnout in the 2012 election, comparing individual participation rates in jurisdictions just above and just below the threshold for coverage. Our analysis attributes a significant increase in Latino voter registration and Asian American turnout to coverage under the VRA.

Racial/ethnic minorities and women continue to be underrepresented in public office in the United States. Here, we evaluate the role of general election political party support for women and minorities in structuring these inequalities, as a key part of general election success is support from party networks. With detailed data on party support and the demographics of congressional candidates, we use two difference-in-differences strategies to leverage within-district and candidate-constant change over time. Thus, we are able to separate the effect of race/ethnicity and gender from other factors we demonstrate to be associated with party support. We find that, all else equal, Democratic and Republican minority nominees do not receive less support than their white counterparts. We also find that white women receive more party support from Democrats than Democratic men or minority women in the general election and that this support is more responsive to changes in electoral competitiveness. These findings suggest that party elites may provide additional support to candidates from underrepresented groups in the general election to broaden their appeal to voters.

In 2020, support for Joe Biden among Latina/o/x voters was 8 percentage points lower than support for Hillary Clinton in 2016, the largest drop of any racial/ethnic group. While much media and academic attention has focused on understanding the impact of misinformation, COVID-19 concerns, and racial animus on Latino voters in 2020, we take a step back and clarify the demographic and core ideological characteristics of Latino voters who voted for Donald Trump in 2020. Using a mix of national survey data, precinct returns, and voter file records, we disaggregate components of electoral change. We find evidence of an increasing alignment between Latinos' ideology, issue positions, and vote choice. Correspondingly, we observe significant pro-Trump shifts among working-class Latinos and modest evidence of a pro-Trump shift among Latinos closer to the immigration experience. These findings, coupled with an analysis of the 2022 CES, point to a more durable Republican shift than currently assumed.

We review the history, magnitude, and scope of voter suppression in the United States., showing that, when it is attempted, it targets the voting rights of a disfavored group. We argue that this is an important weakness of American democracy and that current efforts at voter suppression focus on states with major demographic shifts that are seen by some to be threatening. We then discuss the consequences of recent decisions by the Supreme Court to weaken key elements of the Voting Rights Act, arguing that a weakened Voting Rights Act has led to a resurgence of voter suppression in some states and that those same states often see a rise in countermobilization efforts aimed at encouraging targeted communities to register and vote. An undeniable impact of current attempts at voter suppression, we argue, is that it signals to certain communities that their participation in elections is not wanted.