1.4.1: Voter Engagement

Participation in the democratic process is often considered one of most important duties of citizenship in the United States. Abundant research considers how social position, race, gender, and education level are associated with voter turnout (Fraga 2018; Verba et al. 1995; Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980; Whitaker et al. 2008; Cuevas-Molina et al. 2022; Stauffer et al. 2022). The classification of individuals based on gender, race, income, and education level may also have an interactive effect on voter turnout. What this means is that the difference in voter participation by income may vary by race or gender. For example, research has shown that African Americans are disproportionately poor and working class (Branch and Jackson 2020; Laurison et al. 2020; Granderson 2022). Hence, when one considers the question of voter participation, there may be differences in the effect of income due to the societal imbalance in the respective populations.

In 2021 the results of a research study that further broke down voter participation rates by cross-sectional sub-classes of these characteristics considered this question in detail (Laurison, Brown and Rastogi 2021). The data used for this study are based on a survey by the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, an internet-based survey that matches survey responses to voter records to determine voter demographics and participation. This survey interviews respondents between September and November each presidential election year, with about 50,000 respondents each year. For this study the data from 2008–2016 was used, yielding approximately 150,000 responses.

The data provide an interesting look at how voter participation rates vary between these characteristics, and more interestingly how the characteristics interact with one another. For example, the data show that people in higher income groups tend to participate in elections at a higher rate than those in lower income groups, but that the effect differs depending on race. For example, both African American and white voters had a participation rate slightly less than 55% when their income was lower than $30,000 annually. When the income is increased to over $100,000 the voter participation rate is nearly 70% for white voters, while for African American voters the participation rate increased only to about 60%. Therefore, voter participation rates increase as incomes grow for both populations, but at a much slower rate for African American voters. This discrepancy creates a widening gap in voter participation between the two race groups at the higher income levels. If the data are not broken down by race this trend is invisible not only because race is not included, but also because of the relative lack of African American voters in the largest income class.

Race also tends to interact with gender in voting participation. The results of the study show that both African American men and white men vote at about the same rate, slightly above 50%. While it has been known that women vote at a higher rate, there is an interaction with the race of the voter. The study reports that while more white women vote than men, around 55%, the voting rate for African American women exceeds 60%. Hence the effect of gender is more pronounced for African American women than for white women.

The researchers who published the study point out that these results are not only important for understanding the results of elections but are also vitally important when addressing participation rates across all races, incomes, and genders. Indeed, one of the conclusions considered in the research is whether additional personal resources necessarily and universally imply greater voter participation. The results of this study show that there does not appear to be any such universal relationship, as the effect was not observed for some groups.