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Becoming a Habitual Voter: Inertia, Resources, and Growth in Young Adulthood

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2004

ERIC PLUTZER
ERIC PLUTZER
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Political Science and Sociology, Department of Political Science, 107 Burrowes Building, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802 (plutzer@psu.edu).
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Abstract

This paper reframes our inquiry into voter turnout by making aging the lens through which the traditional resource and cost measures of previous turnout research are viewed, thereby making three related contributions. (1) I offer a developmental theory of turnout. This framework follows from the observation that most citizens are habitual voters or habitual nonvoters (they display inertia). Most young citizens start their political lives as habitual nonvoters but they vary in how long it takes to develop into habitual voters. With this transition at the core of the framework, previous findings concerning costs and resources can easily be integrated into developmental theory. (2) I make a methodological contribution by applying latent growth curve models to panel data. (3) Finally, the empirical analyses provide the developmental theory with strong support and also provide a better understanding of the roles of aging, parenthood, partisanship, and geographic mobility.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 96 , Issue 1 , March 2002 , pp. 41 - 56
Copyright
© 2002 by the American Political Science Association

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