Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-2lccl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T14:56:11.752Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Polling place changes and political participation: evidence from North Carolina presidential elections, 2008–2016

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Joshua D. Clinton Open the ORCID record for Joshua D. Clinton [Opens in a new window] ,
Nick Eubank ,
Adriane Fresh  and
Michael E. Shepherd
Joshua D. Clinton*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA
Nick Eubank
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA
Adriane Fresh
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA
Michael E. Shepherd
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: josh.clinton@vanderbilt.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

How do changes in Election Day polling place locations affect voter turnout? We study the behavior of more than 2 million eligible voters across three closely-contested presidential elections (2008–2016) in the swing state of North Carolina. Leveraging within-voter variation in polling place location change over time, we demonstrate that polling place changes reduce Election Day voting on average statewide. However, this effect is almost completely offset by substitution into early voting, suggesting that voters, on average, respond to a change in their polling place by choosing to vote early. While there is heterogeneity in these effects by the distance of the polling place change and the race of the affected voter, the fully offsetting substitution into early voting still obtains. We theorize this is because voters whose polling places change location receive notification mailers, offsetting search costs and priming them to think about the election before election day, driving early voting.

Keywords

Election administrationpolitical participationvoting
Type
Original Article
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , October 2021 , pp. 800 - 817
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Authors are listed alphabetically; all contributed equally. We thank Dan Smith and Ken Mayer for helpful feedback on an earlier version and we thank Henry Goldberg for fabulous research assistance and for tracking down what we often thought was unobtainable.

References

Amos, B, Smith, DA and Claire, CS (2017) Reprecincting and voting behavior. Political Behavior 39, 133–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anoll, A (2018) What makes a good neighbor? Race, place, and norms of political action. American Political Science Review 112, 494–508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arceneaux, K and Nickerson, DW (2009) Who is mobilized to vote? A re-analysis of 11 field experiments. American Journal of Political Science 53, 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benjamini, Y, Krieger, AM and Yekutieli, D (2006) Adaptive linear step-up procedures that control the false discovery rate. Biometrika 93, 491–507.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergman, E and Yates, PA (2011) Changing election methods: how does mandated vote-by-mail affect individual registrants?. Election Law Journal 10, 115–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brady, HE and McNulty, JE (2011) Turning out to vote: the costs of finding and getting to the polling place. American Political Science Review 105, 115–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brody, RA and Sniderman, PM (1977) From life space to polling place: the relevance of personal concerns for voting behavior. British Journal of Political Science 7, 337–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burden, BC, Canon, DT, Mayer, KR and Moynihan, DP (2014 a) The effects and costs of early voting and same day registration in the 2008 elections. American Journal of Political Science 58, 95–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burden, BC, Canon, DT, Mayer, KR and Moynihan, DP (2014 b) Election laws, mobilization, and turnout: the unanticipated consequences of election reform. American Journal of Political Science 58, 95–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burden, BC, Canon, DT, Mayer, KR and Moynihan, DP (2017) The complicated partisan effects of state election laws. Political Research Quarterly 70, 564–576.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cantoni, E (2016) A precinct too far: turnout and voting costs. Available at http://economics.mit.edu/files/11997.Google Scholar
Citrin, J, Green, DP and Levy, M (2014) The effects of voter ID notification on voter turnout: results from a large-scale field experiment. Election Law Journal 13, 228–242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clinton, JD, Eubank, N, Fresh, A and Shepherd, ME (2020) The politics of locating polling places: race and partisanship in North Carolina election administration, 2008–2016. Election Law Journal, ahead of print. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/elj.2019.0602Google Scholar
Downs, A (1957) An economic theory of democracy. New York, NY: Harper.Google Scholar
Dyck, JJ and Gimpel, JG (2005) Distance, turnout, and the convenience of voting. Social Science Quarterly 86, 531–548.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraga, BL (2016) Candidates or districts? Reevaluating the role of race in voter turnout. American Journal of Political Science 60, 97–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraga, B and Hersh, E (2010) Voting costs and voter turnout in competitive elections. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 2010, 3339–3356.Google Scholar
Fullmer, EB (2015) Early voting: do more sites lead to higher turnout?. Election Law Journal 14, 81–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerber, AS and Green, DP (2000) The effects of canvassing, telephone calls, and direct mail on voter turnout: a field experiment. American Political Science Review 94, 653–663.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerber, AS, Green, DP and Shachar, R (2003) Voting may be habit-forming: evidence from a randomized field experiment. American Journal of Political Science 47, 540–550.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerber, AS, Green, DP and Larimer, CW (2008) Social pressure and voter turnout: evidence from a large-scale field experiment. American Political Science Review 102, 33–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerber, AS, Huber, GA and Hill, S (2013) Identifying the effect of all-mail elections on turnout: staggered reform in the evergreen state. Political Science Research and Methods 1, 91–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerber, AS, Huber, GA, Meredith, M, Biggers, DR and Hendry, DJ (2017) Does incarceration reduce voting? Evidence about the political consequences of spending time in prison. The Journal of Politics 79, 1130–1146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gimpel, JG and Schuknecht, JE (2003) Political participation and the accessibility of the ballot box. Political Geography 22, 471–488.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grimmer, J, Hersh, E, Meredith, M, Mummolo, J and Nall, C (2018) Obstacles to estimating voter ID laws? Effect on turnout. Journal of Politics 80, 1045–1051.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanmer, MJ (2009) Discount voting: voter registration reforms and their effects. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanmer, M, Herrnson, PS and Smith, C (2015) The impact of e-mail on the use of new convenience voting methods and turnout by overseas voters: a field experiment to address their challenges with new technology. Election Law Journal 14, 97–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haspel, M and Knotts, HG (2005) Location, location, location: precinct placement and the costs of voting. The Journal of Politics 67, 560–573.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herron, MC and Smith, DA (2015) Precinct closing times in Florida during the 2012 general election. Election Law Journal 14, 220–238.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herron, MC and Smith, DA (2016) Precinct resources and voter wait times. Electoral Studies 42, 249–263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Highton, B (2004) Voter registration and turnout in the United States. Perspectives on Politics 2, 507–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Highton, B (2006) Long lines, voting machine availability, and turnout: the case of franklin county, Ohio in the 2004 presidential election. PS: Political Science & Politics 39, 65–68.Google Scholar
Highton, B (2017) Voter identification laws and turnout in the United States. Annual Review of Political Science 20, 149–167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keyssar, A (2009) The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States. New York, NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Kousser, T and Mullin, M (2007) Does voting by mail increase participation? Using matching to analyze a natural experiment. Political Analysis 15, 428–445.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leighley, JE and Nagler, J (2013) Who Votes Now?: Demographics, Issues, Inequality, and Turnout in the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malhotra, N, Michelson, MR, Rogers, T and Valenzuela, AA (2011) Text messages as mobilization tools: the conditional effect of habitual voting and election salience. American Politics Research 39, 664–681.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meredith, M and Malhotra, N (2011) Convenience voting can affect election outcomes. Election Law Journal 10, 227–253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meredith, M and Morse, M (2014) Do voting rights notification laws increase ex-felon turnout? The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 651, 220–249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michelson, MR, Malhotra, N, Healy, A, Green, DP, Carnegie, A and Valenzuela, AA (2012) The effect of prepaid postage on turnout: a cautionary tale for election administrators. Election Law Journal 11, 279–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Monroe, NW and Sylvester, DE (2011) Who converts to vote-by-mail? Evidence from a field experiment. Election Law Journal 10, 15–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nickell, S (1981) Biases in dynamic models with fixed effects. Econometrica 49, 1417.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pettigrew, S (2017) The racial gap in wait times: why minority precincts are underserved by local election officials. Political Science Quarterly 132, 527–547.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plutzer, E (2002) Becoming a habitual voter: inertia, resources, and growth in young adulthood. American Political Science Review 96, 41–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powell, GB (1986) American voter turnout in comparative perspective. American Political Science Review 80, 17–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart, III C and Ansolabehere, S (2015) Waiting to vote. Election Law Journal 14, 47–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verba, S, Schlozman, KL and Brady, HE (1995) Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolfinger, RE and Rosenstone, SJ (1980) Who Votes? New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Yoder, J (2018) How polling place changes reduce turnout: evidence from administrative data in North Carolina. Working Paper. Available at https://www.dropbox.com/s/pk219n6bam4584d/pollingplaces.pdf?dl=1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Clinton et al. Dataset

Dataset https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/96C154
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Clinton et al. supplementary material

Clintonet al. supplementary material
Download Clinton et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 1.4 MB