Record Details

Replication data for: Regular Voters, Marginal Voters, and the Electoral Effects of Turnout

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

View Archive Info
 
 
Field Value
 
Title Replication data for: Regular Voters, Marginal Voters, and the Electoral Effects of Turnout
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/26651
 
Creator Fowler, Anthony
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description How do marginal voters differ from regular voters? I develop a method for comparing the partisan preferences of regular voters to those marginal voters whose turnout decisions are influenced by exogenous factors and apply it to two sources of variation in turnout in the U.S.— weather and election timing. In both cases, marginal voters are over 20 percentage points more supportive of the Democratic Party than regular voters—a significant divide. The findings suggest that expansion or contraction of the electorate can have important consequences. Moreover, the findings suggest that election results do not always reflect the preferences of the citizenry, because those marginal citizens who stay home have systematically different preferences than those who participate. Lastly, the method developed in the paper enables future researchers to compare regular and marginal voters on many different dimensions and in many different electoral settings.
 
Subject voter turnout
 
Date 2014
 
Relation none
 
Type aggregate election data, survey data