Record Details

Replication data for: Candidates or Districts? Reevaluating the Role of Race in Voter Turnout

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

View Archive Info
 
 
Field Value
 
Title Replication data for: Candidates or Districts? Reevaluating the Role of Race in Voter Turnout
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/27624
 
Creator Bernard L. Fraga
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description 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.
 
Subject Social Sciences
Voter turnout
Descriptive representation
Elections
Race
Ethnicity
 
Contributor Bernard L. Fraga