Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: A Genome-Wide Association Study of Voter Turnout

投票行为在所有民主国家中都是一项从根本上重要的活动，但事实证明，在个人这样做代价高昂的情况下，为什么个人会大规模合作，这是一个具有挑战性的理论和经验谜题。现有对投票率的解释能力有限，促使政治学家着眼于投票率的非传统预测因素。最近的研究发现，选民投票率的一半以上的变化可以归因于遗传因素(Fowler，Baker；Dawes，2008)，这可能会深刻改变人们对投票行为的看法。然而，与选民投票率相关的特定基因或将基因与投票行为联系起来的确切因果路径仍不清楚。这项研究项目调查了整个人类基因组中的数十万个变异，以寻找哪些变异与选民投票率有关。识别这些变异有助于更好地了解基因如何影响选民投票率，并最终有助于发展和完善政治行为理论。本研究解决的具体问题是：1)哪些特定的基因变异与选民投票率有关；2)这些基因与投票行为之间的因果关系是什么？为了回答第一个问题，调查人员将对选民投票率进行全基因组关联研究。这特别需要寻找分布在人类基因组中的592,652个不同的遗传变异之间的显著关联，并验证和自我报告的选民投票率。这项分析将基于约3700名受试者的样本。为了回答第二个问题，数据集还包含了几个已知对投票率具有高度预测性的个人属性的信息，如收入、教育程度、个性特征和认知能力。因此，研究人员正式测试特定的遗传变异是否通过这些属性之一间接影响投票率。许多基因变异被发现与选民投票率相关的特征有关，这让我们知道应该研究哪些途径。例如，已知有几种基因变异与人格特征有关，最近的政治学研究表明，人格特征会影响投票结果(蒙达克、希宾、卡纳奇、塞利格森和安德森2010年、Gerber、Huber、Raso；ha 2008、Gerber、Huber、Doherty&amp；Dowling 2009年、Mondak&amp；Halperin 2008年)。研究被发现与投票率相关的基因变异的功能作用有助于揭示因果关系。已发现的基因与政治之间的联系为从根本上改变我们看待投票行为的方式提供了可能性。然而，在人们更好地了解基因和投票行为之间的联系机制之前，人们无法建议政府可以采取什么类型的政策来促进更高的投票率，或者政治参与者应该采取什么策略来动员他们的支持者。这项研究对于推动这项新的研究成为对政策制定者和政治行为者有用的东西是必要的，就像全基因组关联研究帮助研究人员更好地检测、治疗和预防疾病一样。

The act of voting is a fundamentally important exercise in all democracies but explaining why individuals cooperate on a large scale when it is individually costly to do so has proven to be a challenging theoretical and empirical puzzle. The limited explanatory power of extant explanations of turnout has prompted political scientists to look at non-traditional predictors of turnout. The recent finding that more than half of the variation in voter turnout could be attributed to genetic factors (Fowler, Baker & Dawes 2008) holds the potential of profoundly changing the way one views voting behavior. However, the specific genes associated with voter turnout or the precise causal pathway linking genes to voting behavior remains unknown. This research project investigates hundreds of thousands of variants across the entire human genome to look for which ones are related to voter turnout. Identifying these variants provides a better understanding of how genes influence voter turnout and will ultimately help to develop and improve theories of political behavior.The specific questions this research addresses are: 1) which specific genetic variants are associated with voter turnout; and 2) what is the causal pathway linking these genes to voting behavior? In order to answer the first question, the investigator will perform a genome-wide association study of voter turnout. This specifically entails looking for significant associations between each of 592,652 distinct genetic variants spread across the human genome and validated as well as self-reported voter turnout. The analysis will be based on a sample of approximately 3,700 subjects. To answer to the second question, the data set also contains information on several individual attributes known to be highly predictive of turnout such as income, education, personality traits and cognitive ability. Therefore, the investigator formally tests whether specific genetic variants indirectly influence turnout via one of these attributes. Many genetic variants have been found to be associated with traits related to voter turnout giving us an idea of which pathways to investigate. For example, several genetic variants are known to be associated with personality traits and recent research in political science has shown personality traits influence turnout (Mondak, Hibbing, Canache, Seligson & Anderson 2010, Gerber, Huber, Raso & Ha 2008, Gerber, Huber, Doherty & Dowling 2009, Mondak & Halperin 2008). Researching the functional role of genetic variants found to be associated with turnout helps uncover causal pathways.The discovered link between genes and politics presents the possibility of fundamentally changing how we view voting behavior. However, until one better understands the mechanism linking genes and voting behavior one cannot suggest what types of policies the government could put in place to promote higher turnout or the strategies political actors should adopt in order to mobilize their supporters. This research is necessary to move this nascent research into something useful for policy makers and political actors much in the way genome-wide association studies have aided researchers in better detecting, treating, and preventing diseases.