Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Demographics and Voter Participation

这个项目考察了影响一个人投票决定的个人和结构因素。先前的研究已经清楚地表明，人口统计数据会影响一个人投票的可能性，而增加与投票相关的成本会降低一个人投票的可能性。该项目构建了一个新的选民投票率理论，将这两个发现结合起来，认为人口统计决定了政治资源（包括政治知识和公民技能），这反过来又决定了一个人是否能够克服施加在他或她身上的投票成本。该项目的智力价值与其在投票理论和实证研究方面的进步有关。该项目开发了统计模型，测试人口统计学和投票成本之间的相互作用，以观察投票成本如何根据人口统计学特征对人们产生不同的影响。这些模型将考虑人口统计、选民面临的投票成本、社区特征和竞选环境。该项目将深入了解选民面临的成本，确定哪类选民的投票成本负担过重，以及如何使这些群体的投票率更具代表性。该研究考察了在以往研究中很少受到关注的投票成本，并将几种投票成本纳入同一模型，以准确发现哪些成本对投票率构成最大威胁。研究选民投票率非常重要，因为投票的人往往比不投票的人在政策和政府事务上有更大的影响力。选民与非选民的政策关注点有所不同。如果某些人因为成本太高而习惯性地弃权，他们可能在地方、州和联邦政府中没有充分的代表。这可能导致部分人口的代表性不足。

This project examines the individual and structural factors that underlie a person's decision to vote. Prior research has made it clear that demographics affect how likely a person is to vote, and that increasing the costs associated with voting makes a person less likely to vote. The project constructs a new theory of voter turnout that merges these two findings, arguing that demographics determine political resources (including political knowledge and civic skills), which in turn determine whether a person is able to overcome the voting costs placed on him or her.The project's intellectual merit is associated with its advances in theory and empirical research on voting. The project develops statistical models that test the interaction between demographics and voting costs to observe how voting costs differentially affect people based on their demographic characteristics. These models will account for demographics, the voting costs voters face, community characteristics, and the campaign environment. The project will provide insight into the costs that voters face and identify which types of voters are overburdened with voting costs and how turnout among these groups can be made more representative. The research examines voting costs that have received little attention in prior research, and incorporates several voting costs in the same model to discover precisely which costs are posing the greatest threat to turnout. Studying voter turnout is of great importance because the people who vote tend to have more influence in matters of policy and government than those who do not vote. Voters have been shown to have different policy concerns than non-voters. If certain people routinely abstain from voting because the costs are too high, they may not be adequately represented in local, state, and federal government. This could leave segments of the population under-represented.