TY - JOUR
T1 - Elected Officials, Empowered Voters
T2 - The Impact of Descriptive Representation on Voter Turnout
AU - Hayes, Matthew
AU - Wong, Cara
AU - Bloeser, Andrew
AU - Fredrickson, Mark
AU - LaForge, Chera
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2022. Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
PY - 2024/3
Y1 - 2024/3
N2 - How does descriptive representation affect the voter turnout of African Americans? Though theories state that electing officials who belong to a minority group should lead to greater participation among that group’s members via empowerment, the empirical evidence has been mixed. With three decades of voter turnout data, Census data, and data on Black elected officials in South Carolina, we address a number of questions about descriptive representation. Using the number of officials, their level of office, and when they were elected, we investigate how Black representatives affect turnout for Black voters. We find evidence of an empowering effect for African Americans, but find it depends on numbers and jurisdiction, with local representation associated with greater boosts to turnout than federal representation. These results help us reconcile the literature on empowerment by demonstrating the nuanced effects of descriptive representation across level and magnitude of representation.
AB - How does descriptive representation affect the voter turnout of African Americans? Though theories state that electing officials who belong to a minority group should lead to greater participation among that group’s members via empowerment, the empirical evidence has been mixed. With three decades of voter turnout data, Census data, and data on Black elected officials in South Carolina, we address a number of questions about descriptive representation. Using the number of officials, their level of office, and when they were elected, we investigate how Black representatives affect turnout for Black voters. We find evidence of an empowering effect for African Americans, but find it depends on numbers and jurisdiction, with local representation associated with greater boosts to turnout than federal representation. These results help us reconcile the literature on empowerment by demonstrating the nuanced effects of descriptive representation across level and magnitude of representation.
KW - Race
KW - Representation
KW - Turnout
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85138724631
U2 - 10.1007/s11109-022-09823-0
DO - 10.1007/s11109-022-09823-0
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85138724631
SN - 0190-9320
VL - 46
SP - 185
EP - 207
JO - Political Behavior
JF - Political Behavior
IS - 1
ER -