What Limits Voter Participation in the United States? Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Explain how individual characteristics can limit political participation. Explain how institutional characteristics can limit political participation. Articulate each characteristic and how it affects participation. In the 2016 US presidential election, 100 million Americans didn’t vote. A Knight Foundation study found that nonvoters have less trust in the electoral system and consume less news and information compared to voters. Notably, among nonvoters, dislike of the candidates was the most commonly cited reason for not voting. The 100 Million Project: The Untold Story of American Non-Voters (Knight Foundation, 2020), 8, https://knightfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/The-100-Million-Project_KF_Report_2020.pdf. While this landmark study of 12,000 nonvoters sheds light on the reasons why people don’t participate in the democratic process, this chapter will further discuss in detail why full voter participation remains elusive. What individual-level characteristics affect voter turnout in the United States? University of Montreal Professor and Canada Research Chair in Electoral Democracy Ruth Dassonneville explains that few variables consistently affect different aspects of voting as much as age. Ruth Dassonneville, “Age and Voting,” in The Sage Handbook of Electoral Behaviour , ed. Kai Arzheimer, Jocelyn Evans, and Michael S. Lewis-Beck (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2017), 137. The older voters are, the more likely they are to show up to the polls. The relationship is considered curvilinear, meaning younger voters are much less likely to vote; likelihood of voting increases steadily as voters hit middle age, followed by a “soft” decline in the oldest age categories. Yosef Bhatti, Kasper M. Hansen, and Hanna Wass, “The Relationship between Age and Turnout: A Roller-Coaster Ride,” Electoral Studies 31, no. 3 (September 2012): 588–593. Why do older voters turn out at higher rates? Some studies suggest that as voters age, voting becomes more of a habit, and that people are more likely to coalesce around the idea of voting. Achim Goerres, “Why Are Older People More Likely to Vote? The Impact of Ageing on Electoral Turnout in Europe,” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 9, no. 1 (February 2007): 90–121. Case Western Reserve University Professor Robert H. Binstock , a leading researcher on seniors’ voting behaviors, has several suggestions as to why age predicts voting. For one, the older a voter is, the more likely they are to pay attention to things such as having to register, which is a precursor to voting. In addition, Binstock notes that the length of residence in one’s home also predicts voting and that seniors are the most likely of all voters to have resided in a single place for longer periods of time. Robert H. Binstock, “Older People and Political Engagement: From Avid Voters to ‘Cooled-Out Marks,’” Generations: Journal of the American Society on Aging 30, no. 4 (Winter 2006–2007): 24–30, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26555473. Other researchers have found correlations between higher levels of media consumption in older voters and a greater propensity to vote. Susan A. McManus, Young v. Old: Generational Combat in the 21st Century (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), 36. In addition, people over the age of 65 tend to vote more because they better understand the relationship between governmental policies that affect them, such as Social Security, and their ability to influence policy makers through political participation. Andrea Louise Campbell, How Policies Make Citizens: Senior Political Activism and the American Welfare State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 14. On a more basic level, older people usually have more time on their hands. Ben Y. Hayden, “Why Do Old People Vote More?,” Psychology Today, September 27, 2011, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-decision-tree/201109/why-do-old-people-vote-more. As people retire and their children leave the house, they have more time to become politically active. However, as the graph in indicates, turnout across all groups has risen in the last two election cycles. While turnout among all groups has risen in recent US elections, older Americans still vote at the highest rates. (source: US Census data; attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license) Income is another individual-level variable that helps explain voter turnout. University of Warwick Professor Christopher J. Anderson and Duke University Professor Pablo Beramendi have found that those earning below the median income are less likely to vote than people earning above the median income and that as income inequality increases, people with lower levels of income are decreasingly likely to vote. Christoper J. Anderson and Pablo Beramendi, “Income, Inequality, and Electoral Participation,” in Democracy, Inequality, and Representation: A Comparative Perspective, ed. Beramendi and Anderson (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), 278. The founding executive director of progressive think tank Data for Progress, Sean McElwee , explains that those with lower incomes do not believe their vote influences political outcomes, while the wealthy do believe their vote counts and are therefore more likely to turn out to vote. Sean McElwee, Why the Voting Gap Matters (New York: Demos.org, 2014), https://www.demos.org/research/why-voting-gap-matters. Wealthier voters also tend to have greater access to the polls. They don’t face the same barriers to voting that many voters at lower income levels face, such as having to rely on public transportation or experiencing difficulty registering to vote. Jeremy Adam Smith and Teja Pattabhiraman, “How Inequality Keeps People from Voting,” Greater Good, October 29, 2020, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_inequality_keeps_people_from_voting. A recent study of the 2020 US election found that some of the reasons for lower participation among low-income voters were the inability to take time off of work, missing voter registration deadlines, and not being able to find their polling places. Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, Jasmine Mithani, and Laura Bronner, “Why Many Americans Don’t Vote,” FiveThirtyEight, ABC News, October 26, 2020, https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/non-voters-poll-2020-election/. The same study also found large disparities between those making over $75,000 and those making less than $40,000 in terms of their likelihood of voting at all. Internationally, and on a more macro level, economic development will have an impact on participation rates “because economic hardship can result in voter apathy and lead people to withdraw from politics and focus on meeting their basic needs.” In addition, economic development affects education levels, which in turn affects voter participation. Abdurashid Solijonov, Voter Turnout Trends around the World (Stockholm: International IDEA, 2016), 35–36, https://www.idea.int/sites/default/files/publications/voter-turnout-trends-around-the-world.pdf. Most of the growth in the electorate since 2000 has come from Hispanic, Black, and Asian eligible voters. (source: Pew Research Center analysis of 2018 American Community Survey and 2000 decennial census. “The Changing Racial and Ethnic Composition of the US Electorate”; attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license) Race is another factor that influences voter turnout. In the United States, White people have historically voted at substantially higher rates than voters of Asian or Latina/Latino descent, with the gap ranging from 15 to 20 percentage points. Ruth Igielnik and Abby Budiman, “The Changing Racial and Ethnic Composition of the US Electorate,” Pew Research Center, September 23, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/2020/09/23/the-changing-racial-and-ethnic-composition-of-the-u-s-electorate/. Asian American turnout has never reached the 50 percent mark, but the 2020 election saw a 63 percent increase in Asian American and Pacific Islander voter participation in Georgia compared to 2016, and Joe Biden ’s win in the state is partially credited to this seismic shift. Ryan Benk and Lulu Garcia-Navarro, “Asian American and Pacific Islander Turnout Helped Hand Biden Georgia,” NPR, December 4, 2020, https://www.npr.org/sections/biden-transition-updates/2020/12/04/942271036/asian-american-and-pacific-islander-turnout-helped-hand-biden-georgia. Black turnout has historically been higher than that of other minority groups, and any history of low turnout among Black people can be attributed to voter suppression policies and local laws that were not officially reversed until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Since then, and notably since the 1980s, Black turnout has been steady. In 2012, Black turnout percentage reached an all-time high, surpassing White turnout in the presidential election that returned Barack Obama , the first Black president, to office for a second term. Rashawn Ray and Mark Whitlock, “Setting the Record Straight on Black Voter Turnout,” How We Rise (blog), Brookings Institution, September 12, 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2019/09/12/setting-the-record-straight-on-black-voter-turnout/. Research on Latina/Latino (Latinx) turnout has shown that the group is not a monolith and that several different factors contribute to any understanding of Latinx voter participation. For example, the longer a Latinx voter has lived in the country, the more likely they are to vote, and differences among Cuban American, Mexican American, and Puerto Rican voters diminish after controlling for socioeconomic factors. Benjamin Highton and Arthur L. Burris, “New Perspectives on Latino Voter Turnout in the United States,” American Politics Research 30, no. 3 (May 2002): 285–306. However, as illustrated in , minority voters will only continue to grow in proportion to the population, and it is reasonable to think that their rates of voter participation will rise as well. What about gender? In 1980, the numbers of eligible male and female voters who reported voting were roughly the same, around 62 percent. Since then, increasingly more eligible female voters have voted than men. By 2016, the gap had widened by 4 percentage points, with the total number of female voters exceeding the number of male voters in every election since 1964. “Gender Differences in Voter Turnout,” Center for American Women and Politics, Rutgers University, updated May 4, 2021, https://cawp.rutgers.edu/facts/voters/turnout. Women turn out in higher numbers for a variety of reasons. Feminist movements have normalized female participation in politics, and the campaign platforms of Republicans in the 1980s—along with the rise of the Christian Right , which espoused traditional family values at the expense of policies such as equal pay and family leave—may have unintentionally mobilized women to vote in higher numebrs. Catherine Rampell, “Why Women Are Far More Likely to Vote Than Men,” Washington Post, July 17, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/catherine-rampell-why-women-are-far-more-likely-to-vote-then-men/2014/07/17/b4658192-0de8-11e4-8c9a-923ecc0c7d23_story.html. Not only do women turn out at higher rates, but they also tend to exhibit voting preferences that differ from men’s. While men and women showed similar voting preferences in 1964, since 1976, the gap between their preferences has consistently widened. Laurence Arnold, “The Gender Gap in Voting,” Bloomberg, updated August 27, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/gender-gap. The polls leading up to the 2020 US election illustrated a “gender canyon,” with a projected 15 percent gender gap between men, the majority of whom supported the Republican candidate, and women, who supported the Democratic candidate Courtney Weaver, “A Historic Gender Gap: Why Men and Women Are Voting Differently,” Financial Times, November 3, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/419376c4-b6be-41dc-93eb-303f2f4a9903. —although this gap narrowed in the actual election to just 7 percentage points, a notable change from the 13-point gap observed in 2016. Geoffrey Skelley, “Why the Gender Gap May Have Shrunk in the 2020 Election,” FiveThirtyEight, ABC News, July 9, 2021, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-the-gender-gap-may-have-shrunk-in-the-2020-election/. Globally, gender as a factor in turnout depends on the country. The lowest rates of female participation in elections are found mainly in countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. Female participation is lowest in Pakistan, while women participate at higher rates compared to men in 21 of 58 countries included in an International IDEA study, International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance notably including Belarus, New Zealand, Russia, and Trinidad and Tobago. Solijonov, Voter Turnout Trends Aside from demographic factors, other individual-level attitudes also affect who participates in politics. A 2006 Pew Research Center study found that individuals who agreed with the statements “I am interested in local politics,” “It is my duty as a citizen to always vote,” “This election matters more,” and “I feel guilty when I don’t vote” were all much more likely to be registered and regular voters than individuals who disagreed with those statements. Pew Research Center, Who Votes, Who Doesn’t, and Why (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, October 2006), https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2006/10/18/who-votes-who-doesnt-and-why/. Subsequent studies found that interest and duty drive political participation. André Blais and Simon Labbé St-Vincent, “Personality Traits, Political Attitudes and the Propensity to Vote,” European Journal of Political Research 50, no. 3 (May 2011): 395–417. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, political efficacy also affects turnout, and historically, declining levels of trust, interest, and efficacy have been shown to lower political participation. Stephen D. Shaffer, “A Multivariate Explanation of Decreasing Turnout in Presidential Elections, 1960–1976,” American Journal of Political Science 25, no. 1 (February 1981): 68–95, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2110913. Multiple scholars also support the theory that voter fatigue —the idea that voters face too many elections and too many electoral decisions—depresses participation, C. Rallings, M. Thrasher, and G. Borisyuk, “Seasonal Factors, Voter Fatigue and the Costs of Voting,” Electoral Studies 22, no. 1 (March 2003): 65–79. and University of California Professor Arend Lijphart suggests that less frequent elections would boost participation. Arend Lijphart, “Unequal Participation: Democracy’s Unresolved Dilemma,” American Political Science Review 91, no. 1 (March 1997): 1–14, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2952255. In addition to demographic and individual-level characteristics, institutional forces can affect political participation. Voter registration requirements are one of the biggest institutional limits on political participation. Unlike countries such as Japan, Australia, Belgium, Germany, and Sweden, which all have automatic voter registration Jennifer S. Rosenberg and Margaret Chen, Expanding Democracy: Voter Registration around the World (New York: Brennan Center for Justice, 2009), https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/publications/Expanding.Democracy.pdf. whereby the government automatically registers citizens to vote, the United States relies on individuals and states to set up registration requirements and procedures. States that have adopted automatic voter registration (AVR)—in which the state automatically registers voters, usually through the Department of Motor Vehicles—have shown increases in the number of registered voters. As indicates, most voters in the United States register through the Department of Motor Vehicles. A 2019 study showed that AVR increased voter registration in seven states plus the District of Columbia, controlling for all other factors. Kevin Morris and Peter Dunphy, AVR Impact on State Voter Registration (New York: Brennan Center for Justice, 2019), https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/2019-08/Report_AVR_Impact_State_Voter_Registration.pdf. Of the 80 million Americans who did not vote in the 2020 election, almost 30 percent cited being unregistered as the top reason they did not go to the polls. Domenico Montanaro, “Poll: Despite Record Turnout, 80 Million Americans Didn’t Vote. Here’s Why,” NPR, December 15, 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/12/15/945031391/poll-despite-record-turnout-80-million-americans-didnt-vote-heres-why. According to US Census data, between 2014 and 2018 most voting-age American citizens registered to vote at a department of motor vehicles or through a county or government registration office. (source: US Census Bureau, Current Population Survey Voting and Registration Supplements: November 2014, 2016, 2018; attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license) Sarina Vij , writing for the American Bar Association’s (ABA’s) Human Rights magazine, notes that minorities are disproportionately affected by institutional barriers such as voter ID laws and decreased access to polling places and voting materials. Sarina Vij, “Why Minority Voters Have a Lower Voter Turnout: An Analysis of Current Restrictions,” Human Rights 45, no. 3 (May 2020), https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/voting-in-2020/why-minority-voters-have-a-lower-voter-turnout/. Voter ID laws require individuals to present an ID, most commonly a driver’s license or passport, in order to vote. Individuals who lack government-issued identification are more likely to be, among other demographics, non-White. Vij indicates that lack of access to polling stations, another institutional barrier to participation, also tends to significantly disadvantage poor and minority voters. Access to actual voting locations goes hand in hand with availability of voting materials; younger, less educated, and non-White voters often cannot find necessary information about what is on the ballot or where they should vote, and they often meet with language barriers as well. Additional institutional restrictions on voting access have resulted in what some believe to be widespread voter suppression . A 2020 Harvard University study noted that restrictions on voter registration drives, new restrictions on early voting and voting by felons, voter roll purges, closure of polling places, restrictions on student voting, elimination of same-day voter registration, and unchecked gerrymandering (the manipulation of the boundaries of voting districts in order to favor one party over another) all contribute to lowered political participation. John Shattuck and Mathias Risse, Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States: Voting Rights (Cambridge, MA: Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard University, 2020), https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/201105_votingrights_converted.pdf. Historically, codified laws in the United States such as Jim Crow laws prohibited Black voters from the ballot box. These laws used literacy tests , poll taxes , and stringent residency requirements to make voting more difficult. Even more horrific, in some regions of the United States, Black voters faced the threat of lynchings: “Slave patrols, the Ku Klux Klan and less formally organized groups of whites used beatings, burnings and hangings to constantly remind blacks of their inferior status and to prevent the use of their newly acquired freedoms to work and vote.” Robert DeFina and Lance Hannon, “The Legacy of Black Lynching and Contemporary Segregation in the South,” The Review of Black Political Economy 38, no. 2 (January 2011): 171. Jim Crow laws remained in effect until 1965, when the passage of the Voting Rights Act formally outlawed racial discrimination in voting. The Voting Rights Act reflects the power that political institutions can have both to act as counteragents to racism and to promote political participation. In 1966, Congress passed the 24th Amendment , which abolished poll taxes. The states ratified the amendment in 1964. In 1975, Congress added language to the original Voting Rights Act requiring localities to provide multilingual voter information, and it further expanded voting rights to protect Americans with disabilities in 1982. “Voting Rights: A Short History,” Carnegie Corporation of New York. https://www.carnegie.org/topics/topic-articles/voting-rights/voting-rights-timeline/. Globally, European Union (EU) countries such as Austria, Malta, Scotland, and Wales have made voting more accessible by lowering the voter age to 16. Other institutions that can affect people’s levels of political participation include religious groups and organizations. Denison University Professor Paul Djupe and Southern Illinois University Professor J. Tobin Grant found that religious institutions can encourage political participation by recruiting members to be part of the political process and highlighting their involvement as having political consequences. Paul A. Djupe and J. Tobin Grant, “Religious Institutions and Political Participation in America,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40, no. 2 (June 2011): 303–314. Several factors prevent people from voting. In terms of individual-level characteristics, older voters are more likely to vote for a variety of reasons, including simply having more time to go to the polls. Those with higher incomes who are not at risk of losing their jobs or who have more flexible working hours are also more likely to vote. Race is another predictor of voter turnout, though in the 2020 election, the share of minority voters grew. Gender is yet another determinant of voter turnout, with women voting at higher rates than men. Institutional factors such as voter registration, voter ID laws, gerrymandering, and voter fatigue also affect voter turnout. Voter registration and ID requirements can affect the ease with which voters can participate in elections. Countries with automatic registration and states that register voters automatically when they get their driver’s licenses have higher rates of electoral participation. Gerrymandering, in which district lines are drawn to favor one party over another, can affect whether people show up to vote, as does voter fatigue—the idea that there are simply too many elections for people to want to take part in. gerrymandering the manipulation of voting districts in order to favor candidates from one party over another Jim Crow laws a set of laws enforced mostly in the southern United States from the late 1800s until 1965 that legalized discrimination based on race, preventing Black Americans from enjoying fundamental rights such as equal access to education and voting voter fatigue feelings of apathy that the electorate can experience under certain circumstances—for example, when they are required to vote too often or are exposed to too much political information or negative news voter suppression discouraging or preventing specific groups of people from voting in order to alter the outcome of an election

Social Sciences


How Do Individuals Participate Other Than Voting? Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Discuss forms of political participation other than voting. Explain individual-level versus group-level participation. Explain how the concept of social capital affects why people participate in political activities. The official website of the United States Senate includes a “Historical Highlight” titled “ Constituents Tell Senator How to Vote ,” which notes that shortly after the first Senate convened in 1789, its members began receiving letters about how they should vote, and that the presumed right of the people to instruct their elected representatives extends back to colonial times. “Constituents Tell Senator How to Vote,” United States Senate, December 12, 2019, https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Constituent_Complaints.htm. This is still true today. Americans are free to call, email, or write their elected representative with their concerns or to appeal for help, and this type of activity is considered political participation. What other forms of participation exist? The first two sections of this chapter examined why voting is such an important form of political participation and exposed some of the major barriers to voting in the United States. While voting is important—and, for some people, difficult—there are a multiplicity of other ways to become involved in politics. This section will discuss individual-level actions that are considered important forms of political engagement. Writing or calling an elected official is an important form of political participation and is also part of how free speech is understood in the United States. The First Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees freedom of speech. Part of the reason the Constitution guarantees free speech is to preserve every citizen’s right to criticize the government. This is not true in many non-democratic countries around the world, where dictators squash public disapproval of their actions. The ability to contact elected officials to criticize or suggest changes is a crucial part of self-government . Free speech, and the extent to which Americans can exercise it, depends on time, place, and content. It is crucial in part because it “aids the political process” Martin H. Redish, “The Value of Free Speech,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 130, no. 3 (January 1982): 604, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3311836. and supports the marketplace of ideas that is essential to self-government. Contacting Your Representatives via Email, Letter, or Phone If you are an American, it is very easy to contact your elected officials with any concerns you might have, be they about a local ordinance, such as whether you can walk your dog off of its leash, or about one of the president’s executive orders. The Internet makes it easy to email officials, though you can always write a letter or make a call as well. The US government has a website that allows people to find their local, state, and nationally elected government officials. Another way to express political opinions and engage in political activity is through volunteering . Unlike voting, which skews toward older individuals, “the percentage of young Americans engaged in regular volunteer activity nearly equals that of their Baby Boomer parents,” Cliff Zukin et al., A New Engagement? Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 7. and while young people might not vote, many participate in a variety of civic engagement activities that can be considered just as important as voting. Volunteerism and voluntary association in groups, be they a formal political group or a neighborhood recycling committee, are important forms of civic engagement because these types of activities teach us how to participate in democratic life. Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, with Robert Leonardi and Raffaella Y. Nanetti (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). What does a volunteer for a political campaign do? Volunteers help candidates and parties by knocking on voters’ doors and explaining policies one-on-one, phone banking (making calls to potential voters to sew up support), stuffing envelopes with campaign literature, distributing yard and window signs, helping people register to vote, and sometimes even transporting voters to the polls. Volunteering for a political campaign is important work because “volunteers’ door-to-door canvassing can make a difference in turnout—particularly in elections where turnout is typically low, such as those in mid-term election years.” John Fryar, “Volunteers Can Be Key to Election Outcomes, Activists Say,” AP News, Associated Press, October 19, 2018, https://apnews.com/article/db10b6038c5b4d768354ffa1a5a56b30. Interestingly, while US voter participation rates are lower than rates in other developed countries, “the rates of political participation—that is, taking part in public life in ways other than voting—tend to be far higher than in other countries.” Andrew Rudalevige, “Americans Get More Politically Involved Than Citizens Elsewhere. The Constitution’s Framers Designed It That Way,” Washington Post, September 1, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/09/01/americans-get-more-politically-involved-than-citizens-elsewhere-the-constitutions-framers-designed-it-that-way/. A Pew Research Center survey of 14 countries from around the globe showed that beyond voting, political participation rates were relatively low. The study notes that “attending a political campaign event or speech is the second most common type of participation among those surveyed,” while “fewer people report participating in volunteer organizations (a median of 27%), posting comments on political issues online (17%), participating in an organized protest (14%) or donating money to a social or political organization (12%).” Richard Wike and Alexandra Castillo, “Many around the World Are Disengaged from Politics,” Pew Research Center, October 17, 2018, https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2018/10/17/international-political-engagement/. Beyond voting, political participation around the world is relatively low. (source: Pew Research Center Spring 2018 Global Attitudes Survey. Q63a-f; attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license) Compare the data in for countries around the world to the data in for the United States, where people report higher levels of political engagement across similar activities: More Americans engage with politics digitally than by volunteering or attending rallies. (source: Pew Research Center survey of US adults conducted Jan. 29-Feb. 13, 2018; attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license) Donating money is also a form of political participation ( Chapter 8: Interest Groups, Political Parties, and Elections will discuss the role of money in elections in greater detail). Political donations, which the Supreme Court has protected as a type of political speech, allow people to feel like they are participating in politics without leaving their homes or picking up a phone, thanks in part to the ease of online donating. Not everyone who donates is a millionaire. While the cap on individual donations to a single candidate is $2,900, voters can also give up to $5,000 to a political action committee (PAC) , $10,000 to state and local political parties, and $36,5000 to the national committee. “Contribution Limits,” Federal Election Commission, accessed April 21, 2021, https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/candidate-taking-receipts/contribution-limits/. Individuals need not be wealthy to contribute to the candidate or party of their choice. The Wall Street Journal profiled a 34-year-old office manager and Bernie Sanders supporter who donated to the Sanders election campaign by giving in three-dollar increments up to 20 times a day. Chad Day and Julie Bykowicz, “Small Donors Get Creative to Give Over and Over to 2020 Candidates,” Wall Street Journal, October 25, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/small-donors-get-creative-to-give-over-and-over-to-2020-candidates-11572001202. Not everyone who contributes gives the maximum of $2,900, but their collective donations add up to a significant amount of money: Close to a quarter of all money raised in the 2020 election cycle came from people who gave less than $200. Ollie Gratzinger, “Small Donors Give Big Money in 2020 Election Cycle,” OpenSecrets, October 30, 2020, https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/10/small-donors-give-big-2020-thanks-to-technology/. This movement toward small donors signifies a positive change in political participation: instead of a small number of very wealthy individuals contributing money, this type of grassroots fundraising creates a chance for broader civic participation. Chapter 8: Interest Groups, Political Parties, and Elections will discuss some of these ideas in further detail. Donating money to political campaigns and candidates looks different in other countries. The United States limits how much any individual or group can donate, and countries such as Belgium, Canada, Chile, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Poland, and Slovenia limit both how much individuals can donate and how much campaigns can spend donations. For example, the donation limit in Canada, which increases by Can$25 at the beginning of each year, was Can$1,650 (roughly US$1,320) total per person as of 2021. “Limits on Contributions,” Elections Canada, last modified June 8, 2021, https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=pol&document=index&dir=lim&lang=e. In France, the donation limit was €4,600 (roughly US$5,300) per candidate and €7,500 (roughly US$8,650) per political party as of 2019. “France,” International IDEA, 2019, https://www.idea.int/data-tools/country-view/86/55?y=2019. Some other countries place no limits on donations (or on spending), including Australia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey. Paul Waldman, “How Our Campaign Finance System Compares to Other Countries,” American Prospect, April 4, 2014, https://prospect.org/power/campaign-finance-system-compares-countries/. Some forms of political participation, such as being informed, discussing issues, and using social media , don’t entail the same level of energy or expense as contacting elected officials, volunteering, or donating money, but they can be just as important and influential. Scholars note that while there are many ways to be involved in politics, people often learn about politics through discussion, and being informed allows people to make good decisions about how to vote in their best interests. Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, “Conceptualizations of Good Citizenship and Political Participation,” Political Behavior 15, no. 4 (December 1993): 355–380, https://www.jstor.org/stable/586463. While keeping informed about politics may not seem like political participation the way that voting or volunteering does, educating oneself is perhaps the most important precursor to becoming more fully involved. This can mean reading about politics in the newspaper or listening to a podcast, but it may also take the form of either face-to-face or online discussions. In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, the New York Times created an online feature called “How to Participate in Politics.” Ian Prasad Philbrick and David Leonhardt, “How to Participate in Politics,” New York Times, updated February 13, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of-living-better/how-to-participate-in-government. In it, a section called “How to Talk about Politics” encourages people to talk in person, find common ground, listen, focus on the issues, and know when to stop talking. The founders of the Common Ground Committee , an organization that sponsors public forums that bring together leaders from different backgrounds to discuss politics, “About,” Common Ground Committee, last modified May 3, 2021, https://commongroundcommittee.org/about/. wrote an opinion piece in which they explained very simply that the reason people need to learn how to discuss politics is so that we can reduce ignorance and fear and create productive outcomes. Bruce Bond and Erik Olsen, “Engaging in Tough Conversations Is Worth It. Even If We Can’t Find Agreement,” USA Today, January 23, 2020, https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/01/23/talking-politics-necessary-constructive-our-democracy-column/4529280002/. You may not be able to imagine a world without a smartphone or social media, and these two technological advances have marked a significant shift not only in how we communicate with one another, shop, and look for information but also in how we participate in politics. Currently, a quarter of Americans get their news from a website or news app, and close to 20 percent use social media. More specifically, in one study conducted from October 2019 to June 2020, 40 percent of people aged 30–49 and 48 percent of people aged 18–29 reported that they got most of their political news from social media. Amy Mitchell et al., Americans Who Mainly Get Their News on Social Media Are Less Engaged, Less Knowledgeable (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, July 2020), https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2020/07/30/americans-who-mainly-get-their-news-on-social-media-are-less-engaged-less-knowledgeable/. Fake news and misinformation may proliferate easily online, but studies have found that both information recall and short-term learning are positively correlated with social media use. Leticia Bode, “Political News in the News Feed: Learning Politics from Social Media,” Mass Communication and Society 19, no. 1 (2016): 24–48. In terms of political engagement, scholars have found that social media increases participation and people’s sense of political agency and that after being exposed to information online, individuals tend to feel more efficacious. Daniel Halpern, Sebastián Valenzuela, and James E. Katz, “We Face, I Tweet: How Different Social Media Influence Political Participation through Collective and Internal Efficacy,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 22, no. 6 (November 2017): 320–336, https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12198. Finally, a meta-study (a study that summarizes multiple studies on a similar topic) found that, overall, social media use is highly correlated with participation in civil and political life. Shelley Boulianne, “Social Media Use and Participation: A Meta-analysis of Current Research,” Information, Communication & Society 18, no. 5 (2015): 524–538. It is important to note that this relationship is not causal —use of social media does not lead to political participation, or vice versa—but the two activities appear to be decidedly related. But why do people turn to social media when they want to find out about politics or make their views known? Simply put, it has never been so easy. We are all broadcasters when we have a social media account. With social media, we feel we can both acquire information and vocalize our views, and these activities are a type of political participation. The ease is also what makes social media a hazardous environment for political information and participation. Almost anyone can generate news anywhere, unchecked, and that news can travel at speeds faster than previously possible. An MIT study found that “falsehoods are 70% more likely to be retweeted on Twitter than the truth, and reach their first 1,500 people six times faster.” Sara Brown, “MIT Sloan Research about Social Media, Misinformation, and Elections,” MIT Sloan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, October 5, 2020, https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/mit-sloan-research-about-social-media-misinformation-and-elections. More problematic, the same study found that falsehoods are also more likely to change people’s opinions. How do we harness social media for good—that is, so that it helps us acquire information and feel more knowledgeable—while fixing its problems? A separate MIT study found that crowdsourcing ratings—in other words, asking people to “grade” information they saw online—works to reduce the spread of fake news. Dylan Walsh, “Crowdsourced Ratings of Online News Quality May Actually Work,” MIT Sloan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, January 28, 2019, https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/crowdsourced-ratings-online-news-quality-may-actually-work. Another study found that when people took the time to assess the accuracy of online headlines, they were more likely to spot fakes. Bence Bago, David G. Rand, and Gordon Pennycook, “Fake News, Fast and Slow: Deliberation Reduces Belief in False (but Not True) News Headlines,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 149, no. 8 (2020): 1608–1613. Compared to television and radio, our relationship with social media is still nascent, and there is room for improvement in how we use it for political purposes. This chapter has looked at how individuals can participate in our political process, either through voting or by engaging in a myriad of other activities. But how can we participate as part of a group? Earlier parts of this chapter discussed how volunteering is a powerful form of individual-level participation. This section will examine how groups and being a part of these groups also acts as a form of political participation. In the United States, if you don’t know which candidate you want to support, or if the next election is still far in the future, an easy organization to become part of, support, and work for is a political party. If you take a look at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) website , you will see that volunteers do many different things, including hosting fundraisers and organizing local events for politicians to attend. “Take Action,” Democratic National Committee, 2021, https://democrats.org/take-action/. The Republican National Committee (RNC) also has a sign-up portal where people can volunteer to be part of their fundraising, phone-banking, and door-knocking efforts. “Sign Up to Volunteer,” The Republican National Committee, 2021, https://www.gop.com/volunteer/. Congressional elections take place every two years, and political parties do not suspend their activities in the interim. They are always looking for individuals to help them achieve their goals. As former House Speaker Tip O’Neill once said, “All politics are local,” and you can volunteer for state and local party organizations, many of which are not as well funded as national campaigns and rely on volunteer help. Current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a name for herself fundraising for local politicians, then for California state candidates, before she ran for office herself. Being part of a party can introduce you to people with shared interests and train you for further involvement in politics. Working for a political campaign is another form of political participation that anyone can engage in. The work of campaigns rests on the shoulders of volunteers. Much like working for a political party, being part of the volunteer staff for a campaign entails making and answering phone calls about a candidate, stuffing envelopes, soliciting donations, distributing campaign literature, knocking on doors, helping register candidates, and doing whatever other work the campaign staff needs. Many people donate their time because they believe in a particular candidate, while others find it is a good way to introduce themselves to the work of politics. Whatever the aim, volunteering for a campaign is an important, often rewarding form of participation that can serve to create new social networks. Griffin Neal, Regional Campaign Manager Please explain what you do for your organization. I am a former grassroots coordinator and current deputy campaign manager for Congressman Mike Johnson’s (LA-04) reelection campaign. How did you get involved in your position? I studied public policy and journalism at the University of Mississippi. To be frank, there isn’t much schooling that can prepare you for the operational side of a campaign. It’s a slog: long nights, early mornings, fast food, and more phone calls than the human ear was built to withstand. However, my degree in public policy provided me with the requisite knowledge of the policy-making process—and politics in general—which allowed me to engage directly with would-be voters on the issues. More importantly though, my degree program emphasized extracurricular involvement, particularly in campus politics. I began volunteering on campaigns as a freshman, ran for office my sophomore year, ran another campaign junior year, and then joined the dark side as a senior, when I became executive editor of the campus newspaper. Ultimately (and unfortunately), campaigns aren’t all too dissimilar from campus elections. What advice would you give students who are interested in your line of work? Reach out to the grassroots coordinator or volunteer coordinator. Immediately. The vast majority of campaigns—from city council to Congress—are understaffed. Volunteering on campaigns isn’t a glamorous job, nor will it immediately pay well. However, being affiliated with a campaign is one of the premier ways to involve yourself in politics. Whether you’re passionate about a candidate or using it as a conduit to eventually work in politics, campaign work offers the best insight into the political process. And because most campaign staffs are overworked, the opportunities for growth and upward mobility are endless. I started with the Johnson campaign in August of 2020, handling volunteer engagement and distributing yard signs; three months later I was doing election night TV hits Interviews with local media. As for actually getting involved with the campaign, if you’re hoping to volunteer with an official seeking reelection, reach out to their office. They can connect you with the requisite campaign staffers. If you’re hoping to work with a new candidate, most campaigns have either an email or phone number connected to their social channels, as well as on any would-be website. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the first call is all you’ll need to get involved, but it’s important to follow through on your request. If you offer to volunteer for a campaign, make sure to outline expectations with your boss and let them know of any potential conflicts—that way, the volunteer coordinator will know how and where they can maximize you as a volunteer. One last piece of advice: take the project no one else wants to take; it will pay dividends in the long run. Another way to become involved with a political group is through protests and social movements . Earlier sections of this chapter showed that in comparison to other demographic groups, Asian Americans have low levels of political participation. However, in 2021, after a year of increased violence against members of the Asian community and a shooting incident that left six Asian women dead at an Atlanta business, Asian American–led protests surged across the country, leading the president, the vice president, and members of Congress to investigate the number of rising hate crimes against Asian Americans and formulate a policy response. Cameron McWhirter, Allison Pohle, and Alex Janin, “Protests across US Call for End to Anti-Asian Violence,” Wall Street Journal, March 21, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/protests-across-u-s-call-for-end-to-anti-asian-violence-11616273497. In 2021, Asian Americans led protests against the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes in the wake of COVID-19. (credit: “03.20.21_Solidarity Against Hate Crimes (200)” by Paul Becker/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) In this way, protests are a good example of how people working collectively can participate in politics to successfully call attention to a cause. This is not only an American phenomenon. Researchers have found that protests continue to play an important role in Latin American countries as a way for people “to achieve certain political objectives and to express policy demands.” Fabiana Machado, Carlos Scartascini, and Mariano Tommasi, “Political Institutions and Street Protests in Latin America,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 55, no. 3 (June 2011): 342, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23049890. Even in authoritarian countries where freedom of expression is not protected, protests function as an important form of political participation. While rural and urban voters may exhibit different characteristics, such as differing levels of education, both can still engage in protest as a way to demand accountability from the government. Lynette H. Ong and Donglin Han, “What Drives People to Protest in an Authoritarian Country? Resources and Rewards vs. Risks of Protests in Urban and Rural China,” Political Studies 67, no. 1 (February 2019): 224–248. Much like everything else in our world, protests have also migrated from the streets to the online sphere. E-petitioning—that is, signing petitions online as opposed to in-person—has been found to mobilize communities to solicit support for policy recommendations, and studies show that policy makers take these types of online protests into account. For example, online activity after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School spurred President Obama to explicitly and publicly acknowledge the widespread online petitions in support of reforming gun laws. Catherine Dumas et al., “E-petitioning as Collective Political Action in We the People” (conference paper, iConference 2015 Proceedings, University of California, Irvine Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences, March 24–27, 2015), http://hdl.handle.net/2142/73665. Protest movements are often associated with younger people—think Tiananmen Square or anti-Vietnam movements—and young, savvy protestors tend to be active online. After the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, the New York Times ran an article with the headline “How the Parkland Students Got So Good at Social Media.” The article described an online protest, fueled entirely by people who had yet to even enter college, that was hugely successful in garnering public support and keeping gun control issues front and center. Jonah E. Bromwich, “How the Parkland Students Got So Good at Social Media,” New York Times, March 7, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/us/parkland-students-social-media.html. Academics echo the notion that while younger generations may seem apathetic and unlikely to participate in traditional ways, “the political identity and attitudes of young citizens are . . . seen to be increasingly shaped less by their social ties to family, neighbourhood, school or work” and more “by the manner in which they participate and interact through the social networks which they themselves have had a significant part in constructing,” Brian D. Loader, Ariadne Vromen, and Michael A. Xenos, “The Networked Young Citizen: Social Media, Political Participation and Civic Engagement,” Information, Communication & Society 17, no. 2 (2014): 143, https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2013.871571. thereby creating “new forms of networked young citizenship.” Ibid., 149. In this way, the combination of protests and the online world creates a new avenue for political participation that is just as important as traditional, offline engagement. Protest movements “swept the globe [in 2019]—so widely that some experts said there were more protests, and more protesters, in 2019 than at any other time in history.” Bill Wanlund, “Global Protest Movements,” CQ Researcher 30, no. 17 (May 2020), https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2020050100. There was a considerable increase in global protest movements between 2009 and 2019. (source: Samuel J. Brannen, Christian S. Haig, and Katherine Schmidt, The Age of Mass Protests: Understanding an Escalating Global Trend Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, March 2020; attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license) The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found that factors such as slowing global economic growth, worsening effects of climate change , and foreign meddling in internal politics contribute to the growth of protest movements worldwide. Samuel J. Brannen, Christian S. Haig, and Katherine Schmidt, The Age of Mass Protests: Understanding an Escalating Global Trend (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, March 2020), https://www.csis.org/analysis/age-mass-protests-understanding-escalating-global-trend. One notable example is the Umbrella Movement , a pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong that adopted its name in 2014 after the umbrellas that protesters used to shield their identities from Chinese officials, block pepper spray and water cannons, and defend against police clubs. Having become a symbol of the resistance, umbrellas are now considered “weapons” by the Chinese government and are increasingly difficult to purchase online. Chloe Whiteaker, “The Essential Tool for Hong Kong Protesters? An Umbrella,” Bloomberg, September 20, 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-hong-kong-protesters-umbrellas/. Hong Kong, which was once a British colony, reverted to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” arrangement whereby Hong Kong would be allowed some continued autonomy and its citizens would have more rights than those in mainland China. However, in June 2019, the Chinese government enacted plans to allow the extradition of Hong Kong citizens to China, a move that protesters said would subject citizens of Hong Kong to unfair trials and target activists and journalists. Though the extradition bill was withdrawn, activists in Hong Kong believe that China will continue to dismantle their legal rights and continue to protest against Beijing in order to protect their independence. “The Hong Kong Protests Explained in 100 and 500 words,” BBC News, November 28, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49317695. Tensions between pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong and Chinese party officials only continued to escalate as prosecutors alleged that the protests were a security threat and interfered with government functions. By March 2021, after the protests had largely been quelled by COVID-19 pandemic restrictions and “a harsh national security law” passed in June 2020, Chinese officials had arrested more than 10,000 pro-democracy protesters, and more than 2,400 had been charged. Austin Ramzy, “Hundreds in Rare Hong Kong Protest as Opposition Figures Are Charged,” New York Times, March 1, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/world/asia/hong-kong-protest.html. Hong Kong Protests: Why ‘Umbrella Revolution’? BBC News In this video, visual artist Kacey Wong explains why the Hong Kong protest movement adopted the name ‘Umbrella Movement.’ Another major international protest movement was the Arab Spring , one of the most prominent social movements of the 2010s, which started when a Tunisian street vendor lit himself on fire as a form of protest against the country’s authoritarian government. This single act set off a wave of protests across North Africa and the Middle East, resulting in regime changes and modest political, social, and economic gains in several countries, but also still-ongoing protests and violence. Kali Robinson, “The Arab Spring at Ten Years: What’s the Legacy of the Uprisings?,” Council on Foreign Relations, December 3, 2020, https://www.cfr.org/article/arab-spring-ten-years-whats-legacy-uprisings. Ten years after the Arab Spring, Tunisia remains locked in civil unrest and protests, driven mainly by economic unease as successive governments have failed to close the gap between the rich and the poor. As in Hong Kong, Tunisian protesters have been jailed, abused, and prosecuted by the government, and the Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH) has estimated that 30 percent of the 1,400 protesters arrested so far are minors. Simon Speakman Cordall, “‘Things Are Getting Worse’: Tunisia Protests Rage On as Latest Victim Named,” Guardian, January 27, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/jan/27/things-are-getting-worse-tunisia-protests-rage-on-as-latest-victim-named. While governments in North Africa and the Middle East pushed back against the movement, the Arab Spring was influential, and it resulted in leadership change in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Yemen. (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license) Pro-democracy protests such as the ones in Hong Kong, North Africa, and the Middle East show that Americans’ ability to advocate and protest on behalf of their beliefs should not be taken for granted. Much of this chapter has examined how people can participate more fully in democracy, whether through voting, writing an elected official, volunteering, reading about politics, or posting their views online. But how can we create an environment where more people participate in the political process? One answer lies in the production of what is called social capital . Social capital is the idea that individuals form connections that benefit their own interests and that these social networks in turn produce communities that create norms of reciprocity. In other words, being well-connected can help you personally, but it also creates a group of networked people who feel obligated to help one another in positive ways. As Harvard University Professor Robert Putnam writes in his seminal work Bowling Alone (2000), “Your extended family represents a form of social capital, as do your Sunday school class, the regulars who play poker on your commuter train, your college roommates, the civic organizations to which you belong, the Internet chat group in which you participate, and the network of professional acquaintances recorded in your address book.” Putnam, Bowling Alone, 21. All of these groups are examples of how relationships can facilitate social interaction and participation. Studies of social capital around the globe have shown that if we can increase social capital, we can bolster political participation. A study on social capital and its effects on political participation in Japan, which has a notoriously low political participation rate relative to its regional peers, found that social networking fueled participation. Ken’ichi Ikeda and Sean E. Richey, “Japanese Network Capital: The Impact of Social Networks on Japanese Political Participation,” Political Behavior 27, no. 3 (September 2005): 239–260. Studies in Latin American have likewise found a robust relationship between the production of social capital and political participation. A study of Mexico, Chile, Peru, and Argentina found that greater involvement in non political activities leads to more participation in explicitly political ones. Fostering interpersonal trust and organizational involvement outside of politics pushes people to be more politically active. Klesner, “Social Capital,” 29. Just as social media can be an outlet for political participation, it can also increase social capital. In an early study on Facebook and political participation, researchers found a small but noticeably positive relationship between use of the social media site and the production of social capital. Sebastián Valenzuela, Namsu Park, and Kerk F. Kee, “Is There Social Capital in a Social Network Site? Facebook Use and College Students’ Life Satisfaction, Trust, and Participation,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 14, no. 4 (July 2009): 875–901, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2009.01474.x. As social media has become increasingly prominent in our lives, subsequent studies have revealed that it continues to play a role in social capital and participation, possibly in more influential ways. University of Salamanca and Penn State University Professor Homero Gil de Zúñiga , Tennessee Tech University Professor Nakwon Jung , and University of Wisconsin Professor Sebastián Valenzuela found that seeking information via social networking sites was a positive and significant predictor of social capital and civic and political participatory behaviors, both online and offline. They posit that social networks show how “learning about what happens around us and in our community, reflecting on it, and discussing it with others constructively affects the political realm; as well as it facilitates a cohesive community by enabling citizens to engage in civic action.” Homero Gil de Zúñiga, Nakwon Jung, and Sebastián Valenzuela, “Social Media Use for News and Individuals’ Social Capital, Civic Engagement and Political Participation,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 17, no. 3 (April 2012): 329, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2012.01574.x. One study of Nigerian university students found that social media enhanced students’ levels of political engagement, particularly around national elections. Lambe Kayode Mustapha, Victor Olanrewaju Gbonegun, and Maryam Lasisi Mustapha, “Social Media Use, Social Capital, and Political Participation among Nigerian University Students,” Trípodos, no. 39 (2016): 127–143, https://raco.cat/index.php/Tripodos/article/view/335040. The researchers note that their study bolsters assertions made by researchers in the United States social media on social capital production and participation know no geographic limits. Finally, older individuals benefit from use of social media as well; Crowdsourcing and Innovation expert Lee B. Erickson at Penn State found that Facebook appeared to facilitate different types of social capital for users over the age of 65. Lee B. Erickson, “Social Media, Social Capital, and Seniors: The Impact of Facebook on Bonding and Bridging Social Capital of Individuals over 65,” (conference paper, AMCIS 2011 Proceedings, 2011), https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2011_submissions/85/. The creation of social capital is an important concept in political science, and that social capital can be created in a variety of ways, even through social media. In an article in the journal Political Psychology , Ronald La Due Lake and University of California Professor Robert Huckfeldt explain, “Social capital produces an important political consequence by encouraging wider participation in democratic processes.” Ronald La Due Lake and Robert Huckfeldt, “Social Capital, Social Networks, and Political Participation,” Political Psychology 19, no. 3 (1998): 583, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3792178. The creation of social capital is a difficult task in a world that makes multiple demands on our time, from commuting to what feels like ever-expanding work hours. However, given the repeated evidence of the effects of social capital on enhancing political participation, it raises the question: Is social capital as important as things like voter registration reforms in terms of encouraging the broader public to vote? There are several ways to participate in politics other than voting. On an individual level, people can write to their elected officials; volunteer for causes they believe in; donate money to candidates, causes, or campaigns; keep informed about politics and discuss topics of personal importance; and follow elected officials or political causes online. People can also participate as part of a group by joining political parties or campaigns and by taking part in protests. All of these activities contribute to social capital, which is the idea that individuals form connections that benefit their own interests and that these social networks in turn produce communities that create norms of reciprocity and promote more civil engagement overall. social capital the effects of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively

Social Sciences


What Is Public Opinion and Where Does It Come From? Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Define public opinion. Describe the different types of public opinion. Detail the external influences that affect the development of an individual’s opinion. Political participation is an important measure of the health of a democracy, as popular involvement serves as a source of its legitimacy . However, the public cannot be expected to carry out the responsibility of making the government run. People have jobs, families, and other pressing concerns, and while it is always important to be involved somehow—whether by voting, writing officials, or reading about politics—we elect public officials to represent our interests and to serve as experts in ways we cannot. But how do elected officials know what we want? Voting is certainly a good proxy for understanding how people feel, but it does not provide a great deal of detail for public officials to understand public sentiment on certain issues. This is where the concept of public opinion is very important. Being able to gauge what people want is an integral part of the rationale behind democratic government. Public opinion is the aggregation of individual views that represent the feelings that people hold on an issue at a given point in time. Not all people have opinions on all topics, and therefore another way to define public opinion is to say that it represents the views of ordinary citizens that they are willing to express openly. People’s opinions can change for many reasons, so it is also important to recognize that a public opinion poll is a measure of how people feel at the particular moment when the poll was conducted. By measuring public opinion, elected officials throughout government gain insight into what people think should be done about certain issues. There are some issues where the majority of the public shares the same opinion, otherwise known as the majority opinion . For example, in a 2020 Harvard University poll, 80 percent of Americans surveyed agreed with the statement “Without our freedoms, America is nothing”; 93 percent stated that they believe clean air and water are basic rights; 92 percent supported the right to a quality education; 92 percent supported racial equality; and 89 percent agreed that affordable health care is a right. Caitlin Oprysko, “Poll: Americans United on a Slew of Issues, despite Contentious Election Season,” Politico, September 15, 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/15/election-season-americans-united-issues-poll-414687. Because each of these figures represents more than 50 percent of those surveyed, these views may be considered representative of the majority opinion. However, this definitely does not mean that the majority of people have opinions on all issues or even share a common point of view. For example, a farmer may have a strong opinion on federal agricultural subsidy programs, while a dentist may not. As Stanford University Professor Jon Krosnick writes, “American citizens vary a great deal in terms of the personal importance they attach to their attitudes on public policy issues.” Jon A. Krosnick, “Government Policy and Citizen Passion: A Study of Issue Publics in Contemporary America,” Political Behavior 12, no. 1 (1990): 60, https://www.jstor.org/stable/586285. While people may not know everything about every issue, they are likely to hold strong opinions about the ones that are most important to them. The theory of issue publics states that the American electorate is made up of multiple small groups that care about single issues, rather than a public that cares equally about all issues. The opinion not of the broader public but of business, political, and other cultural elites—that is, elite opinion —represents the views of one of these small groups. Where do people’s opinions come from? In one of the seminal works on the topic, aptly named Public Opinion (1922), journalist and political commentator Walter Lippmann writes, “We can see how indirectly we know the environment in which . . . we live.” Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1922), 4. In other words, we acquire most of our information secondhand, not through personal experience, and myriad external forces influence our opinions. We can broadly categorize these forces. Demographic groups are one of the most influential of these external forces. Think about your age, your race or ethnicity, and your gender. These demographic characteristics can influence how people feel about certain issues or candidates. For example, Black Americans are twice as likely as Asian or White Americans to agree with the statement that not enough attention has been paid to the January 6, 2021, riots at the United States Capital. Black Americans are also more likely to attach a high level of importance to prosecuting the Capitol rioters, by a margin of approximately 20 percentage points over other racial groups. Pew Research Center, Large Majority of the Public Views Prosecution of Capitol Rioters as “Very Important” (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, March 2021), https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/03/18/large-majority-of-the-public-views-prosecution-of-capitol-rioters-as-very-important/. It is not unreasonable to attribute Black Americans’ opinions to the unfair treatment they have experienced at the hands of a historically prejudiced justice system, and through this example, we can see how self-identification affects people’s opinions. On the issue of Brexit , or Britain leaving the EU, the thrust of the debate centered on immigration , and opinion polls on the topic illustrated a stark divide based on demographics . College-educated individuals in the UK were much less likely to hold anti-immigrant views, with 20 percent of college-educated Britons saying they would not accept a Muslim as a family member, compared to 43 percent of less educated Britons. Omkar Joshi and Jonathan Evans, “British Attitudes on National Identity and Religious Minorities Not Unique in EU,” Pew Research Center, February 19, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/19/british-attitudes-on-national-identity-and-religious-minorities-not-unique-in-eu/. Social groups also affect our opinions on politics and public officials. Think about who you spend time with: your friends, your family, a sports team, your classmates, and your coworkers. These social groups have a strong impact on how we think about issues. In other words, and to paraphrase Vincent Price, it is not so much where we stand on the issues but with whom we stand . Vincent Price, “Social Identification and Public Opinion: Effects of Communicating Group Conflict,” Public Opinion Quarterly 53, no. 2 (1989): 198, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2749523. Perhaps your parents were lifelong Democrats, and this is why you tend to vote Democratic. If you work in the world of finance, you will likely be surrounded by conservative thinkers, and this may lead you to espouse lower taxes. These people—your social groups—influence how you think about an issue, and the opinions you form will reflect your association with these groups. This process by which people assimilate to group values is also called socialization . Sociology is the study of groups, human connections, social influences, and cultural forces that shape our relationships and personal worldviews. Sociology and political science naturally overlap. Both disciplines are considered social sciences; that is, they both examine human societies and groups. By understanding the broader theories of sociology, political scientists can gain insight into social norms and organizations as they relate to political institutions and actors. The set of beliefs, principles, or doctrines that guide one’s views of how the government should work is referred to as their political ideology (political ideology is covered in more detail in Chapter 3: Political Ideology ). Political ideology can act as a framework that directs people’s thinking on political issues. Identifying as a liberal or a conservative, for example, will influence how you feel about particular issues. As John Hopkins University and Harvard Professor V. O. Key writes, “For many persons the policy position of their party, as they perceive it, may strongly affect their own policy preferences.” V. O. Key, Public Opinion and American Democracy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), 68. Liberals tend to support government programs, intervention, and social reform, and thus if you view yourself as a liberal , you will also likely support measures such as government-sponsored health care and government-sponsored programs for minorities. Conservatives, on the other hand, generally do not believe in government intervention and tend to maintain that governmental control means fewer individual freedoms. Therefore, individuals who identify as conservative are likely to consider increased taxes for things such as social welfare programs unnecessary and an infringement on people’s ability to make and keep the money they have earned. The title of the first chapter of Walter Lippmann ’s Public Opinion , “The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads,” refers to the idea that our opinions depend a great deal on the worldview we assemble for ourselves. Political ideology is one of these “pictures” to which Lippmann refers; we rely on ideology as a cue to how we should react to various ideas. In Britain, ideology also affected how people felt about Brexit . A majority of the Conservative Party (60 percent of Tories) supported leaving the EU, while 70 percent of Liberal Democrats and 53 percent of Labour Party members supported remaining as part of the EU. Shannon Schumacher, “Brexit Divides the UK, but Partisanship and Ideology Are Still Key Factors,” Pew Research Center, October 28, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/10/28/brexit-divides-the-uk-but-partisanship-and-ideology-are-still-key-factors/. In this way, we see that ideology is a factor across nations in terms of our opinions. Sometimes we look to specific people in our lives to form opinions on politics. Social researchers Bernard Barelson , Paul Lazarsfeld , and William McPhee quote James Bryce as saying, “There is the active class [of person], who occupy themselves primarily with public affairs, who aspire to create and lead opinion.” Bernard R. Barelson, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and William N. McPhee, Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign (1954; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 109. Otherwise known as opinion leaders , these people can shape ordinary voters’ opinions, either purposefully or inadvertently. Who are opinion leaders? As Barelson, Lazarsfeld, and McPhee note, opinion leaders may be bankers or mayors, or they may be “near-by influencers.” Ibid., 109. John Stuart Mill describes the idea in a slightly different way: “The mass do not now take their opinions from dignitaries in Church or State, from ostensible leaders, or from books. Their thinking is done for them by men much like themselves, addressing or speaking in their name, on the spur of the moment.” John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859; repr., Kitchener, ON: Batoche Books, 2001), 62, https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/mill/liberty.pdf. In other words, anyone in your social circle or someone you see through the media, and increasingly social media , can be an opinion leader, and you may consciously or subconsciously take their views into consideration when forming your own opinions. This is not to say that elite public figures are not opinion leaders. Northwestern University Professor Benjamin Page and Columbia University Professor Robert Shapiro ’s study on presidential influence on public opinion, for example, found that presidents who are popular do, in fact, have the ability to sway how people think about issues. Benjamin I. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro, “Presidents as Opinion Leaders: Some New Evidence,” Policy Studies Journal 12, no. 4 (1984): 649–661. However, it is important to reiterate that anyone can be an opinion leader: “In the course of casual daily conversation the political pundit of the work group, the bridge-playing wife of a political ‘active,’ the well-informed neighbor—these and others may well convey the relevant political sentiment to a more or less passive audience.” Angus Campbell et al., The American Voter (1960; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 271. Opinion leaders are people whose words you value—or, as University of Pennsylvania Professor Elihu Katz and Columbia University Professor Paul Lazarsfeld famously explain, all social strata generate their own opinion leaders “horizontally,” and opinion leaders in your own immediate environment can be just as instrumental in informing your opinions. Elihu Katz and Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1955), 3. Sometimes these opinion leaders are people we see in the media, and sometimes opinion leaders have influence because they are frequent media consumers. For more on this subject, see Chapter 12: The Media . It feels reasonable to believe that our family, coworkers, and important figures can affect our thinking, but multiple studies have also shown that the media can influence how we form our opinions. George Washington University Professor Robert Entman asserts that the media contributes to what people think about as well as to their political preferences and evaluations. Robert M. Entman, “How the Media Affect What People Think: An Information Processing Approach,” Journal of Politics 51, no. 2 (1989): 347–370, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2131346. Early works from V. O. Key note that the media may exert a particularly significant influence on opinion in the short run, on people with lower levels of information, and on opinions regarding certain issues, such as international affairs or those with which individuals have minimal personal experience. Key, Public Opinion, 401–405. Similarly, Page and Shapiro found that the media was particularly powerful in shaping opinions on foreign affairs, Benjamin I. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro, The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans’ Policy Preferences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 354. and how the media frames stories about presidents has been shown to influence voters’ evaluations of political leaders. John R. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 81. Studies on poverty and crime have also shown that the way the media frames an issue can influence public opinion on these issues. Shanto Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible? How Television Frames Political Issues (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Chapter 12: The Media looks further into the relationship between the media and politics, but suffice it to say that a plethora of research exists to substantiate the claim that on different levels and to varying degrees, the media does influence public opinion. Public opinion is the aggregation of individual views that represent the feelings people hold on an issue at one point in time that they are willing to express. Many things can affect how people form their opinions and why they have them, including social and economic factors such as race, education level, income, or ideology. There are different types of opinion, including majority opinion (the opinion of the numerical majority), elite opinion (the opinion of those members of society with highly specialized knowledge or influence), and opinions of issue publics, or those people who hold strong opinions on a few specific issues but not on every issue. conservative politically speaking, an individual who generally does not believe in government intervention and tends to maintain that governmental control means fewer individual freedoms elite opinion the opinion not of the broader public but of business, political, and other cultural elites issue publics small segments of the overall public that express interest or vote based on a single issue liberal politically speaking, an individual who supports government intervention and social welfare programs majority opinion the opinion of the majority of those polled opinion leaders individuals who can affect the opinions of other individuals, whether through their prominence, influence, or experience political ideology a set of beliefs, principles, or doctrines that guide one’s views of how government should work public opinion views that individuals are willing to express openly at a specific point in time

Social Sciences


How Do We Measure Public Opinion? Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Describe different methods of measuring public opinion. Explain the shortcomings of these methods. Earlier in this chapter, we discussed how writing to public officials is an important facet of political participation. Before we had a good way to measure public opinion, constituent letters were one of the few ways officials could gauge how the public felt. The advent of public opinion poll s provided a scientific way of identifying and measuring opinions. Social scientist Jean Converse , in her history of the field, writes that surveys can be traced back 2,000 years but were forged in the 20th century as a way to understand mass populations and societies and to gain insight into elites. Jean M. Converse, Survey Research in the United States: Roots and Emergence, 1890–1960 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 1. Over time, polls and surveys have become more precise through careful sampling and improved techniques. A sample is a group selected by a researcher to represent the characteristics of the entire population, and because we can never poll the entire population, getting the right sample is important to the accuracy of any poll. But how can we accurately gauge the opinions of the whole country on a sample of 1,400 or 2,000 people? The way the sample is drawn affects its accuracy. In the most common method, probability sampling , researchers randomly choose samples from the larger population. This method requires that everyone has an equal chance of being part of the sample and that they are randomly selected, which allows researchers to make generalizations about the larger population. If a researcher chooses people at random from a population, it is likely that their views will match the opinions of the larger population as a whole. These types of samples are often generated through random digit dialing , in which respondents are chosen at random by a computerized phone number generator. Researchers then use these randomly generated phone numbers to reach people at home and ask them about their opinions. While random digit dialing has been the go-to for decades, the decrease in landlines, increased adoption of cell phones, and increased time that people are at work have all contributed to the decreased reliance on home-based phone numbers. A Los Angeles Times article found that Internet-based surveys and automated interviewing systems (as opposed to live pollsters) were particularly accurate and may reflect a shift in how researchers measure public opinion moving forward. David Lauter, “Which Pollsters Did Best: Non-traditional Methods Were Standouts,” Los Angeles Times, November 8, 2012, https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-xpm-2012-nov-08-la-pn-which-pollsters-did-best-election-20121108-story.html. The difficulty of reaching people for polls is not just an American phenomenon. Researchers in Japan have found steep decreases in responses to nationally conducted surveys, with the steepest declines in metropolitan areas and among younger demographics. Scholars point to increased commute times, longer work hours, and higher mobility among younger Japanese as contributing to this problem. Nicolaos E. Synodinos and Shigeru Yamada, “Response Rate Trends in Japanese Surveys,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 12, no. 1 (March 2000): 48–72. Sampling in countries facing violence or instability can be a serious—and dangerous—problem for pollsters. James Bell , director of international survey research for the Pew Research Center, notes that when Pew conducted polls during civil unrest in Ukraine and Venezuela, polls needed to be conducted face-to-face rather than by phone. In addition, sometimes the data acquired in polls must be processed locally if pollsters cannot immediately evacuate the area. James Bell, “Q/A: How Pew Research Tracks Public Opinion in Countries Stricken by Violence and Unrest,” Pew Research Center, May 8, 2014, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/05/08/qa-how-pew-research-tracks-public-opinion-in-countries-stricken-by-violence-and-unrest/. The Importance of Empirical and Quantitative Skills This graph shows support for political parties in New Zealand between 2009 and 2012, according to various political polls. (credit: “File:NZ opinion polls 2009-2011 -parties.png” Mark Payne, Denmark/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0) Everyone loves a good public opinion poll. As you’ll see in other chapters, data from polls are utilized throughout society, from the media to candidates running for office, and even to decide what gets included in legislation. However, being able to properly understand what the data are telling us is a skill that is developed and can be utilized in a wide range of areas. If you can look at a set of numerical data or observable facts and reach an informed conclusion about what is happening—for example, about whether a group of voters prefers a certain candidate or if a group of residents wants a park built in their town—this is really no different from determining if a group of consumers prefers brand X bread or brand Y bread. In the modern digital era, we have a wealth of information at our fingertips. Being able to properly understand and interpret that information is a skill that is becoming fundamental in today’s workforce. There are also “nontraditional” sampling methods, which may be less scientific but offer certain benefits. One nontraditional method is a convenience sample , which, as the name suggests, is a sample based on convenience rather than probability. If you do not have the funds to create a poll based on a probability sample and random digit dialing , you might instead ask your classmates or your coworkers to respond to your survey with their opinions on the last election. While this method is both convenient and easy, we cannot extrapolate much from the information beyond the sample from which it is drawn. Another type of polling method is called cluster sampling , in which researchers divide the overall population into clusters, based on characteristics such as shared cities or schools, then randomly select people from within those clusters to poll. This type of sampling is cheaper than probability sampling, but the results are also not quite as representative because they are not randomly drawn. How reliable are polls? One of the most basic issues with a poll is a sample that is too small, which leads to sampling errors . Generally speaking, the larger the sample, the less chance of error. A typical sample of 1,500 people will have a sampling error of approximately 2.6 percent, which is generally considered an “acceptable” margin of error in public opinion polling. This means that out of 1,500 respondents, if 60 percent say that the LA Lakers is their favorite NBA team, due to sampling error, the true figure could be anywhere between 57.4 percent and 62.6 percent who prefer the Lakers. The smaller the sample, the larger the error. The methods by which respondents are contacted can also affect a poll’s accuracy. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2020, 83 percent of Americans aged 30–34, 74.5 percent of those aged 35–44, and almost 60 percent of those aged 45–64 used cell phones exclusively. Stephen J. Blumberg and Julian V. Luke, Wireless Substitution: Early Release of Estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, January–June 2020 (Washington, DC: US Department of Health and Human Services, February 2021), https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/wireless202102-508.pdf. This trend away from landlines can contribute to selection bias , whereby the sample drawn is not representative of the population being studied. In this case, any sample drawn from people using landlines would probably skew heavily toward individuals who are much older and those who are likely to be at home more often. The design of the survey itself can limit a poll’s accuracy. Question wording, interviewer bias, and response bias can all lead to measurement error , or limitations in response validity due to survey design problems. Questions should be worded in a straightforward manner in order to solicit a truthful response. Studies have shown that alterations in question wording, also known as question wording effects , change how people respond to polls and surveys. For example, University of Chicago Professor Kenneth Rasinki found that even the slightest changes in wording altered people’s support for government spending, Kenneth A. Rasinski, “The Effect of Question Wording on Public Support for Government Spending,” Public Opinion Quarterly 53, no. 3 (Autumn 1989): 388–394, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2749127. while Cornell University Professor Jonathon Schuldt , Indiana University Professor Sara Konrath , and University of Southern California Professor Norbert Schwarz found that responses changed depending on whether they used the term “ global warming ” or the term “ climate change .” Jonathon P. Schuldt, Sara H. Konrath, and Norbert Schwarz, “‘Global Warming’ or ‘Climate Change’? Whether the Planet Is Warming Depends on Question Wording,” Public Opinion Quarterly 75, no. 1 (Spring 2011): 115–124, https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfq073. Bias that stems from the identity of the individual conducting the interview known as interviewer bias , can also change people’s opinions. For example, Princeton University Professor Daniel Katz found that the social class of the interviewer had an effect on survey response, Daniel Katz, “Do Interviewers Bias Poll Results?,” Public Opinion Quarterly 6, no. 2 (Summer 1942): 248–268, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2745023. while a study of breast cancer patients found that response rates to surveys were higher when the race of the person administering the survey was the same as that of the respondent. Patricia G. Moorman et al., “Participation Rates in a Case-Control Study: The Impact of Age, Race, and Race of Interviewer,” Annals of Epidemiology 9, no. 3 (April 1999): 188–195. Similar effects have been found when interviewers are of different genders. Leonie Huddy et al., “The Effect of Interviewer Gender on the Survey Response,” Political Behavior 19, no. 3 (September 1997): 197–220, https://www.jstor.org/stable/586516. In other words, people sometimes respond differently based on the gender of the person conducting the survey. Inaccuracies can also arise from response bias , when respondents inaccurately report their true opinions for one reason or another. One famous example of response bias is called the “ Bradley effect .” This theory refers to a phenomenon observed in the 1982 California gubernatorial race between Tom Bradley , a Black man, and George Deukmejian , a White man of Armenian descent. In polls leading up to this race, Bradley was shown to be in the lead, but he ultimately lost by a narrow margin. The theory behind the Bradley effect is that White voters are unlikely to admit to bias against minority candidates, and as such, polls may overestimate support for a minority candidate. Also known as social desirability bias , this type of response bias occurs when respondents give the answer they think they should give, and not what they really feel. Measuring public opinion is both a skill and a science. In order to attempt to accurately capture public sentiment, researchers must draw samples from the broader public, which usually entails selecting a probability sample using random digit dialing. Errors can occur if the sample size is too small or if the survey suffers from measurement error. Examples of such errors include selection bias, question wording effects, interviewer effects, response bias, and social desirability. cluster sampling when researchers divide the overall population into clusters, based on characteristics such as shared cities or schools, then randomly select people to poll from within those clusters convenience sample a sample based on convenience rather than probability interviewer bias when individual characteristics such as the race or gender of the interviewer affect a person’s survey response measurement error limitations in response validity due to survey design problems probability sampling when researchers choose samples at random from the larger population question wording effects when the wording of the questions on a survey affects how individuals respond random digit dialing a survey method that selects people for involvement by generating telephone numbers at random response bias when respondents to a survey inaccurately report their true opinions for one reason or another sample a group selected by researchers to represent the characteristics of the entire population sampling errors errors that occur in a statistical analysis due to the unrepresentativeness of the sample selection bias when the method by which a sample is chosen causes the sample to be unrepresentative of the population being studied social desirability bias when respondents answer survey questions in a manner intended to cause them to be viewed favorably by others

Social Sciences