IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/28052.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Did states' motor voter programs help the Democrats?

Author

Listed:
  • Knack, Stephen
  • White, James

Abstract

The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 required all states to establish "motor voter," mail-in and agency registration procedures prior to the 1996 Presidential election. Using state-level data for the 1976-94 period on party registration, we analyze the party registration impacts of state programs that were precursors to the NVRA. "Active" motor voter programs roughly similar to those mandated by the NVRA are found to significantly increase the proportion of registrants on the rolls who are unaffiliated with either major party. Mail-in registration shows no impact on party registration, while agency registration significantly increases the Democratic share of the two-party registration total -- despite the fact that most agency programs in our sample period were far weaker than NVRA mandates.

Suggested Citation

  • Knack, Stephen & White, James, 1998. "Did states' motor voter programs help the Democrats?," MPRA Paper 28052, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:28052
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/28052/1/MPRA_paper_28052.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Giles, Micheal W. & Hertz, Kaenan, 1994. "Racial Threat and Partisan Identification," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 88(2), pages 317-326, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Richard J. Cebula & Garey C. Durden & Patricia E. Gaynor, 2008. "The Impact of the Repeat-Voting-Habit Persistence Phenomenon on the Probability of Voting in Presidential Elections," Southern Economic Journal, Southern Economic Association, vol. 75(2), pages 429-440, October.
    2. Richard J. Cebula & Garey C. Durden & Patricia E. Gaynor, 2008. "The Impact of the Repeat‐Voting‐Habit Persistence Phenomenon on the Probability of Voting in Presidential Elections," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 75(2), pages 429-440, August.
    3. Richard J. Cebula & Garey C. Durden & Patricia E. Gaynor, 2008. "The Impact of the Repeat-Voting-Habit Persistence Phenomenon on the Probability of Voting in Presidential Elections," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 75(2), pages 429-440, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michael Reksulak & Gökhan Karahan & William Shughart, 2007. "Flags of our fathers: Voting on Confederate symbols in the State of Georgia," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 131(1), pages 83-99, April.
    2. Seth C. McKee & Melanie J. Springer, 2015. "A Tale of “Two Souths”: White Voting Behavior in Contemporary Southern Elections," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 96(2), pages 588-607, June.
    3. Olga Orlanski & Günther G. Schulze, 2017. "The Determinants of Islamophobia - An Empirical Analysis of the Swiss Minaret Referendum," CESifo Working Paper Series 6741, CESifo.
    4. Francisco Herreros & Henar Criado, 2009. "Social Trust, Social Capital and Perceptions of Immigration," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 57(2), pages 337-355, June.
    5. Wendy K. Tam Cho & James G. Gimpel, 2010. "Rough Terrain: Spatial Variation in Campaign Contributing and Volunteerism," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(1), pages 74-89, January.
    6. Lauren M. McLaren, 2007. "Explaining Opposition to Turkish Membership of the EU," European Union Politics, , vol. 8(2), pages 251-278, June.
    7. Joshua N. Zingher & M. Steen Thomas, 2014. "The Spatial and Demographic Determinants of Racial Threat," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1137-1154, December.
    8. Christine H. Roch & Michael Rushton, 2008. "Racial Context and Voting over Taxes," Public Finance Review, , vol. 36(5), pages 614-634, September.
    9. Maureen A. Craig & Julian M. Rucker & Jennifer A. Richeson, 2018. "Racial and Political Dynamics of an Approaching “Majority-Minority†United States," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 677(1), pages 204-214, May.
    10. Dietlind Stolle & Stuart Soroka & Richard Johnston, 2008. "When Does Diversity Erode Trust? Neighborhood Diversity, Interpersonal Trust and the Mediating Effect of Social Interactions," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 56(1), pages 57-75, March.
    11. Jon Wakefield, 2004. "Ecological inference for 2 × 2 tables (with discussion)," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 167(3), pages 385-445, July.
    12. Christopher Mullins & Daniel Kavish, 2017. "Conceal Carry and Race: A Test of Minority Threat Theory in Law Generation," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 6(4), pages 1-11, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    voting; elections;

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:28052. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.