IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/amposc/v60y2016i2p364-382.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Making Young Voters: The Impact of Preregistration on Youth Turnout

Author

Listed:
  • John B. Holbein
  • D. Sunshine Hillygus

Abstract

Recent research has cast doubt on the potential for various electoral reforms to increase voter turnout. In this article, we examine the effectiveness of preregistration laws, which allow young citizens to register before being eligible to vote. We use two empirical approaches to evaluate the impact of preregistration on youth turnout. First, we implement difference‐in‐difference and lag models to bracket the causal effect of preregistration implementation using the 2000–2012 Current Population Survey. Second, focusing on the state of Florida, we leverage a discontinuity based on date of birth to estimate the effect of increased preregistration exposure on the turnout of young registrants. In both approaches, we find preregistration increases voter turnout, with equal effectiveness for various subgroups in the electorate. More broadly, observed patterns suggest that campaign context and supporting institutions may help to determine when and if electoral reforms are effective.

Suggested Citation

  • John B. Holbein & D. Sunshine Hillygus, 2016. "Making Young Voters: The Impact of Preregistration on Youth Turnout," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 60(2), pages 364-382, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:amposc:v:60:y:2016:i:2:p:364-382
    DOI: 10.1111/ajps.12177
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12177
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ajps.12177?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Stommes, Drew & Aronow, P. M. & Sävje, Fredrik, 2023. "On the Reliability of Published Findings Using the Regression Discontinuity Design in Political Science," I4R Discussion Paper Series 22, The Institute for Replication (I4R).
    2. Jennifer Oser & Marc Hooghe & Zsuzsa Bakk & Roberto Mari, 2023. "Changing citizenship norms among adolescents, 1999-2009-2016: A two-step latent class approach with measurement equivalence testing," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 57(5), pages 4915-4933, October.
    3. Niklas Potrafke & Felix Roesel, 2020. "Opening hours of polling stations and voter turnout: Evidence from a natural experiment," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 133-163, January.
    4. Claire McKay Bowen & Fang Liu & Bingyue Su, 2021. "Differentially private data release via statistical election to partition sequentially," METRON, Springer;Sapienza Università di Roma, vol. 79(1), pages 1-31, April.
    5. Angela Cools, 2020. "Parents, Infants, and Voter Turnout," Working Papers 20-04, Davidson College, Department of Economics.
    6. Piatak Jaclyn, 2023. "Do Sociocultural Factors Drive Civic Engagement? An Examination of Political Interest and Religious Attendance," Nonprofit Policy Forum, De Gruyter, vol. 14(2), pages 185-204, April.
    7. Tong Wang & Cynthia Rudin, 2022. "Causal Rule Sets for Identifying Subgroups with Enhanced Treatment Effects," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 34(3), pages 1626-1643, May.
    8. Yingying Dong & Michal Kolesár, 2023. "When can we ignore measurement error in the running variable?," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(5), pages 735-750, August.

    More about this item

    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:wly:amposc:v:60:y:2016:i:2:p:364-382. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1540-5907 .

    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.