We test the possibility that political attitudes and behaviors are the result of both environmental and genetic factors. Employing standard methodological approaches in behavioral genetics—specifically, comparisons of the differential correlations of the attitudes of monozygotic twins and dizygotic twins—we analyze data drawn from a large sample of twins in the United States, supplemented with findings from twins in Australia. The results indicate that genetics plays an important role in shaping political attitudes and ideologies but a more modest role in forming party identification; as such, they call for finer distinctions in theorizing about the sources of political attitudes. We conclude by urging political scientists to incorporate genetic influences, specifically interactions between genetic heritability and social environment, into models of political attitude formation.

Those developing good urban governance indicators face at least four major challenges: concept definition, measure choice, sample choice and indicator evaluation. While data collection and manipulation are often of primary concern, normative considerations are at least equally important insofar as they establish which indicators best represent ‘good’ urban governance and the standards by which selected indicators should be judged. After arguing that citizen participation is inextricably linked to good urban governance, a process by which to build and evaluate relevant indicators is developed, using election data from Greater Vancouver. ‘Persistent losing’ is presented as the normative rule by which these data should be evaluated, which asserts that community members can reject electoral rules which impose on them, more than others, higher participation costs. Results from Greater Vancouver municipal elections demonstrate that there is a good chance that some community members residing in Greater Vancouver can be considered persistent losers and suggestions are made as to how this situation might be remedied.

This research note reports the results of an extension of Huckfeldt's study of the effects of neighborhood status on political participation. Using survey responses from the 1972 American Election Study, Huckfeldt's distinction between individually and socially based participation (1979), and composite measures of respondent and neighborhood social status, we find: (1) that neighborhood social status is related to socially based participation; but (2) that it is unrelated to individually based participatory acts; and (3) that the effect of neighborhood social status on participation is not consistent for respondents of different levels of social status.

This paper uses the consolidation of polling places in Los Angeles County during the October 2003 gubernatorial recall election to study the costs of voting. The consolidation afforded an opportunity to observe a natural experiment: those whose polling places were changed in the consolidation should be statistically comparable to those whose polling places are not changed. Thus, we may observe both groups' turnout rates and ascribe any differences to the treatment of the change in polling locus. We find evidence that changing polling place locations does decrease turnout overall by a substantial 1.5 percentage points; a drop in polling place turnout of 3.3 percentage points is offset by an increase in absentee voting of 1.8 percentage points.

This article analyzes factors shaping technological capabilities in USA and European countries, and shows that the differences between the two continents in this respect are much smaller than commonly assumed. The analysis demonstrates a tendency toward convergence in technological capabilities for the sample as a whole between 1998 and 2008. The results indicate that social capabilities, such as well-developed public knowledge infrastructure, an egalitarian distribution of income, a participatory democracy and prevalence of public safety condition the growth of technological capabilities. Possible effects of other factors, such as agglomeration, urbanization, industrial specialization, migration and knowledge spillovers are also considered.

The paradox between an individual's decisions to head to the polls and the absence of strictly rational arguments for this action has intrigued – and troubled – many scholars. The present article surveys various theoretical contributions to resolve this paradox of (not) voting. We assess these approaches based on their ability to explain a number of ‘stylised facts’ with respect to voter turnout. The main conclusion is that straying away from the behavioural assumptions of the Downsian model provides more realistic models and leads to promising predictions as to the individual's decision to head to the polls. Incorporating the role of (social) groups and learning in particular can be regarded as important strides towards understanding the individual's decision to cast a vote.

The decision to vote has puzzled scholars for decades. Theoretical models predict little or no variation in participation in large population elections and empirical models have typically accounted for only a relatively small portion of individual-level variance in turnout behavior. However, these models have not considered the hypothesis that part of the variation in voting behavior can be attributed to genetic effects. Matching public voter turnout records in Los Angeles to a twin registry, we study the heritability of political behavior in monozygotic and dizygotic twins. The results show that a significant proportion of the variation in voting turnout can be accounted for by genes. We also replicate these results with data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and show that they extend to a broad class of acts of political participation. These are the first findings to suggest that humans exhibit genetic variation in their tendency to participate in political activities.

The authors develop an agent‐based model of dynamic parties with social turnout built upon developments in different fields within social science. This model yields significant turnout, divergent platforms, and numerous results consistent with the rational calculus of voting model and the empirical literature on social turnout. In a simplified version of the model, the authors show how a local imitation structure inherently yields dynamics that encourage positive turnout. The model also generates new hypotheses about the importance of social networks and citizen‐party interactions.

Rational choice theories of electoral participation stress that an individual's decision to vote depends on her expected net benefit from doing so. If this instrumental motive is relevant, then turnout should be higher in elections where more is at stake. We test this prediction, by studying how turnout is affected by exogenous variation in governments' financial exibility to provide pork for their voters. By utilizing simultaneous elections for different offices, we identify a positive effect of election stakes on turnout.

Political scientists are often interested in estimating causal effects. Identification of causal estimates with observational data invariably requires strong untestable assumptions. Here, we outline a number of the assumptions used in the extant empirical literature. We argue that these assumptions require careful evaluation within the context of specific applications. To that end, we present an empirical case study on the effect of Election Day Registration (EDR) on turnout. We show how different identification assumptions lead to different answers, and that many of the standard assumptions used are implausible. Specifically, we show that EDR likely had negligible effects in the states of Minnesota and Wisconsin. We conclude with an argument for stronger research designs.

Part I. Basics: 1. The analysis of politics 2. Becoming a group: the constitution 3. Choosing in groups: an intuitive presentation 4. The formal analytics of choosing in groups Part II. Spatial Theory: 5. Politics as spatial competition 6. Two dimensions: elusive equilibrium Part III. Extensions: Collective Choice, Uncertainty, and Collective Action: 7. The collective-choice problem: impossibility 8. Uncertainty 9. Voting as a collective-action problem Solutions to selected problems.

One of the ironies of the behavioral movement in political science is that scholars following in its wake were more likely to study attitudes than behavior. Nonetheless, over the past several decades political scientists have produced an abundant body of research on mass political participation (for recent reviews of this research, see Conway 1989; Crotty 1991). In this essay, I provide nonspecialists a substantive overview of the major theoretical models and empirical findings of this literature I also focus part of the discussion on the assumptions and applicability of several theoretical orientations evidenced in the subfield today and propose a brief research agenda for the subfield; scholars specializing in the subfield will find these points of particular interest. Three broad conclusions drawn from my review of the literature structure the proposed research agenda presented in the concluding section. First, the discipline broadly accepts as a basic model of participation the "standard socioeconomic model" which emphasizes individuals' socioeconomic status and civic orientations as predictors of participation. Yet a growing body of research emphasizes the importance of mobilization as a major factor influencing participation in U.S. politics. Hence, mobilization factors simply cannot be ignored if we are to develop a complete understanding of who participates and why they do so. Second, political participation is typically equated with voter turnout, although citizens participate in a variety of political activities, with varying levels of involvement over time. We will improve the theoretical rigor of our models of participation by studying this variety of political acts and how it changes over time; focusing on voter turnout alone-as discrete acts structured by the electoral calendar-offers no such advantage. We must therefore shift the focus of our study to alternative forms of participation.

Objective: What can machine learning tell us about who voted in 2016? There are numerous competing voter turnout theories, and a large number of covariates are required to assess which theory best explains turnout. This article is a proof of concept that machine learning can help overcome this curse of dimensionality and reveal important insights in studies of political phenomena. Methods: We use fuzzy forests, an extension of random forests, to screen variables for a parsimonious but accurate prediction. Fuzzy forests achieve accurate variable importance measures in the face of high‐dimensional and highly correlated data. The data that we use are from the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. Results: Fuzzy forests chose only a small number of covariates as major correlates of 2016 turnout and still boasted high predictive performance. Conclusion: Our analysis provides three important conclusions about turnout in 2016: registration and voting procedures were important, political issues were important (especially Obamacare, climate change, and fiscal policy), but few demographic variables other than age were strongly associated with turnout. We conclude that fuzzy forests is an important methodology for studying overdetermined questions in social sciences.

In this study, I evaluate the merits of the structural-legal theory of voter participation in light of the most recent voting reforms instituted in the states. Specifically, I determine the extent to which alternative voting methods such as unrestricted absentee voting, in-person early voting, election-day registration, and motor vehicle and mail registration actually increase turnout and attract participants to the electoral arena by making voting more convenient and reducing the “costs” of participation. In doing so, voter turnout is examined in federal elections across the 50 states and over the time period 1972-2002. Apooled cross-sectional time-series model with fixed effects is used to explore the aggregate, state-level data. Overall, the results reveal the relative weakness of the structural-legal theory with regard to explaining electoral participation and show that voter turnout in U.S. elections may be less about convenience and costs than expected.

In recent years many states have reformed (or considered reforming) their electoral administration to increase turnout. This article uses the existing international literature on electoral administration and voter turnout to construct a continuum on which electoral procedures can be classified according to whether they have ‘restrictive’ or ‘expansive’ effects on participation. This continuum is argued to be a useful heuristic device for political scientists and policy‐makers seeking to identify the likely effects of reforms and can help to structure future debate and research.

In democratic societies there is a tension between maximizing ballot access and minimizing voter fraud. Since the 2000 presidential election, this tension has been central to discussions about election reform at the national, state, and local level. We examine this tension by focusing on the implementation of voter identification laws in one state that has experienced significant issues in recent elections, and that is currently implementing election reform: New Mexico. We hypothesize that Hispanic voters are more likely to show some form of identification than other types of voters. Using a voter data set from New Mexico's First Congressional District in the 2006 election, we find that Hispanic, male and Election Day voters are more likely to show some form of identification than non-Hispanic, female and early voters. In addition, using an overlapping study of Bernalillo County 2006 poll workers, which almost entirely overlaps with the First Congressional District, we find no evidence that differences in poll worker partisanship or ethnicity produce differences in voter identification procedures. Our findings suggest that broad voter identification laws, which may be applied unequally, may be perceived as discriminatory.

In U.S. presidential elections, voter turnout dropped about 14% between 1960 and 1988. This drop in turnout has inspired many reform proposals to increase turnout. One such proposal allows voters to register on election day. Prior research has estimated the impact of day of registration voting using multivariate models with the individual as a unit of analysis; however, day of registration voting is no longer a hypothetical reform since it has been implemented in three states. A pre-post quasi-experimental design revealed that states changing their state laws to allow day of registration voting significantly increased their turnout compared to a control group of states that did not allow day of registration voting. The author estimated that a nationwide law allowing day of registration voting would increase turnout by 5%. The increased electoral participation found for day of registraton voting held for both presidential elections and midterm elections. However, the turnout increase for presidential elections was more stable across different elections than the turnout increase for midterm elections.

I consider the role of unions in fostering electoral participation in the U.S. Using aggregate and individual data, I argue that turnout varies directly with the organizational strength of unions, not only through their ability to mobilize their own members per se, but also, and more importantly, through their ability to affect the rate of participation of voters in general. My results imply that unionization helps explain much of the post-1960 decline in voter turnout. The magnitude of the relationship is demonstrated to rival that of more conventional determinants of voter turnout such as education.

Here b denotes the benefit from having your .candidate win, p the probability of your vote deciding the outcome, and c the costs of voting (Downs 1957). By and large this formulation has considered b and c at the systemic level; ease of registration, competitiveness of the election, literacy requirements and many similar factors have all been used to assess levels of turnout (Rosenstone and Wolfinger 1978; Powell 1980). In terms of this literature, then, c refers to a set of costs imposed on all voters within a given political jurisdiction. Once a voter has arrived at the voting booth the costs of actually marking a ballot would seem to be trivial relative to the costs of actually turning out to vote. This last point, however, is not true for all types of ballot. Many ballots require much more of voters than simply turning out and marking a single preference for one office. Under preferential systems or where a large number of elective offices and/or propositions are on the ballot, the decisions facing voters are quite complex. Between 1974 and 1988, for example, in addition to a wide range of elective offices, Californians faced an average of 13 propositions at each election. As can be seen from Figure 1, California's voters express some dissatisfaction with this process. Nearly one-third of voters gave responses which suggested that propositions made too many demands upon them. Responses which noted that there were too many propositions or that they were too confusing (i.e., that too many demands were being made) far outweighed responses which expressed a lack of faith in the efficacy of the proposition process (e.g. that special interests dominate the process). The question here is whether we can represent such

Fowler, Baker, and Dawes (2008) recently showed in two independent studies of twins that voter turnout has very high heritability. Here we investigate two specific genes that may contribute to variation in voting behavior. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we show that individuals with a polymorphism of the MAOA gene are significantly more likely to have voted in the 2004 presidential election. We also find evidence that an association between a polymorphism of the 5HTT gene and voter turnout is moderated by religious attendance. These are the first results ever to link specific genes to political behavior.