Gender, Race, Age, and Voting: a Research Note

In this brief analysis, we use a new dataset of two million voter registration records to demonstrate that gender, race, and age do not correlate with political participa- tion in ways that previous research has shown. Among Blacks and Latinos, women participate at vastly higher rates than men; many Blacks participate at higher rates than Whites; and the relationship between age and participation is both not linear and varies by race and gender. Survey research is unable to capture the true rela- tionship between demographics and participation, on account of survey bias and, more importantly, the non-linearity of eects. As a result, theories of participation, like the dominant resources-based models, have been built on faulty premises and tested with inadequate data. Our evidence calls for a renewed eort to understand election participation by utilizing large datasets, by being attentive to linearity assumptions, and by returning to theory.