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Political Behavior

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01.12.2008 | Original Paper

Political Socialization in Context: The Effect of Political Competition on Youth Voter Turnout

verfasst von: Julianna Sandell Pacheco

Erschienen in: Political Behavior | Ausgabe 4/2008

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Abstract

Adolescence is an important time for political development. Researchers have concentrated on the family as the sole socializing agent of youths; however, as Campbell, Gimpel, and others have shown, political contexts also matter for young citizens. Using the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, the Record of American Democracy, and election outcomes data, I find that adolescents who resided in politically competitive locales or states have higher turnout years later compared to those who lived in uncompetitive contexts. These effects are not mediated by the home political environment and act through political socialization. This research adds to a growing literature on the influence of political contexts on political behavior and is the first to explore how political competition during adolescence influences voter turnout in young adulthood.

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I also consider an interaction between political competition and the home political environment on voter turnout. However, the hypotheses concerning the direction of the interaction effect are unclear. Moreover, in models not reported here, interaction variables were not statistically significant at conventional levels.

Due to the nature of the ROAD dataset, however, the measurement of local political competition corresponds to different levels of aggregation depending on the state. “Local” corresponds to counties for 1,520 respondents, minor civil divisions for 2,962 respondents, minor civil division groups for 4,510 respondents, and census block groups for 1,109 respondents (see Appendix for more details).

Factor analyses from polychoric correlations provide evidence of unidimensionality. The first eigenvector explains 61% of the variance, the second factor has a eigenvalue of .56 (indicating one factor), and the factor loadings are uniformly high (.74–.88). Thus, there is no methodological evidence that presidential elections are distinct from other elections. Reliability is also high, as indicated by a Cronbach’s alpha of .88.

Campbell (2006) argues that political competition has a curvilinear relationship on turnout. I measured political competition as suggested by Campbell (2006) by splitting the variables into two measures and including the separate measures in the analyses, but the analyses remain essentially unchanged. Hence, I conclude that political competition has a linear effect on youth voter turnout levels.

Percent foreign born is highly correlated with percent Hispanic (r = .73). Community income is highly correlated with community education (r = .76). I only include percent foreign born and community education as control variables in order to prevent multicollinearity. Models that include percent Hispanic instead of percent Black are essentially unchanged as are models that include community income instead of community education.

As suggested by a previous reviewer, a measure of urbanicity in 1988 was also added to the models; however, it was not statistically significant using conventional levels.

The positive, significant results of the local political competition remain unchanged when analyses are split based on the exact level of aggregation (county, minor civil division, minor civil division group, and census blockgroup).

There is measurement error with the 1996 state political competition variable because it is merged with the respondent’s state of residence as reported in 1994. In the event that an individual’s state of residence in 1994 was missing (as is the case with several respondents who did not attend post-secondary education), the 1996 political competition measure was merged using the 1992 state as reported by respondents.

Predicted probabilities for political competition presented in Table 2 should be taken with caution. The political competition variables are skewed upward, as shown by their mean values. For state political competition, 90% of the observations are higher than .70. For local political competition, 90% of the observations are above .53. Very few observations are actually at the minimum value (0) for the political competition measures.

As in Table 2, predicted probabilities from Table 3 should be taken with caution. See previous footnote.

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Titel: Political Socialization in Context: The Effect of Political Competition on Youth Voter Turnout
verfasst von: Julianna Sandell Pacheco
Publikationsdatum: 01.12.2008
Verlag: Springer US
Erschienen in: Political Behavior / Ausgabe 4/2008
Print ISSN: 0190-9320
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-6687
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-008-9057-x

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