Who Participates in Local Elections? Evidence From Current Population Survey

Abstract

Local elections have had historically low participation rates in the United States. Knowing who participates in local elections is important because it will allow democracy scholars to better understand whose interests are being represented in local governing bodies and explain how and why local governing bodies make the decisions they do. I use binary logistic regression analysis on survey responses from the U.S. Census Bureau’s September 2021 Current Population Survey Volunteering and Civic Life Supplement to analyze self-reported participation regarding demographic characteristics and state-level election policies. This paper finds that age, gender, education, race, homeownership, and family income are all important predictors of participation in local elections. Likewise, this paper finds that all mail elections and Same Day Registration have strong, statistically significant effects on local-level voter turnout, voter ID laws have a counterintuitive effect, the length of early voting periods has a small but statistically significant effect, and Automatic Voter Registration and direct democracy processes have no statistically significant effects on participation in local elections.