The Effect of Randomized School Admissions on Voter Participation

Working Paper No. 11794 There is little causal evidence on the effect of economic and policy outcomes on voting behavior. This paper uses randomized outcomes from a school choice lottery to examine if lottery outcomes affect voting behavior in a school board election. We show that losing the lottery...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:NBER Working Paper Series 2005-11, p.11794
Main Authors: Hastings, Justine S, Kane, Thomas J, Staiger, Douglas O, Weinstein, Jeffrey M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Economic theory
Economics
Election results
Local elections
Participation
School admissions
School boards
School choice
School districts
Students
Voter behavior
Voters
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Summary:Working Paper No. 11794 There is little causal evidence on the effect of economic and policy outcomes on voting behavior. This paper uses randomized outcomes from a school choice lottery to examine if lottery outcomes affect voting behavior in a school board election. We show that losing the lottery has no significant impact on overall voting behavior; however, among white families, those with above median income and prior voting history, lottery losers were significantly more likely to vote than lottery winners. Using propensity score methods, we compare the voting of lottery participants to similar families who did not participate in the lottery. We find that losing the school choice lottery caused an increase in voter turnout among whites, while winning the lottery had no effect relative to non-participants. Overall, our empirical results lend support to models of expressive and retrospective voting, where likely voters are motivated to vote by past negative policy outcomes.
ISSN:0898-2937
DOI:10.3386/w11794