Low Voter Stereotypes

Even after the passing of the Fifteenth Amendment, African Americans were “disenfranchised in the South by intimidation and electoral trickery, including whites-only primaries, rigged literacy tests, and poll taxes” (Patterson 2011, p. 180). The Freedom Riders rode through the South, enduring harassment and imprisonment to encourage other African Americans to vote. Voter turnout in African American communities is greatly encouraged. Personally, coming from an African American family, I was strongly encouraged by my parents and grandparents to vote when I was of legal age. My family instilled the importance of voting in me at a very young age. Although voter turnout among African Americans is still fairly low, in the 2008 presidential election African Americans had the second highest voter turnout, behind non-Hispanic Caucasians (African Americans, n.d.). Race can influence voter turnout because with African Americans specifically, although rates are getting better, they are still not high.

In the last half of the twentieth century, voter turnout in federal elections has declined. During the same period, voter turnout has been higher in presidential elections than in midterm elections.

During the 2012 presidential elections, many of the vote turnout rates revealed that the minority vote was the most decisive and important vote for the election. In fact, the minority vote, in 2012, was accredited for Barrack Obama’s presidential incumbency. An example analysis of the aforementioned statement was shown in the Minority Turnout Determined the 2012 Election article by William H. Frey. In his article Frey reports that “[the] increased minority turnout was indeed responsible for Obama’s win in the 2012 election… during this period, the (typically Democratic leaning) combined Black and Hispanic electorate rose to approach nearly quarter of eligible voters” (The Brookings Institution). Frey’s research helps illustrate how crucial,

In every election, the major parties are trying to figure out how to win the election by ascertaining which voters or groups of voters support or oppose their candidate. One of the strategies used to win an election is the use of voter mobilization or conversely demobilization. It is general knowledge that a part of the Democratic party 's tactics to win elections is simply to get their supporters mobilized and to get out the vote, while the Republicans realize their "leverage goes up as the voting population goes down" (Hicks et al. 19). The product of these different strategies results in the Democrats trying to get: more people registered, more people to vote in the early election, more people to vote absentee or mail in votes, and more people to the polls on the day of the election. Conversely, Republicans want to suppress votes from traditionally Democratic voters: minorities, the poor, students, and the elderly, so they use the strategies that will reduce the chances of the Democrats from casting their vote by stricter voter identification laws, shorter registration hours, no same day of election registration, and reduced early voting periods.

Adults, Six Vote and Four Don’t. What Separates Them?”,digs in to understand the demographics of voter turnout. Though it is a fact that Hispanics and lower classes don’t vote as much, however there are many demographics that don’t vote overall. This article comes to the conclusion that individuals are motivation for different things, and their overall opinion is that the richer, older, and more educated the citizen is, the more likely they are to vote. In the 2012 election, many white people did vote to the ones that did not vote. However, once we start getting down to the African Americans, Hispanic, and Asian, the voting seems to even out, for the voters and non-voters. Since African Americans vote so much, with the significantly smaller population than whites, they are more likely to vote 1.5 times more than whites. African Americans started to vote, in the 1990s when Barack Obama and Jesse Jackson urged more African Americans to vote. They also became true of their race, when 90 percent of them voted for Barack Obama. When it comes to income, the less you make, the less you vote. Hispanics as voters are trickier than the other races. Obstacles prevent, and also make it challenging to

It's September now, in a midterm year, and election season is going to suck up a lot of national attention over the next two months. Hot election topics will include voter IDs and voter suppression: In August, a federal judge declined to issue an injunction against a North Carolina law that requires voters to show photo IDs; this week a federal trial began of a voter ID law in Texas. The DOJ believes that requiring people to have photo IDs is an unreasonably onerous burden. This is a good time, then, to talk about voter suppression. By and large, 18-year-olds know nothing and shouldn't be voting. Let's suppress them. Of course you can produce anecdotal evidence to the contrary, evidence of 18-year-olds who don't know nothing. I'm sure everyoe

The issue of race will have a significant effect on the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have vastly different demographics in voting support, a much of that difference lies between different ethnic/racial groups. According to Pew Research, a recent polls shows that white voters are expected to vote in favor of Donald Trump at a 45% rate, as opposed to 33% of the white electorate supporting Clinton. The White vote has traditionally been in favor of the Republican nominee, and in 2012 the white electorate voted in favor of Mitt Romney at a 20-point margin (Pew). However, the divide between Clinton and Trump in regards to the Black voting population is staggering. According to the same Pew poll, Hillary

Partisanship is prejudice in favor of a particular cause, or being biased. Having or being prejudiced means that you have preconceived opinions that are not based on reason or actual experience. These preconceived opinions can lead to the harm of others emotions, or physical bodies. Being prejudiced hurts innocent people. In The One and Only Genuine Original Family Band, Grandpa’s prejudice against Republicans helps to drive Mr. Carder and Alice apart. “He wasn’t too bright, even as a boy. Then he growed up to be a gosh darned republican” (Grandpa) In my opinion, partisanship can be just as hurtful as prejudice. In fact, it is a form of prejudice. It states that right in the definition!

The decline in both education and the amount of voters in elections is starting to affect the political world. Looking for the explanation of why the voter turnouts are so low and how it can be changed will be examined within this

They found that as a precinct has more renters or more non-white voters, the turnout under VBM elections decreases, although at different rates for different election types. Having higher rates of college graduates in a precinct is correlated to higher turnout rates under VBM. This study was one of the first to consider who VBM might benefit, as opposed to the less complex question of increasing general turnout. While this research is indicative of who VBM might benefit, it relies on precinct-level data, and cannot effectively determine if individuals voting behavior changed under VBM. Berinsky, Burns, and Traugott (2001) extended this line of research on demographic effects by looking to the individual voting level to determine who VBM benefitted

The connection between weather and voter habit has become a well-established theme among media outlets, political figures, and academics. However, until Brad T. Gomez, Thomas G. Hansford, and George A. Krause’s study, there was not substantial research to neither endorse nor refute this embraced the concept. In “The Republicans Should Pray for Rain: Weather, Turnout, and Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections” the authors sought to answer a two part research question. The first part of this question asks: Is voter participation affected by precipitation (be it in the form of rain or snow)? The second half addresses the influence weather has on a voter’s ballot selection. In their study the dependent variable is voter turnout and selection, which they choose to measure at a county level; the independent variable is the amount of rain or snow on Election Day.

The turnout rates between constitutional, governor, and presidential elections has huge difference. “In 2004 presidential election, the peoples’ engagement was 56.57%, in 2008 it went up to 59.50%, in 2012 it dropped down again 58.58%, and in 2016 it went up again

The VAP and VEP turnout rates are both relevant. However, while VAP is great for collecting data, VEP is more relevant in constructing turnout measures. For the reason that, VAP includes in the denominator ineligible felons and non-citizens, which happen to have increased in numbers from 1980-2008. Therefore, in order to develop accurate, and less biased measurements, the VEP measure is better than its VAP counterpart because it doesn’t include the felons and non-citizens. Most importantly, VEP turnout is very effective in finding out the turnouts for both presidential and midterm

Exactly, that's why I noted politicians don't seem to be able to change the direction to the majorities satisfaction. Their hands are tied somewhat and people forget that. It takes a special person to be in politics and hold tight to the goal without being brought down by the negativity (shadow) exhibited by media and the people. We pass judgement before looking at it from the eyes of the beholder. We lack compassion and set aside facts to satisfy this shadow discussed in the article. At least the president has exhibited some maturity and comic relief in the face of it.

One of the interesting findings of this project concerned the role of turnout in affecting party strength. There are several ways forward. For example, it is possible that turnout drove changes outside of the South. This seems unlikely because the South had such anemic