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Violence and Voting in the United States: How School Shootings Affect Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2021

LAURA GARCÍA-MONTOYA Open the ORCID record for LAURA GARCÍA-MONTOYA [Opens in a new window] ,
ANA ARJONA Open the ORCID record for ANA ARJONA [Opens in a new window]  and
MATTHEW LACOMBE Open the ORCID record for MATTHEW LACOMBE [Opens in a new window]
LAURA GARCÍA-MONTOYA*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame, United States
ANA ARJONA*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, United States
MATTHEW LACOMBE*
Affiliation:
Barnard College, Columbia University, United States
*
Laura García-Montoya, Visiting Fellow, Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame, United States, [email protected].
Ana Arjona, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Northwestern University, United States, [email protected].
Matthew Lacombe, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Barnard College, Columbia University, United States, [email protected].
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Abstract

How do citizens change their voting decisions after their communities experience catastrophic violent events? The literature on the behavioral effects of violence, on the one hand, and on political behavior, on the other, suggest different answers to this question. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we investigate the influence of indiscriminate, rampage-style school shootings on both voter turnout levels and the relative electoral support for the Democratic and Republican Parties at the county level in US presidential elections (1980–2016). We find that although voter turnout does not change, the vote share of the Democratic Party increases by an average of nearly 5 percentage points in counties that experienced shootings—a remarkable shift in an age of partisan polarization and close presidential elections. These results show that school shootings do have important electoral consequences and bring to the fore the need to further examine the effects of different forms of violence on political behavior.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 116 , Issue 3 , August 2022 , pp. 807 - 826
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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