Polling place changes and political participation: evidence from North Carolina presidential elections, 2008–2016
Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>How do changes in Election Day polling place
locations affect voter turnout? We study the behavior of more than 2 million eligible
voters across three closely-contested presidential elections (2008–2016) in the swing
state of North Carolina. Leveraging within-voter variation in polling place location
change over time, we demonstrate that polling place changes reduce Election Day voting
on average statewide. However, this effect is almost completely offset by substitution
into early voting, suggesting that voters, on average, respond to a change in their
polling place by choosing to vote early. While there is heterogeneity in these effects
by the distance of the polling place change and the race of the affected voter, the
fully offsetting substitution into early voting still obtains. We theorize this is
because voters whose polling places change location receive notification mailers,
offsetting search costs and priming them to think about the election before election
day, driving early voting.</jats:p>
Type
Journal articlePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/24309Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1017/psrm.2020.43Publication Info
Clinton, Joshua D; Eubank, Nick; Fresh, Adriane; & Shepherd, Michael E (2021). Polling place changes and political participation: evidence from North Carolina presidential
elections, 2008–2016. Political Science Research and Methods, 9(4). pp. 800-817. 10.1017/psrm.2020.43. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/24309.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Nicholas Eubank
Assistant Research Professor of Political Science
I am an Assistant Research Professor in the Duke Social Science Research Institute
(SSRI), where I study a range of topics related to political accountability, include
gerrymandering, social networks, election administration and race and incarceration.
Adriane Stewart Fresh
Assistant Professor of Political Science
I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Duke University. I received my
PhD in Political Science at Stanford in 2017, and my MA in Economics at Stanford in
2015. Prior to arriving at Duke, I was a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for the
Study of Democratic Institutions at Vanderbilt University.
I study the political economy of development. My research concerns how elites respond
to dramatic economic and institutional changes. I'm interested in the effects of
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