TY - JOUR
T1 - It's Not Just What You Have, but Who You Know
T2 - Networks, Social Proximity to Elites, and Voting in State and Local Elections
AU - Pietryka, Matthew T.
AU - DeBats, Donald A.
PY - 2017/5
Y1 - 2017/5
N2 - Individual-level studies of electoral turnout and vote choice have focused largely on personal attributes as explanatory variables. We argue that scholars should also consider the social network in which individuals are embedded, which may influence voting through variation in individuals' social proximity to elites. Our analysis rests on newly discovered historical records revealing the individual votes of all electors in the 1859 statewide elections in Alexandria, Virginia and the 1874 municipal elections in Newport, Kentucky, paired with archival work identifying the social relations of the cities' populations. We also replicate our core findings using survey data from a modern municipal election. We show that individuals more socially proximate to elites turn out at a higher rate and individuals more socially proximate to a given political party's elites vote disproportionately for that party. These results suggest an overlooked social component of voting and provide a rare nineteenth-century test of modern voting theories.
AB - Individual-level studies of electoral turnout and vote choice have focused largely on personal attributes as explanatory variables. We argue that scholars should also consider the social network in which individuals are embedded, which may influence voting through variation in individuals' social proximity to elites. Our analysis rests on newly discovered historical records revealing the individual votes of all electors in the 1859 statewide elections in Alexandria, Virginia and the 1874 municipal elections in Newport, Kentucky, paired with archival work identifying the social relations of the cities' populations. We also replicate our core findings using survey data from a modern municipal election. We show that individuals more socially proximate to elites turn out at a higher rate and individuals more socially proximate to a given political party's elites vote disproportionately for that party. These results suggest an overlooked social component of voting and provide a rare nineteenth-century test of modern voting theories.
KW - Elections
KW - Electoral turnout
KW - Elites
KW - Voting
KW - Socioeconomic aspects
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85013491988&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/S000305541600071X
DO - 10.1017/S000305541600071X
M3 - Article
VL - 111
SP - 360
EP - 378
JO - AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW
JF - AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW
SN - 0003-0554
IS - 2
ER -