400 million voting records show profound racial and geographic disparities in voter turnout in the United States.

ABSTRACT: One of the core tenets of a well-functioning representative democracy is that the people who vote to elect government officials are representative of the public. Here we reinforce the idea that reality is far from this lofty ideal. We document the extent and nature of inequities in voter participation in the United States with a level of granularity and precision that previous research has not afforded. To do so, we use a unique nationwide dataset of approximately 400 million validated voting records across multiple election cycles. With this novel dataset, we document large and persistent gaps in voter turnout by race, age, and political affiliation. Minority citizens, young people, and those who support the Democratic Party are much less likely to vote than whites, older citizens, and Re

SUBMITTER: Barber M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9177044 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature