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Mixed partisan households and electoral participation in the United States

Research suggests that partisans are increasingly avoiding members of the other party—in their choice of neighborhood, social network, even their spouse. Leveraging a national database of voter registration records, we analyze 18 million households in the U.S. We find that three in ten married coupl...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Hersh, Eitan, Ghitza, Yair
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6179382/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30303974
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0203997
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author Hersh, Eitan
Ghitza, Yair
author_facet Hersh, Eitan
Ghitza, Yair
author_sort Hersh, Eitan
collection PubMed
description Research suggests that partisans are increasingly avoiding members of the other party—in their choice of neighborhood, social network, even their spouse. Leveraging a national database of voter registration records, we analyze 18 million households in the U.S. We find that three in ten married couples have mismatched party affiliations. We observe the relationship between inter-party marriage and gender, age, and geography. We discuss how the findings bear on key questions of political behavior in the US. Then, we test whether mixed-partisan couples participate less actively in politics. We find that voter turnout is correlated with the party of one’s spouse. A partisan who is married to a co-partisan is more likely to vote. This phenomenon is especially pronounced for partisans in closed primaries, elections in which non-partisan registered spouses are ineligible to participate.
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spelling pubmed-61793822018-10-26 Mixed partisan households and electoral participation in the United States Hersh, Eitan Ghitza, Yair PLoS One Research Article Research suggests that partisans are increasingly avoiding members of the other party—in their choice of neighborhood, social network, even their spouse. Leveraging a national database of voter registration records, we analyze 18 million households in the U.S. We find that three in ten married couples have mismatched party affiliations. We observe the relationship between inter-party marriage and gender, age, and geography. We discuss how the findings bear on key questions of political behavior in the US. Then, we test whether mixed-partisan couples participate less actively in politics. We find that voter turnout is correlated with the party of one’s spouse. A partisan who is married to a co-partisan is more likely to vote. This phenomenon is especially pronounced for partisans in closed primaries, elections in which non-partisan registered spouses are ineligible to participate. Public Library of Science 2018-10-10 /pmc/articles/PMC6179382/ /pubmed/30303974 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0203997 Text en © 2018 Hersh, Ghitza http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Hersh, Eitan
Ghitza, Yair
Mixed partisan households and electoral participation in the United States
title Mixed partisan households and electoral participation in the United States
title_full Mixed partisan households and electoral participation in the United States
title_fullStr Mixed partisan households and electoral participation in the United States
title_full_unstemmed Mixed partisan households and electoral participation in the United States
title_short Mixed partisan households and electoral participation in the United States
title_sort mixed partisan households and electoral participation in the united states
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6179382/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30303974
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0203997
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