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You Want to Vote Where Everybody Knows Your Name:
Anonymity, Expressive Engagement, and Turnout Among Young Adults*
ABSTRACT
Past research has suggested that voting is a habit that is learned (or not) during a formative
period in the life of young adults. Learning to vote is also costly, and the costs paid by young
adults depend in part on the situation in which they find themselves during the critical first few
elections at which they are old enough to vote. The suggestion has been made that what matters
primarily is the extent to which young adults are engaged in social networks that will mobilize
them politically and give their votes value. This paper develops the theoretical basis for the
conjecture and designs an indirect test that investigates the effect of length of residence on the
turnout of young adults. The test is performed in the context of a model that gives primacy to the
role of new electoral cohorts in effecting turnout change – a model that focuses on the motiva-
tions that young adults have to turn out, including motivations deriving from the nature of the
electoral contest, using survey and aggregate data for U.S. presidential elections since 1964. The
findings show that individuals respond to variations in the competitiveness of elections and also
to particularities of their social situation that are presumed to make them more or less susceptible
to the mobilizing influence of family, friends, and acquaintances.
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• Thanks to Gary King for supplying me with district-level data for elections in the early 1990s, to Cees van der
Eijk for helpful comments, and to Diane Garner for suggesting the title.
Convention