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Family Structure and Voter Turnout
Nicholas H. Wolfinger and Raymond E. Wolfinger
INTRODUCTION
Soccer moms and NASCAR dads, staple characters in journalists’ stories about past and
future elections, are not even bit players when social scientists describe who is likely to vote.
Analyzing citizens one by one, researchers have concluded that who votes is explained largely by a
triad of individual characteristics: education, age, and residential stability; the more of each, the
greater the probability of voting (R. Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980; Squire, R. Wolfinger, and
Glass 1987; Rosenstone and Hansen 1993). Although not disputing this conventional wisdom, we
add a fourth variable to be treated as a significant predictor of turnout: each person’s family
structure, defined as marital status and the presence of children in the household.
This connection is noteworthy for several reasons. First, sociologists have established that
family structure has important implications for many aspects of well-being (McKeever and N.
Wolfinger 2001, 2005a,b; Waite and Gallagher 2000; N. Wolfinger 2005). We inquire whether
these implications extend to electoral participation. Second, we find that vulnerable social
groups—notably single parents—are light voters and therefore may be proportionately
underrepresented in policy making. Third, married people are more inclined than other citizens to
vote for Republican presidential candidates (Miller and Shanks 1996, pp. 263, 534-535; New York
Times 2004).
Convention