Sarah Anzia, UC Berkeley – AP Workshop

DateOctober 17, 2016

Time12:30pm to 2:00pm

Location
4357 Bunche Hall 

Contact

Abstract:The idea that public policy is biased in favor of groups of citizens who vote at high rates is central to scholarship on American politics, but few studies have actually tested it. In this paper, I carry out a test of the expected turnout-policy connection that leverages variation in the turnout of senior citizens in city elections and the senior-friendliness of city transportation policy. Surprisingly, my results do not support the conventional wisdom: I find no significant association between the percentage of seniors in the electorate and better transportation for seniors. I then use this null finding as a launching pad for developing expectations about the conditions under which a group of citizens will influence policy. In a second round of empirical tests, I find support for those expectations: transportation policies are friendlier to seniors in cities where senior citizens are a cohesive, politically-focused group, and where they engage in political activities other than voting.

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