Voter Turnout Research History Research Paper Essay (Research Paper Sample)

The Influence of Having to Work on Youth Voting Habits
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The Influence of Having to Work on Youth Voting Habits
Abstract
The study examined the correlation between having to work and voting habits among the youth. For this study, a survey targeted to potential voters in Baltimore MD was carried out with the number of participants being 150. The nature of the survey was to inquire from individuals within the age bracket of 18-29 if having to attend school influenced their participation in the midterm as well as general election. The 150 members involved in the survey answered questions in a nominal scale. For this study specifically, participants were selected randomly and had to be residents of Baltimore city. They were recruited using the mechanical Turk method. Expected outcome is that being committed to work may influence and individual’s participation in the political process. The findings of this study are significant because politicians locally situated in Baltimore will apply them in enacting policies that will accommodate this affected group in particular.
Introduction
People are faced with stress daily because they have to deal with personal problems as well as stressful circumstances in their lives. However, despite all these problems, the norms in civil society demand that they participate in the political process because an effective democracy is dependent on citizen participation ADDIN CSL_CITATION {"citationItems":[{"id":"ITEM-1","itemData":{"DOI":"10.1111/pops.12344","ISSN":"14679221","abstract":"While everyone deals with stressful situations on a daily basis, individuals have different behavioral reactions to that stress. We argue that life stress also affects individuals’ political behavior, but this effect is contingent on their past political involvement. While individuals familiar with and engaged in the political process are unaffected when confronted with stress in life, individuals who are not routinely involved in the electoral process are more likely to disengage from politics. To test the differential effects of stress on the likelihood of political involvement, we fielded two experiments, one preceding the U.S. presidential election of 2012 and the second preceding the 2013 municipal election in a small Midwestern American town. We find that when triggered to consider life stressors unrelated to politics, individuals without a history of past participation in politics are less likely to vote while individuals who are habitual voters are unaffected.","author":[{"dropping-particle":"","family":"Hassell","given":"Hans J.G.","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""},{"dropping-particle":"","family":"Settle","given":"Jaime E.","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""}],"container-title":"Political Psychology","id":"ITEM-1","issue":"3","issued":{"date-parts":[["2017"]]},"page":"533-550","title":"The Differential Effects of Stress on Voter Turnout","type":"article-journal","volume":"38"},"uris":["http://www.mendeley.com/documents/?uuid=c3d6a76c-6f4e-4ead-abc9-29e16a00a07f"]}],"mendeley":{"formattedCitation":"(Hassell & Settle, 2017)","plainTextFormattedCitation":"(Hassell & Settle, 2017)","previouslyFormattedCitation":"(Hassell & Settle, 2017)"},"properties":{"noteIndex":0},"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"}(Hassell & Settle, 2017). Surprisingly, not all individuals participate in every aspect of the process, and some abstain. Statistics from previous elections show that the percentages of people who turn out to vote are less than the actual U.S. population that has the potential to vote. Notably, since 1988, young individuals between the age of 18 and 29 make up the smallest percentage of individuals who vote while the elderly have improved from being the lowest percentage to the second largest in 2016 ADDIN CSL_CITATION {"citationItems":[{"id":"ITEM-1","itemData":{"author":[{"dropping-particle":"","family":"File","given":"Thom","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""}],"id":"ITEM-1","issued":{"date-parts":[["2018"]]},"number-of-pages":"1-20","title":"Characteristics of Voters in the Presidential Election of 2016","type":"report"},"uris":["http://www.mendeley.com/documents/?uuid=6a4bfeec-f66f-4d0b-8c57-0591a9bc7573"]}],"mendeley":{"formattedCitation":"(File, 2018)","plainTextFormattedCitation":"(File, 2018)","previouslyFormattedCitation":"(File, 2018)"},"properties":{"noteIndex":0},"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"}(File, 2018). Research shows as age increases, the propensity for one to vote increases ADDIN CSL_CITATION {"citationItems":[{"id":"ITEM-1","itemData":{"abstract":"http://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/voting-and-registration/p20-577.html","author":[{"dropping-particle":"","family":"File","given":"Thom","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""}],"container-title":"U.S. Census Bureau","id":"ITEM-1","issue":"April","issued":{"date-parts":[["2014"]]},"title":"Census: Young-Adult Voting (Apr 2014) National","type":"article-journal"},"uris":["http://www.mendeley.com/documents/?uuid=5de2cdf5-ae6c-4120-b309-aebd76596331"]}],"mendeley":{"formattedCitation":"(File, 2014)","plainTextFormattedCitation":"(File, 2014)","previouslyFormattedCitation":"(File, 2014)"},"properties":{"noteIndex":0},"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"}(File, 2014). Therefore, this implies voter turnout rates among the young populations are low. The low turnout rates then prompts various researchers to examine the potential causes of such trend. Studies investigating a range of factors have been undertaken but one that assesses having to work as a potential barrier among the youth is yet to be exhaustively done. Consequently, this prompts the need to study how having to work may influence turnout rates among the youth.