The Effect of Political Protests on Elections in America

• In Event: Protests and Voting

Abstract

In this paper, we use novel geo-located data linked to nationwide voter files and granular historical elections data to estimate the effect of political protests on elections in the United States. Though previous work has explored this question, these works have been isolated to individual moments of protest and have not been able to leverage the precise measures of electoral behavior that we do. Our work speaks to the literature on social movements, political participation, and democratic accountability and gives a window into the modern effects of social protests on elections in the United States.

Authors

• John Holbein, University of Virginia

• Tova Wang, nvf