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How Voting is Like Taking an Sat Test

An Analysis of American Voter Rolloff

University of California, Irvine

IAN McALLISTER

Australian National University

ANTHONY SALVANTO

University of California, Irvine

Millions of American voters fail to complete their ballots each election year. These voters present a puzzle: After having incurred the costs of going to the polls, why do they choose not to vote on some of the items on the ballot? This paper considers voter rolloff between presidential and House races in an effort to understand the reasons why some voters abstain selectively. We consider this question by analyzing House rolloff based on aggregate data from the 1990s and national survey data from the 1980s. The results indicate that voters skip House contests not because they are lacking in education or members of minority groups, but rather because they do not have enough information to cast a vote. This finding offers new insight into how rolloff voters approach a ballot: They treat voting as if it were a test, picking out the questions that they can answer.

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