Date of Award

2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

Second Department

Natural Sciences

First Advisor

Reilly, Jack

Area of Concentration

Political Science and Statistics

Abstract

Of the numerous costs to turning out in an election, distance to polling location has been gaining traction as a notable cost to voting with a consistent negative effect on turnout the further a voter lives from their polling place. However, one of the major shortcomings of existing research in this area has been the limited scope of these studies - due to data challenges, most have been significantly limited in their geographic breadth, conducting analysis at the county level or lower. Taking advantage of the 12 million citizen Florida voter file, this study uses a far larger amount of data in a cross-sectional design to analyze the relationship between individuals’ distance to polling locations and turnout, as well as the type of turnout, across the entire state of Florida. The scale and detail of the data allows us to gain leverage on a variety of related questions in greater precision than before as well, including the extent to which distance plays a role in voters opting for mail or early voting, interactions between distance and demographic variables, as well as whether alternative distance measures provide a clearer picture of the costs of. This study underscores the importance of understanding the role that local voting policies and choices have in influencing the conduct—and possibly outcome—of elections.

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