CHAPTER 9 – PARTICPATION, CAMPAIGNS, AND ELECTIONS
WHO PARTICIPATES AND HOW?: Political participation refers to a wide range of
activities in politics. Participation in politics includes not only voting in elections but also
attending campaign events, rallies, and fundraisers; contributing money to campaigns,
candidates, and parties; contacting elected officials; working on behalf of candidates and
campaigns, such as canvassing voters; displaying campaign signs; and signing political
petitions. Protests, demonstrations, and strikes, too, are age-old forms of participatory
politics. Participation also includes publicly expressing support for or opposition to
candidates or campaigns on social media, as well as organizing campaign events. The
expansive world of digital politics includes not only the exchange of information but also
new forms of fundraising and voter mobilization.
o RIOTS AND PROTESTS: If there is any natural or spontaneous form of popular
political participation, it is not the election but the protest or riot. In fact, for much
of American history, fewer Americans exercised their right to vote than
participated in urban riots and rural uprisings, as voting for a long time was
limited to White, male, landowning citizens. The vast majority of Americans today
reject rioting or other violence for political ends, but peaceful protest is protected
by the First Amendment and generally recognized as a legitimate and important
form of political activity. During the height of the civil rights movement in the
1960s, hundreds of thousands of Americans took part in peaceful protests to
demand social and political rights for African Americans. Peaceful marches and
demonstrations have since been employed by a host of groups across the
ideological spectrum. In many years, even before the protests following George
Floyd’s death in May 2020, growing concern over excessive use of police force
against African Americans has led to hundreds of protests across the nation. The
Black Lives Matter movement prompted national discussion and political action
around racial inequity in the criminal justice system and reform, although critics
argued that continued instances of excessive force, such as George Floyd’s
death in police custody, showed continued need for reform.
o POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN ELECTIONS: For most people, voting in
elections is the most common form of participation in politics. When asked what
makes a good citizen, the top reason mentioned by three in four Americans is
voting. By contacting political officials, attending campaign events and rallies, or
volunteering to work on a campaign, citizens can communicate much more
detailed information to public officials than they can by voting, thus making these
other political activities often more satisfying. But these forms of political action
generally require more time, effort, and/or money than voting. As a result, the
percentage of the population that participates in ways other than voting is
relatively low.
VOTING: For most Americans, voting is the single most important political
act. The right to vote gives ordinary Americans an equal voice in politics,
since each vote within the same district or state has the same value.
Voting is especially important because it selects the officials who make
the laws that the American people must follow. During early periods of
American history, the right to vote, called suffrage, was usually restricted
to White males over the age of 21. Many states further limited voting to
those who owned property or those who paid more than a specified
amount of annual tax. Until the early 1900s, state legislatures elected
U.S. senators, and there were no direct elections for members of the
electoral college (who in turn elect the president). As a result, elections
, for the U.S. House as well as for state legislatures and local offices were
how eligible citizens could participate in government. Voter turnout as a
percentage of the adult U.S. population during this period was extremely
low. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, states often further restricted
voting rights, initially through poll taxes (fees charged to vote) and literacy
tests (reading tests) designed to limit immigrant voting in northern cities.
These strategies were later imported into the southern states to prevent
African Americans and poor Whites from voting during the Jim Crow era –
the period after the Civil War when African Americans were legally
granted the right to vote before the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights
Act. Before the 1960s civil rights movement, voting rights often varied
greatly from state to state, with many southern states using an array of
laws to prevent participation in politics, including all-White primaries and
requiring that voters own property in order to be able to vote. Given the
variation in voting rights across states, over the past two centuries of
American history many federal statutes, court decisions, and
constitutional amendments have been designed to override state voting
laws and expand suffrage. Women nationwide won the right to vote in
1920 through the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment. The women’s
suffrage movement had held rallies, demonstrations, and protest marches
for more than half a century before achieving this goal. Before the
Nineteenth Amendment, numerous states and territories adopted
women’s suffrage, paving the way for women to earn the right to vote
normally. The most recent expansion of the right to vote, the Twenty-
Sixth Amendment, lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. Ratified during
the Vietnam War in 1971, it was intended to channel the disruptive
student protests against the war into peaceful participation at the ballot
box.
o ONLINE POLITICAL PARTICIPATION: The internet gives citizens greater
access to information about candidates and campaigns and a greater role in
politics than ever before. While building on traditional forms of participation,
digital politics makes many of those activities easier, more immediate, and more
personalized. The internet and social media offer an active, two-way form of
communication with feedback, rather than the more passive, one-way
communication involved in reading newspapers, watching television, or listening
to the radio. It combines person-to-person communication with broadcast
capability. Digital political participation includes a wide range of activities:
discussing issues and candidates or mobilizing supporters through social media,
email, and text messaging; reading online news stories and commenting on
them; viewing YouTube videos and campaign ads; contributing money to
candidates, parties, and groups; contacting political leaders and following them
on Twitter; running campaign ads on social networking sites; organizing petition
drives; and organizing face-to-face neighborhood meetings online. With 67% of
Americans reading the news using social media, digital participation is the most
common way average Americans participate in politics outside of voting. Online
mobilization works effectively through emotional appeals, immediacy, personal
networks, and social pressure. One’s social network plays a much stronger role
in political participation than do individual factors such as income and education.
When members of a social network indicate they have voted in an election or
contributed to a candidate, for example, that can motivate others in their network
to do the same. Social media can efficiently coordinate the actions of millions of
, people required for running political campaigns and winning elections. One in
three social media users has encouraged others to vote, and roughly the same
percentage have shared their own thoughts on politics and government online.
Social media make possible tiny acts of political participation – sharing, following
a candidate or organization, liking a post, commenting – that can scale up to
dramatic changes, leading to real-world political protests, voter-mobilization
drives, and the election of candidates and parties to government. Such acts give
those who are uninterested in or rarely engaged by politics an easy way of
getting involved, which can then encourage them to do more. Digital politics can
create punctuated bursts of collective action. For example, during the 2016
presidential primaries, Bernie Sanders’s supporters primarily relied heavily on
Reddit to organize rallies and rock concerts on his behalf, After Donald Trump
won the 2016 election despite losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes,
over 700,000 people signed an online petition to eliminate the electoral college
and elect the president based on actual votes cast. Some have dismissed
political activity on social media as clicktivism – forms of participation that require
little effort and may not convert to offline acts of participation in politics. Others
argue that so-called clicktivism is the building block for sustained participation in
politics. Donald Trump’s extensive use of Twitter is evidence that audience-
building on social media matters for political leadership and winning votes. A
survey analysis of 65,000 registered voters found that frequent social media
users were more likely to vote for Trump than for any other candidate in 2016.
The clicks of millions of Americans can and do add up.
o SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS: Americans with higher levels of education, more
income, and higher-level occupations – what social scientists call socioeconomic
status – participate much more in politics than do those with less education and
less income. Education is the single most important factor in predicting whether
an individual will not only vote but also participate in most other ways, such as
encouraging other people to vote or support an issue and donating to a
candidate or cause. Just 52% of those with only a high school diploma voted in
the 2016 presidential election, compared with 74% of college graduates.
Unsurprisingly, income is another important factor when it comes to making
contributions, as well as voting. Among people age 45-64, for example, the 2016
census found that 83% of individuals earning over $150,000 a year voted
compared to 43% of those earning less than $20,000 per year. Individuals higher
on the socioeconomic scale also tend to have higher levels of interest in politics.
o AGE: Older people have much higher rates of participation than do young
people, in part because they are more likely to own home and pay property
taxes, which make them more aware of the importance of the government. The
pattern of older people voting was more evident in 2016, with citizens 65 years
and older reporting the highest turnout (71%), followed by those age 45-66
(67%), age 30-44 (58%), and age 18-29 (46%), according to the census. In
midterm elections without a presidential race, youth turnout has historically been
extremely low, though youth turnout grew dramatically with the most recent
midterm. Among the youngest age cohort, voter turnout went from 20% in 2014
to 36% in 2018, and increased to 53-56% in 2020.
o RACE AND ETHNICITY: Increased demographic diversity is rapidly changing
U.S. politics. Members of racial and ethnic groups are more likely to vote
Democratic, while White non-Latinos are more likely to vote Republican. The
2016 and 2020 electorates were the country’s most racially and ethnically diverse
ever; combined, African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and other racial or
WHO PARTICIPATES AND HOW?: Political participation refers to a wide range of
activities in politics. Participation in politics includes not only voting in elections but also
attending campaign events, rallies, and fundraisers; contributing money to campaigns,
candidates, and parties; contacting elected officials; working on behalf of candidates and
campaigns, such as canvassing voters; displaying campaign signs; and signing political
petitions. Protests, demonstrations, and strikes, too, are age-old forms of participatory
politics. Participation also includes publicly expressing support for or opposition to
candidates or campaigns on social media, as well as organizing campaign events. The
expansive world of digital politics includes not only the exchange of information but also
new forms of fundraising and voter mobilization.
o RIOTS AND PROTESTS: If there is any natural or spontaneous form of popular
political participation, it is not the election but the protest or riot. In fact, for much
of American history, fewer Americans exercised their right to vote than
participated in urban riots and rural uprisings, as voting for a long time was
limited to White, male, landowning citizens. The vast majority of Americans today
reject rioting or other violence for political ends, but peaceful protest is protected
by the First Amendment and generally recognized as a legitimate and important
form of political activity. During the height of the civil rights movement in the
1960s, hundreds of thousands of Americans took part in peaceful protests to
demand social and political rights for African Americans. Peaceful marches and
demonstrations have since been employed by a host of groups across the
ideological spectrum. In many years, even before the protests following George
Floyd’s death in May 2020, growing concern over excessive use of police force
against African Americans has led to hundreds of protests across the nation. The
Black Lives Matter movement prompted national discussion and political action
around racial inequity in the criminal justice system and reform, although critics
argued that continued instances of excessive force, such as George Floyd’s
death in police custody, showed continued need for reform.
o POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN ELECTIONS: For most people, voting in
elections is the most common form of participation in politics. When asked what
makes a good citizen, the top reason mentioned by three in four Americans is
voting. By contacting political officials, attending campaign events and rallies, or
volunteering to work on a campaign, citizens can communicate much more
detailed information to public officials than they can by voting, thus making these
other political activities often more satisfying. But these forms of political action
generally require more time, effort, and/or money than voting. As a result, the
percentage of the population that participates in ways other than voting is
relatively low.
VOTING: For most Americans, voting is the single most important political
act. The right to vote gives ordinary Americans an equal voice in politics,
since each vote within the same district or state has the same value.
Voting is especially important because it selects the officials who make
the laws that the American people must follow. During early periods of
American history, the right to vote, called suffrage, was usually restricted
to White males over the age of 21. Many states further limited voting to
those who owned property or those who paid more than a specified
amount of annual tax. Until the early 1900s, state legislatures elected
U.S. senators, and there were no direct elections for members of the
electoral college (who in turn elect the president). As a result, elections
, for the U.S. House as well as for state legislatures and local offices were
how eligible citizens could participate in government. Voter turnout as a
percentage of the adult U.S. population during this period was extremely
low. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, states often further restricted
voting rights, initially through poll taxes (fees charged to vote) and literacy
tests (reading tests) designed to limit immigrant voting in northern cities.
These strategies were later imported into the southern states to prevent
African Americans and poor Whites from voting during the Jim Crow era –
the period after the Civil War when African Americans were legally
granted the right to vote before the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights
Act. Before the 1960s civil rights movement, voting rights often varied
greatly from state to state, with many southern states using an array of
laws to prevent participation in politics, including all-White primaries and
requiring that voters own property in order to be able to vote. Given the
variation in voting rights across states, over the past two centuries of
American history many federal statutes, court decisions, and
constitutional amendments have been designed to override state voting
laws and expand suffrage. Women nationwide won the right to vote in
1920 through the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment. The women’s
suffrage movement had held rallies, demonstrations, and protest marches
for more than half a century before achieving this goal. Before the
Nineteenth Amendment, numerous states and territories adopted
women’s suffrage, paving the way for women to earn the right to vote
normally. The most recent expansion of the right to vote, the Twenty-
Sixth Amendment, lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. Ratified during
the Vietnam War in 1971, it was intended to channel the disruptive
student protests against the war into peaceful participation at the ballot
box.
o ONLINE POLITICAL PARTICIPATION: The internet gives citizens greater
access to information about candidates and campaigns and a greater role in
politics than ever before. While building on traditional forms of participation,
digital politics makes many of those activities easier, more immediate, and more
personalized. The internet and social media offer an active, two-way form of
communication with feedback, rather than the more passive, one-way
communication involved in reading newspapers, watching television, or listening
to the radio. It combines person-to-person communication with broadcast
capability. Digital political participation includes a wide range of activities:
discussing issues and candidates or mobilizing supporters through social media,
email, and text messaging; reading online news stories and commenting on
them; viewing YouTube videos and campaign ads; contributing money to
candidates, parties, and groups; contacting political leaders and following them
on Twitter; running campaign ads on social networking sites; organizing petition
drives; and organizing face-to-face neighborhood meetings online. With 67% of
Americans reading the news using social media, digital participation is the most
common way average Americans participate in politics outside of voting. Online
mobilization works effectively through emotional appeals, immediacy, personal
networks, and social pressure. One’s social network plays a much stronger role
in political participation than do individual factors such as income and education.
When members of a social network indicate they have voted in an election or
contributed to a candidate, for example, that can motivate others in their network
to do the same. Social media can efficiently coordinate the actions of millions of
, people required for running political campaigns and winning elections. One in
three social media users has encouraged others to vote, and roughly the same
percentage have shared their own thoughts on politics and government online.
Social media make possible tiny acts of political participation – sharing, following
a candidate or organization, liking a post, commenting – that can scale up to
dramatic changes, leading to real-world political protests, voter-mobilization
drives, and the election of candidates and parties to government. Such acts give
those who are uninterested in or rarely engaged by politics an easy way of
getting involved, which can then encourage them to do more. Digital politics can
create punctuated bursts of collective action. For example, during the 2016
presidential primaries, Bernie Sanders’s supporters primarily relied heavily on
Reddit to organize rallies and rock concerts on his behalf, After Donald Trump
won the 2016 election despite losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes,
over 700,000 people signed an online petition to eliminate the electoral college
and elect the president based on actual votes cast. Some have dismissed
political activity on social media as clicktivism – forms of participation that require
little effort and may not convert to offline acts of participation in politics. Others
argue that so-called clicktivism is the building block for sustained participation in
politics. Donald Trump’s extensive use of Twitter is evidence that audience-
building on social media matters for political leadership and winning votes. A
survey analysis of 65,000 registered voters found that frequent social media
users were more likely to vote for Trump than for any other candidate in 2016.
The clicks of millions of Americans can and do add up.
o SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS: Americans with higher levels of education, more
income, and higher-level occupations – what social scientists call socioeconomic
status – participate much more in politics than do those with less education and
less income. Education is the single most important factor in predicting whether
an individual will not only vote but also participate in most other ways, such as
encouraging other people to vote or support an issue and donating to a
candidate or cause. Just 52% of those with only a high school diploma voted in
the 2016 presidential election, compared with 74% of college graduates.
Unsurprisingly, income is another important factor when it comes to making
contributions, as well as voting. Among people age 45-64, for example, the 2016
census found that 83% of individuals earning over $150,000 a year voted
compared to 43% of those earning less than $20,000 per year. Individuals higher
on the socioeconomic scale also tend to have higher levels of interest in politics.
o AGE: Older people have much higher rates of participation than do young
people, in part because they are more likely to own home and pay property
taxes, which make them more aware of the importance of the government. The
pattern of older people voting was more evident in 2016, with citizens 65 years
and older reporting the highest turnout (71%), followed by those age 45-66
(67%), age 30-44 (58%), and age 18-29 (46%), according to the census. In
midterm elections without a presidential race, youth turnout has historically been
extremely low, though youth turnout grew dramatically with the most recent
midterm. Among the youngest age cohort, voter turnout went from 20% in 2014
to 36% in 2018, and increased to 53-56% in 2020.
o RACE AND ETHNICITY: Increased demographic diversity is rapidly changing
U.S. politics. Members of racial and ethnic groups are more likely to vote
Democratic, while White non-Latinos are more likely to vote Republican. The
2016 and 2020 electorates were the country’s most racially and ethnically diverse
ever; combined, African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and other racial or
