Political Participation
A key source of power at both individual and community levels stems from exercising political influence over decisions affecting the community. Some research suggests that people who participate in politics feel more empowered and have higher life satisfaction and that children whose parents are politically engaged are more likely to become politically active themselves as they grow up.

Political participation takes many forms, such as whether voting-eligible individuals vote in elections. Political participation can reflect a voter’s own sense of power and autonomy, sense of well-being, self-rated health, and political representation. For example, people living in states with low voter turnout are far more likely to report being in fair or poor health than people in states with high voter turnout. Other research found that individuals reporting greater political participation scored higher on self-rated indices of empowerment.

Metric: Share of the voting-eligible population who turn out to vote

This metric measures the share of the voting-eligible population that voted in the local election in a year with a presidential election.

Validity: This metric is well established. Scholars of political science have used this metric in articles published in peer-reviewed journals.

Availability: Data are reported out by local governments and are available to the public.

Frequency: New data for the metric are available at election cycles.

Geography: Data are broadly available at the electoral district level.

Consistency: Voter turnout is measured consistently over time and geography, but the values can be volatile from year to year, with higher turnouts in years involving a presidential election, so we focus our metric to occur during presidential elections.

Subgroups: Voter turnout by race or ethnicity within a jurisdiction can be measured using different methods depending on the demographic balance of the jurisdiction. For diverse or integrated communities, ecological inference or rows by column inference is preferred. For less diverse or highly segregated communities, homogenous precinct analysis is preferred. Each is based on the census-defined racial and ethnic characteristics of the jurisdiction.

Limitations: Residential mobility can affect this metric, so it is important to interpret changes in voter turnout in the context of demographic shifts in the jurisdiction. In local communities with higher rates of immigrants, voter turnout can inaccurately reflect a community’s political participation. Communities with a population of immigrants who are not registered to vote could consider additional local data to better assess political participation and civic engagement.

 PREDICTORS