Pre-adult political experiences and political participation

Abstract

ABSTRACT Young adults are less likely to vote than older Americans, but they do not enter adulthood as blank slates. The political experiences before young adults are eligible to vote can shape their future likelihood of participation. In this paper, we explore how one particular event, the result of the 2016 presidential election, changed the likelihood of participation among young adults. We designed an original experiment that randomly assigned adults eligible to vote in a presidential election for the first time to be primed to remember their emotional reactions to the 2016 election. We found that participants who were asked to think about their emotional reaction to the 2016 United States presidential election were significantly more likely to say that they would vote in an election if one were held today. These findings suggest that, at least in the case of the 2016 election, reminding young adults of past political experience is likely to increase their motivation to vote.