Reassessing the effects of emotions on turnout

Phillips, Joseph B. and Plutzer, Eric 2023. Reassessing the effects of emotions on turnout. The Journal of Politics 85 (3) , pp. 1094-1106. 10.1086/723816

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Abstract

Discrete emotions such as anger, pride, worry, and hopefulness have been shown to predict candidate preferences, issue attitudes, reports of participation other than voting, and stated intention to participate in various civic and electoral activities. Yet we know very little about how emotions might affect the most fundamental individual act in a democracy: turning out to vote. Using original survey data linked to past and future validated turnout to form four three-wave panels, we find that worry was a significant mobilizer of turnout in the 2018 midterm election, while enthusiasm was not. We also find that measures of discrete emotions have detectable impacts on turnout only when respondents are prompted to think about political stimuli. These results have implications for theory, measurement, and model specification that should inform future work on the effects of emotions on political participation generally.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Cardiff Law & Politics Department of Politics and International Relations (POLIR)
Publisher:	The University of Chicago Press
ISSN:	0022-3816
Funders:	McCourtney Institute for Democracy
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	1 September 2024
Date of Acceptance:	30 August 2022
Last Modified:	08 Nov 2024 05:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/171699

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