RAPID: Collaborative Research: Collaborative Multi-Racial Post-Election Survey (CMPS)

University Of Kentucky Research Foundation, Lexington KY

Investigators

Abstract

What are the broader political consequences of former felon disenfranchisement in the communities where they reside? How does living near individuals who cannot vote affect legally enfranchised individuals? feelings of political efficacy and engagement? This RAPID investigates these questions, and associated underlying mechanisms, by adding specific questions in a Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey and analyzing the results. Current research proposes that legally enfranchised individuals who live in communities with individuals who are disenfranchised as a result of felony convictions are less likely to engage in politics and less likely to vote?through a combination of social network effects and feelings of lower political efficacy. This proposition is investigated as is the possibility that political campaigns might work to counteract these tendencies in competitive election settings. The research considers how social networks affect political participation and voting behavior and how the participation of community members and friends in politics affects feelings of political efficacy and inclinations to participate in politics. The goal of this RAPID project is to test several key theoretical mechanisms related to the community-level consequences of former felon disenfranchisement. Placing survey questions on the Collaborative Multi-Racial Post-Election Survey (fielded in cooperation with the Latino Decisions survey project at UCLA) and subsequent statistical analysis of the collected survey data, researchers investigate key causal mechanisms including: how social networks and feelings of political efficacy relate to political participation and civic engagement, and the extent to which campaigns might be able to counteract these effects. While most of the questions are observational, there are also specifically designed experimental treatments embedded in the survey, which will test the causal effects of electoral competitiveness and living in communities where many individuals cannot vote on feelings of political efficacy and inclinations to participate in politics.