I joined a Black Lives Matter protest in Harrisburg, PA, this past weekend, and as I listened to the shouts for justice, and saw the energy and emotion from so many people who were demanding change, I also wondered about voter participation. Will so much social turmoil transform into an upswelling of November voting, echoing the enthusiasm of so many protesters?

Some optimism for greater turnout in November might be hinged on earlier research by Gillon and Soule (2018). These authors summarized their analysis of protests in this abstract:

Results show that protests that express liberal issues lead to a greater percentage of the two-party vote share for Democratic candidates, while protests that espouse conservative issues offer Republican candidates a greater share of the two-party vote. Additionally, results indicated that protest shines a light on incumbent politicians’ failure to address constituent concerns, which leads quality candidates to enter subsequent races to challenge incumbent politicians.

While the correlation may well be spurious, Pennsylvania protests (clickable markers) and county registration rates are shown in the map below.

 

Voter Registration and Protests in Pennsylvania

 

 

Sources:

Pennsylvania Department of State. Voting and Election Statistics.

US Census Bureau. Table S0101. Available at www.data.census.gov