Voter participation and democratic engagement

¶ … Voter Participation by categories in the 1996 Presidential Elections by the U.S. Census Bureau, determining for each of the 5 categories which factor would be determinant in deciding to vote would take into account recent socio-political realities.

Gender: in a gender balanced society like the U.S., which promotes freedom of speech and equality of rights and gender, it is quite difficult to say which of the two is a determining factor for voting. Generally, in gender balanced societies, women and men have the tendency to vote in similar numbers. If one of the two could be predominant, most likely it would be men, who have a longer tradition of voting and in many parts of rural U.S. are considered heads of the family and main decision makers.

Race: in what regards race, it is clear that in percentage the White population is more likely to vote higher than Black, Hispanic or Asian populations. Besides historical conditions of no-vote right or poor socio-economic conditions, the White population in the U.S. represents more than 70% of the entire population and therefore it is more likely to find within such a numerous population a large secction that would decide to vote.

Age is an important differentiator in taking the decision to vote or not and it mainly has to do with the socio-political environment of the voting time. If the main issues on the public agenda would interest young people, than, they would vote in a larger number. Constant voters appear to be those that are middle aged and elderly as their political experience is higher and their understanding of the importance of voting is most likely higher than in the young section. If one should be selected from the three, probably the elderly would vote the most, but with a small difference from the middle aged people.

Income, as well as education, is one of the most important elements in the voting patterns. Usually, the middle and upper class vote in higher percentage than the lower class due to their understanding of the importance of the voting procedure, similar to the age differentiator. More numerous, the middle class would probably vote the highest, as a large number of upper class citizens have fewer incentives.

Education is one of the most important elements of voting as it creates, in time, civic responsibilities. Therefore, in theory, the most likely to vote are those that have higher education and that usually having higher compared incomes.

B) In each of the categories, gender, race, age, income, and years of education, who is most likely to vote? Answer in one or two complete sentences.

In the gender category the most likely to vote is the female voter that has a mild advantage over the male type of voter. This assumption should be analyzed carefully, as often in survey as well as in collected votes some mistakes may appear. The difference between the female and the male voter is very small which indicates that both genders have more or less equal vote intentions and, therefore, reasons for such a small gap cannot be traced to any significant difference in the two elements of the analysis.

In the race category, it is not difficult to asses which of the mentioned races are more likely to vote, as the segment White race is higher than the next identified ones: Black and Hispanic. Nevertheless, in any voting behavior analysis is it important to also identify which of the "all races" element is predominant, as it might turn out that another race could have a higher percentage than, for example, the third race, the Hispanic one.

In the category the elderly people seem to have the highest percentage in voting, with a small difference for the 45-65 years age which can be identified as the middle years.

Based on income, the 1996 Presidential Elections show that the registered voters most likely to vote are those that earn $50.000 or over with 60% of them, followed closely by those between $35.000 and $49.999 with over 48% and those that earn between $25.000 and $34.999.