Does Voter Turnout Influence School Bond Elections?

Abstract

This article investigates the role of voter turnout in school bond election outcomes. It is widely believed that turnout is negatively related to bond approval rates. Conclusions from previous empirical research, however, may be misleading because many sociodemographic factors and election parameters that influence bond support are also likely to influence voter turnout decisions. To account for the endogeneity of turnout, we employ an instrumental variable approach. We find that the persistent part of voter turnout plays a negligible role in explaining bond approval shares conditioned on election timing, past voting behavior, and district characteristics. Using first-difference models, change in turnout has a negative and significant influence on change in approval share and probability of bond success. Our results support previous research and suggest that targeted voter mobilization strategies have the potential to influence school bond outcomes.

Parents, Homevoters, and Public School Employees: An Analysis of Voting Patterns in the 2012 Georgia Charter Schools Amendment Referendum

“…It is worth noting that the referendum was scheduled for a high-turnout general election rather than an election in which no major offices were on the ballot. Papers such as Meredith (2009) and Gong and Rogers (2014) find that bond referenda supporting traditional public schools stand a greater likelihood of passage in lowturnout elections; hence, the charter school issue's passage may have been aided by having it scheduled for a general election. Our finding that Democrats, who likely had a high turnout to support President Obama's reelection, strongly supported the referendum, increases the saliency of this point.…”

Information, Tax Salience, and Support for School Bond Referenda

“…Bowers et al (), Holcombe and Kenny (), Pecquet, Coats, and Yen () and Dunne, Reed, and Wilbanks () all find that support for school bonds is negatively related to turnout. In contrast, Gong and Rogers (), using an instrumental variables identification strategy, find little evidence that voter turnout directly effects support for school bonds. Rather, their results suggest that the change in turnout from one election to the next is negatively related to school bond passage rates.…”

“…15 13. As noted by Gong and Rogers (2014), there are two popular methods of modeling vote shares: the method we employ, namely OLS, and the logit transformation of the share voting yes which takes the form: pyes…”

“…As noted by Gong and Rogers (), there are two popular methods of modeling vote shares: the method we employ, namely OLS, and the logit transformation of the share voting yes which takes the form: . Examples of studies that use a logit transformation include: Pecquet et al (), and Gong and Rogers (). Examples of studies that use OLS include: Gong and Rogers () and Thompson and Whitley ().…”

“…Prior studies have typically used either a probit or logit specification to model the probability of bond passage (e.g., Bowers and Lee ; Gong and Rogers ; Shober ; Zimmer et al ). We follow Thompson and Whitley () and use a linear probability model for ease of interpretation.…”