The Electoral Impact of Newly Enfranchised Groups: The Case of Women’s Suffrage in the United States

Abstract

How do newly enfranchised groups achieve representation of shared interests? I theorize that while suffrage expansion has the potential to sway electoral tides in favor of the newly enfranchised, such effects are conditional on the strength of a social movement that seeks to represent the group. A social movement defines the group's shared interests and creates a mobilized pool of voters that takes electoral action to foster common goals. In testing this argument, I use evidence from the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment in the United States.I employ a difference-in-differences approach that exploits the heterogeneity in the proportion of women across counties to estimate preferences of women voters and show that these preferences vary with the strength of the suffrage movement. These findings highlight that de jure inclusion of a previously disenfranchised group is necessary but may not be sufficient for de facto representation of the group's shared interests.

Women’s Suffrage and Children’s Education

“…As a third, more minor addition, we also provide evidence that suffrage changed the voting behavior of incumbent politicians towards abstention. This is a likely mechanism for the rise in the passage of progressive bills post-suffrage shown in earlier work , together with the election of new, less-conservative legislators (Morgan-Collins, 2019). It also provides empirical evidence that women's lobbying changed legislators' voting behavior, which is frequently mentioned in historical accounts.…”

“…First, we show that suffrage increased voting for progressive bills in the Senate both by increasing "yay" votes by legislators elected post-suffrage and by reducing "nay" votes by incumbent legislators. Thus, suffrage appears to have swayed the votes of existing legislators in addition to changing the composition of legislators (Morgan-Collins, 2019). Second, we show that in the South, 10 percent growth in local education spending translated to 10 percent growth in spending in white schools and 5.2 to 6.3 percent growth in spending black schools.…”

“…For example, one year after the passage of suffrage in North Carolina, "politicians passed unusually liberal appropriations' for the states educational and child-caring institutions (Schuyler (2006), p.171)." This appears to have been due to the election of new, progressive legislators (Morgan- Collins, 2019) and to women's lobbying of existing legislators. In particular, women's lobbies created the perception of a close political alignment among its members, which appears to have made politicians more willing to support progressive legislation (Lemons, 1973;Moehling and Thomasson, 2012).…”

At the Intersection of Gender and Class: How Were Newly Enfranchised Women Mobilized in Sweden?

“…Indeed, Carpenter et al (2018) finds that women’s turnout after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment was higher in states with greater pre-suffrage petitioning for the vote. In turn, Morgan-Collins (2021) argues that American suffragists helped to generate group consciousness and provided information that enabled women not only to mobilize, but also to coordinate electorally on progressive issues. However, women’s engagement in organized activities or voluntary associations was mostly an experience of privileged women (Evans, 1977, p. 144–145).…”

“…Political conformity and political information induces turnout among the majority members because the group internalizes a sense of shared belonging, or shares material or symbolic grievances (Huddy, 2013). Shared group identity is also valuable to organized interests and politicians who have an incentive to define the group’s shared issues and to mobilize the group on those shared issues (Morgan-Collins 2021; Valenzuela & Michelson, 2016).…”