Nativity and California Online Voter Registration and Turnout in November 2012 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Differences among Latina/o, Asian American, and White Online Registrants in California
California Journal of Politics and Policy, 2014
In September 2012, the California Secretary of State's office offered eligible voters the opportunity to register online for the first time. This article analyzes those eligible voters that registered online for the November 2012 election. We find important differences among these registrants by ethnorace, age, and gender. We also find that a large proportion of these online registrants were new voters and that they did not concentrate in affluent census tracts, suggesting that this electoral reform did help to expand the electorate for that election.
Differences in Latina/o, Asian American and White Online Registrants in California
In September 2012, the California Secretary of State’s office offered eligible voters the opportunity to register online for the first time. This article analyzes those eligible voters that registered online for the November 2012 election. We find important differences among these registrants by ethnorace, age, and gender. We also find that a large proportion of these online registrants were new voters and that they did not concentrate in affluent census tracts, suggesting that this electoral reform did help to expand the electorate for that election.
Social Science Quarterly, 2005
Objectives. The 1990s witnessed the growth and maturation of the Latino electorate in California and many scholars have posited as to the reasons. One argument is that naturalizations by way of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) drove the increases in Latino participation. In this article we investigate the extent to which this is the case.Methods. Using unpublished INS data, we offer the first empirical test of the IRCA theory by examining Latino IRCA petitions by zipcode to determine whether or not IRCA legalizations and subsequent naturalizations were the force behind increased Latino turnout, and the overall growth of the Latino vote. We merge IRCA data with Registrar of Voter data to examine real growth in the Latino vote at the zipcode level from 1996–2000 in southern California.Results. Although Latino voting grew substantially, we find that IRCA naturalizations did not spur the increases in Latino voting in the 1990s as some have expected. Instead, demographic and mobilization variables explain why the Latino vote grew between 1996 and 2000.Conclusions. As Congress debates new proposals to “legalize” the millions of undocumented immigrants living and working in this country, many will inevitably ask what impact their citizenship will have on the electorate. This study sheds some light on the relationship between amnesty programs, citizenship, and voting among Latinos.
2013
From Naturalized Citizen to Voter: Context of Naturalization and Electoral Participation in Latino Communities Louis DeSipio University of California, Irvine Naturalization surged in the 1990s to levels unprecedented in the history of its federal regulation since 1907 (see Table One). The more than five million immigrants who naturalized as U.S. citizens in the 1990s exceeded the number of naturalizees in the previous three decades combined. Naturalization has since declined somewhat from the peak years of the late 1990s, but remains at levels twice as high as the early 1990s and before. The large number of newly naturalized citizens – most of whom are adults – will likely have some impact on U.S. electoral politics for many years to come simply based on their numbers and concentration in a few states, but they also raise a dilemma for democratic institutions in the United States. Specifically, they test whether existing incorporative mechanisms are successful at making these new, v...
Voting and Registration in California: Demographic Differences
2015
This report explores the characteristics of California's unregistered voters, comparing them to registered voters in the state and disaggregating the unregistered and registered populations by ethnorace 1 , class, age, and gender. 2 We find: • Youth are less likely to be registered across all ethnoracial groups, but youth of color are especially unlikely. • Voting-eligible Latinos and Asian Americans are less likely to register and vote, regardless of income. • Women are more likely to be registered across all ethnoracial groups. • Where Californians register to vote varies by ethnorace and age more than by income.
Impacting the political landscape: Who registers and votes among naturalized Americans?
Political Behavior, 2001
Little is known about the voting behavior of naturalized Americans, primarily due to a lack of good quality data on the national level. Using data from the Voting and Registration Supplement to the November 1996 Current Population Survey (CPS), we examine whether region of origin and length of time spent in the United States affect the likelihood of registering and voting among naturalized citizens, net of other socioeconomic and demographic factors already known to influence electoral behavior. We find that naturalized citizens who have a longer length of time at current residence and in the United States, and those who are older, with more education and higher income are more likely to register and vote. Region of origin is not a major explanatory variable, but there are differences in registering and voting by country of origin among naturalized citizens from Asia and Latin America. Finally, being registered is a necessary but not sufficient condition that predicts voting among naturalized citizens from Asia and from Latin America.
S.F. Chinese Immigrant Voters Persistency in Voter Registration
California Center For Population Research, 2007
This working paper assesses the durability of Chinese-American political participation in the San Francisco Bay Area between 1996 and 2004. We are interested in this durability, which we call "survival," for two reasons. First, because it gives us a better understanding of the universe of the population we are trying to study. Our survey was culled from those members of the 1996 cohort who are on the most recent registration rolls, which means that it contains information on only those members of the 1996 cohort who remained politically active. It is therefore useful for us to learn more about the characteristics of this group, and to determine what characteristics contribute to their continued political action. In particular, we want to know if the continued Chinese-American participation is a specifically ethnic phenomenon; that is, if the durability of the Chinese-American registration is owed to their being Chinese American, rather than to other factors (such as income or age or gender). If the continued Chinese-American registration is ethnic in nature, this would lend credence to our hypothesis that the large surge in political activity in 1996 by Chinese Americans was a defensive reaction, and one that remains influential today. Our second reason for performing this analysis is more academic: the data themselves tell an interesting story about the durability of political involvement. Political scientists have long concerned themselves with patterns of electoral participation, and in efforts to determine why political participation increases for some individuals and declines for others. Thus while our primary purpose in this duration analysis is to better understand this Bay Area Chinese-American population, a secondary benefit is that it yields us a useful experiment that can contribute to the more general literature in political science. We use registration to vote as our proxy for political activity, and the sample is, again, drawn from the 1996 cohort of first-time Chinese-American registers. The 1996 cohort is a useful one to study because, as we have noted in previous sections, 1996 marked a significant upsurge in Chinese-American political activity in the Bay Area, largely as a reaction to anti-immigrant legislation. The 1980s and early 1990s witnessed an increase in anti-immigrant sentiment in both American politics at large and California in particular-a number of anti-immigrant measures were either proposed or passed by voters in California. The threat to immigrants posed by these measures prompted a significant increase in naturalization rates and voting on the part of Bay Area Chinese Americans, culminating in a large cohort of Chinese Americans that voted in the national elections of 1996. Naturalization was an understandable and predictable reaction for Chinese Americans. Naturalization not only provided protection against anti-immigrant measures, but also provided a voice with which the newly naturalized could help shape future policies. The durability of Chinese-American political engagement, however, is less easy to predict. Two conflicting dynamics are at work. On the one hand, ethnic mobilization, and particularly defensive mobilization, can be short-lived. Political activity spawned by a
The Latino Voter Registration Dilemma
2016
The Latino electorate has increased impressively in recent decades, and is projected to reach approximately 28 million eligible voters by the 2016 presidential election. Yet in every presidential election since 1992 less than half of all potential Latino voters voted. This report shows that the reason for low participation rates among Latinos is because Latinos do not register to vote at comparable rates to other race/ethnic groups.