Abstract

Young voters are one of the most overlooked—and negatively represented—populations in US elections, and their representation and inclusion in this upcoming presidential election is at an even greater stake than ever before. Their voter turnout in the 2020 presidential election will undoubtedly be affected by the ongoing global pandemic for two primary reasons: First, the informational and institutional hurdles that often preclude turnout likely will be amplified, as campaigns limit person-to-person mobilization contacts and election rules change to accommodate social distancing. Second, young voters will likely be disenfranchised due to their lack of permanent address/unstable residence, in no small part due to universities potentially closing at a moment’s notice, similar to spring 2020. Given these challenges, an important and pressing concern for the democratic belonging of young voters is: How will Covid-19 impact the participation of young voters in the 2020 presidential election? We propose a field experiment to mobilize young voters amidst these rapidly changing electoral contexts and students’ personal living situations. We will improve on our previously successfully 2018 mobilization efforts with an experimental design that is adaptable no matter whether the university remains in-person, online, or adopts a hybrid model. We will test whether informational or social pressure treatments about the election will increase official voter turnout among first-year students, and their roommates, in a university-wide first-year writing course who are eligible voters enrolled at a major Midwestern university into our sample.

Principal Investigators

Nazita Lajevardi

Assistant Professor, Political Science, Michigan State University

Bio

Nazita Lajevardi is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science. She received her PhD from the University of California, San Diego, in 2017, her JD from the University of San Francisco School of Law in 2012, and her BA from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2009. Her work focuses mainly on issues related to race and ethnic politics, political behavior, voting rights, and immigration. Her work has been published in venues such as Cambridge University Press, the Journal of Politics, American Political Science Review, Political Behavior, Journal of Race and Ethnic Politics, and Politics Groups and Identities, among others.

Dan Bergan

Associate Professor, Michigan State University

Bio

Daniel E. Bergan received his PhD in political science at Northwestern University and was a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Communication and in James Madison College, a public policy residence college, at Michigan State University, where he teaches courses on research methods, campaigns, and the effects of communication on the policy process. Dr. Bergan’s current work explores whether elected officials’ perceptions are responsive to objective indicators of citizen needs and whether mass media and direct communication from constituents, experts, and other groups can influence policymaker behavior. His other research interests include youth voter engagement, the influence of motivated reasoning on citizen beliefs and attitudes, and the effects of mass media in elections. Dr. Bergan’s work has appeared in Public Opinion Quarterly, the Journal of Communication, Political Behavior, the Journal of Political Marketing, and other journals.

Ana Bracic

Assistant Professor, Michigan State University

Bio

Dr. Bracic is an assistant professor in the Political Science Department at Michigan State University (MSU) and a member of the Minority Politics Initiative at MSU. From 2014 to 2019, she was an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Oklahoma. Her research is predominantly in the field of comparative politics and focuses on questions of human rights, discrimination, the persistence of social exclusion, and ground-level effectiveness of human rights institutions, such as NGOs. Most of her research relies on lab-in-field and survey experiments. In order to gather data from severely underrepresented populations, such as Roma in Central Europe, Dr. Bracic uses innovative approaches to measurement, like videogames. Dr. Bracic is a cofounder of Community Engagement + Experiments Lab (CEEL) at the University of Oklahoma and served on its faculty advisory board. Dr. Bracic earned her PhD from the Politics Department at NYU in 2013.

Dustin Carnahan

Assistant Professor, Michigan State University

Bio

Dustin Carnahan is an assistant professor in communication at Michigan State University specializing in the study of political communication. His specific research interests include misinformation and its correction, selective exposure to partisan news content, the effects of media on public opinion, youth voter engagement, and how information processing biases influence how people respond to media messages. His research has appeared in Human Communication Research, Political Communication, Political Behavior, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, and the International Journal of Public Opinion Research.

Kjerstin Thorson

Associate Professor, Michigan State University

Bio

Kjerstin Thorson is an associate professor in the College of Communication Arts & Sciences at Michigan State University. Her research explores how people use digital and social media to learn about and participate in politics, especially youth and young adults. She is currently investigating how social media platforms are reshaping the visibility of news and politics—especially in local civic information infrastructures—and the democratic consequences of information inequality. Her work has appeared in top academic journals, including Political Communication, Information, Communication & Society, New Media & Society, and Communication Theory.

Sarah Reckhow

Associate Professor of Political Science, Michigan State University

Bio

Sarah Reckhow is an associate professor of political science at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on urban politics and policy and the role of nonprofits and philanthropy in the political process. Reckhow’s award-winning book, Follow the Money: How Foundation Dollars Change Public School Politics (Oxford University Press, 2013), examines the role of major foundations, such as the Gates Foundation, in urban school reform. Reckhow received her PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2009.