Potter Gold

Andrew Potter has a nice and counterintuitive column in this week's Maclean's. Potter argues that negative advertising may not be all bad. He has Warren Kinsella and me in his corner. I am not sure how I would match up in bar fight, but I suspect Warren's a good comrade in arms.

Anyways, it's an article I like, first because of the counterintuitions, but also because Potter cites some of my recent research. The paper is under review, so I won't link to it, but if you'd like a copy email me. In the meantime, here's the abstract:

Some citizens differ in their levels of concern for the supporters of various parties. I demonstrate how such concerns can motivate citizens to vote . I first present a simple formal model which incorporates concern for others and election benefits to explain the decision to vote. By predicting substantial turnout, this model overcomes the “paradox of participation”. I then verify the model empirically. I utilize a series dictator games in an online survey of more than 2000 Canadians to measure the concern of individuals for other partisans. I show how the preferences revealed in these games can predict the decision to vote in the face of several conventional controls. Taken together, the formal model and empirical results generate a more fulsome and satisfactory account of the decision to vote than an explanation which relies solely on duty.

The genetics of voter turnout

A little more than a year after this, Fowler and Dawes have released another working paper demonstrating a genetic component to the decision to vote. Rather than relying on twin studies, however, this time they have obtained genetic mappings from subjects in a multi-wave, long-term study of adolescents in the United States. The results are extremely interesting, especially because they identify two genes which play a role in the decision to vote, and because these genes interact with religiosity. This at least partially answers the question of why the religious are more likely to vote without relying on an argument about the skills gained through religious observance.

This, I should think, is the future of political science.

My favourite line, by the way, is "Genes are the institutions of the human body."