New Study Shows Stress Affects Voting Behavior by Laurel Davila

There is a great article in Mother Jones entitled Want to suppress the vote? Stress people out written by Chris Mooney.

Chris reports that, “The United States has a voting problem. In the 2012 presidential election, only about 57 percent of eligible American voters turned out, a far lower participation rate than in comparable democracies.  That means about 93 million people who were eligible to vote didn't bother.”

Chris goes on to say that figuring out why folks don’t vote is important to those of us who care about democracy. Apparently there are plenty of studies that show that poverty and age demographic factors adversely affect voting, but now there is a new study showing individual-level biological factors also influence whether or not someone votes.

This new study published in the journal of Physiology and Behavior was conducted by a team of political scientists, psychologists, and biologists. They show a correlation between higher blood level cortisol levels (stress hormone) and voting behavior.

So, if the GOP is purposely creating stress in folks lives with methods of voter suppression ….then certain targeted people in the demographics whom they don’t want to vote …won’t vote.

This is good information to know, and to use in documenting voter suppression cases in the future. The author of the study suggests that voting by mail is a good alternative solution for stress related to voting. 

Source URL: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/stress-cortisol-voter-turnout