Cahill & Ojeda: Health and Voting in Rural America

In Health and Voting in Rural America, Katie A. Cahill (Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy, University of Tennessee) and Christopher Ojeda (Department of Political Science, University of Tennessee) assess the impact of health and other factors on rural voter turnout. Prior work has emphasized how consequential health is, generally, in predicting a citizen’s political engagement. Typically, citizens in poor health are less politically engaged than healthier citizens, but the authors find that health matters less than expected when the voters are rural.

The authors conclude that rural political behavior is complex but that place itself is an important factor when understanding voter engagement. In general, rural voters are more engaged than their health, education status, and income levels would otherwise predict.

The authors speculate that higher levels of social capital, including in the forms of familial support and participation in religious communities, may make poor health less of an obstacle to voting than it may be in non-rural areas. The authors rely on both county-level and individual-level data to examine several variables related to health and voting, including religious attendance and the cost of voting. Here, cost of voting refers to the time, attention, and knowledge required to vote and potential obstacles that can raise this cost including voter registration rules and forms or residency and identification requirements.

For religious rural voters in particular, the authors do find that health becomes significantly less influential as a predictor of voter turnout. In addition, health does not predict voter turnout in rural places with high costs of voting, but there is some effect where voting costs are low.

There is more to consider here, but Health and Voting in Rural America introduces the complexities and some of the multiple variables in play when analyzing voter participation in rural and non-rural areas. It also highlights the importance of considering place—rural geography—in evaulating rural polticial participation.

This digest was produced with significant contribution by Aurora Kenworthy, UNL Law Student.