Voter Turnout - Hereditary Factors

Hereditary Factors

While socioeconomic factors undoubtedly play a role in determining voter turnout, new evidence suggests that genetic factors may also be important. Scholars recently used twin studies of validated turnout in Los Angeles and self-reported turnout in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to establish that the decision to vote in the United States has very strong heritability. If so, it could help to explain why parental turnout is such a strong predictor of voting in young people, as people inherit genes as well as behaviors from their parents. It might also help to explain why voting appears to be habitual. If there is an innate predisposition to vote or abstain, this would explain why past voting behavior is such a good predictor of future voter reaction.

In addition to the twin study method, scholars have used gene association studies to analyze voter turnout. Two genes that influence social behavior have been directly associated with voter turnout, specifically those regulating the serotonin system in the brain via the production of monoamine oxidase and 5HTT. This study was recently reanalyzed and the findings suggested to be the result of several significant errors. Once these errors were corrected, there was no longer any statistically significant association between common variants of these two genes and voter turnout.