What Do They Know and When Do They Know It? An Examination of Citizen Awareness of Context

The connection between the individual and her aggregate geographic environment, usually defined as the neighborhood, is a key component of the contextual model of social influence. However, there is substantial anecdotal evidence that people have very little knowledge or connection to their neighborhood. In this paper we explore the connection by using data from the South Bend Study (Huckfeldt and Sprague 1985) to answer two questions. What do people know about objective conditions of their neighborhoods? Second, do these conditions influence perceptions people have of their neighborhoods? We find that (a) people have a good deal of knowledge about the objective conditions, and (b) even after controlling for individual factors, these conditions positively influence how people perceive their status within the neighborhood. In short, there is a connection, albeit an imperfect one, between the individual and the geographic context

Bringing The Spatial In: The Case Of The 2002 Seattle Monorail Referendum

Contests over public goods remain at the forefront of urban political battles in nearly every major city in the United States. The spatial location of the good can play an instrumental role in understanding the contours and outcomes of such conflicts. The authors explore a particular case - voting for a growth-related development project, the monorail, by referendum in the city of Seattle - and examine how a grassroots campaign successfully mobilized voters by targeting both their particularistic and collective interests. The authors conduct analysis at the precinct level and use spatial tools of analysis and ecological inference, finding that voter support for the monorail stemmed from the location of the proposed route and the campaign\u27s progressive appeals to environmental, social justice, and high tech concerns. Although cost overruns ultimately derailed construction of the monorail in 2005, when passed in 2002, the monorail was the most expensive infrastructure project in Seattle\u27s history

Location Of Public Goods And The Calculus Of Voting: The Seattle Monorail Referendum

Objectives: In this article we explore how the geographic location of a proposed public good on the ballot in a local referendum influences voting turnout. We argue that voters who live farther away from the good, and are thus likely to bear the cost of the good but have no access to it, would be more motivated to turn out in the election. Drawing on the cost-orientation hypothesis, or negativity effect, that people are more strongly motivated to avoid losses than to approach gains, we expect these voters to derive higher expressive benefits from the act of voting relative to those of voters located closer to the good. Methods: We examine voting turnout in the 2002 referendum in the City of Seattle on the proposed construction of a monorail. We conduct our study at the precinct level using spatial tools of analysis. We evaluate the effect of accessibility on turnout by means of a curvilinear model that incorporates demographic and political variables. Results: We find that voting turnout is determined partly by accessibility. Turnout is higher in precincts located farther away from the monorail line than in precincts located relatively closer to the line. Partisanship conditions this effect. Conclusions: This study provides tentative support for linking voter turnout to the negativity effect via expressive benefits. Voters\u27 location in relation to a public good may affect directly their political behavior by means of their perceived net gains or losses from the good. © 2010 by the Southwestern Social Science Association

Location of Public Goods and the Calculus of Voting: The Seattle Monorail Referendum

In this article we explore how the geographic location of a proposed public good on the ballot in a local referendum influences voting turnout. We argue that voters who live farther away from the good, and are thus likely to bear the cost of the good but have no access to it, would be more motivated to turn out in the election. Drawing on the "cost-orientation" hypothesis, or "negativity effect", "that people are more strongly motivated to avoid losses than to approach gains," we expect these voters to derive higher expressive benefits from the act of voting relative to those of voters located closer to the good. Copyright (c) 2010 by the Southwestern Social Science Association.