Does losing a spouse reduce voter turnout? This study examines nearly six million Californians who lost partners, linking voter records to death data. Using coarsened exact matching and cohort comparisons, we find widowed voters decline by 9 percentage points indefinitely after their spouse dies.
This drop suggests social isolation explains the post-spouse loss voting slump. Our findings support previous debates about whether spouses influence each other's political engagement.
| Widowhood Effects in Voter Participation was authored by William R. Hobbs, Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler. It was published by Wiley in AJPS in 2014. |
