Campaign and contextual influences on voter participation in state legislative elections

Recent studies suggest that campaign mobilization factors such as candidate spending and electoral competition play a substantial role in influencing voter participation in elections. This analysis focuses on the relative inf luence of these campaign effects along with a variety of contextual feature s on district-level turnout in state legislative elections. Models testing a variety of variables across seven states in 1994 point to the overwhelmin g influence of socioeconomic and political context, with campaign mobilizat ion effects contributing a much smaller degree of explanatory power. While some mobilization factors (such as campaign spending) have the potential to exert a strong impact on turnout, factors beyond the control of candidate campaigns are responsible for much of the observed variation in turnout acr oss state legislative districts.