Interpretation of interaction effects in logit an probit analyses - Reconsidering the relationship between registration laws, education, and voter turnout

Scholars have argued that more restrictive registration laws,most drastical ly deter the least educated citizens from political participation. Others, however, argue that the most educated, rather than the least educated, are most drastically impeded by restrictive registration requirements. These op posing conclusions have dramatically different implications concerning regi stration reform in the United States. In this analysis, we urge scholars to take the arguments made by Nagler more seriously, and we argue that past m odels have not fully considered the inherently nonlinear functional form of the legit and probit models. Using graphical displays, we show that citize ns with moderate levels of education are actually those who are "hardest hi t" by restrictive closing dates. Consequently, we moderate all prior conclu sions and show evidence that it is neither the most nor the least educated who are the "hardest hit" by early closing dates.