Recessions and registrations: do local economic downturns impact voter participation?

Abstract

This paper examines how local economic shocks affect political participation, focusing on voter registration as an early-stage margin of engagement. While a sizable literature studies the impact of economic conditions on voter turnout, less is known about how these conditions influence the decision to enter the electorate. Voter registration requires forward-looking effort and information acquisition, implying that economic shocks may affect participation through both resource constraints and attention channels. I test these predictions using a county-month panel of voter registrations in Ohio from 2000 to 2024, constructed from state voter files and combined with measures of local economic shocks based on Sahm rule recession indicators and mass layoff events from WARN notices. Across specifications, I find little evidence that local economic shocks meaningfully affect registration behavior. Neither measure produces statistically significant changes in registrations. These results hold across alternative specifications, event-study designs, and after excluding election-driven registration spikes. I interpret this pattern as consistent with models in which participation decisions made well in advance of elections are less responsive to short- run economic conditions, even when such conditions influence later-stage behaviors such as turnout or vote choice.