Walkability and Voter Turnout

Working Paper
Walkability and Voter Turnout ASPA Draft
Authors
Affiliation

Stone Neilon

Anand Edward Sokhey

Walkability and Voter Turnout

September 11, 2025

Abstract

Do features of the built environment influence rates of political participation? In this paper we consider the relationship between walkability—i.e.,the ease of walking to amenities in an area—and turnout in the contemporary United States. Focusing on census block groups in the country’s 25 most populated Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), we leverage the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) walkability indices and aggregate voting data from the 2016, 2018, and 2020 election cycles. We find that areas with higher walkability have higher official turnout; this association obtains across primary and general election contests, in the presence of controls for a variety of socioeconomic factors, and under different modeling choices. In subsequent analyses we bring in novel data on the difficulty of voting in states to consider whether the apparent benefits of walkability can be better understood through traditional notions of “cost-based” versus socially-grounded theories of mass behavior. Our results suggest that both explanations have purchase, though on balance we think the evidence points more towards social factors. We discuss the implications of our findings as they relate to both political geography and longstanding theories of democratic functioning.

Keywords

Built Environment, Voter Turnout, Walkability


Reuse

Citation

BibTeX citation:
@online{neilon2025,
  author = {Neilon, Stone and Edward Sokhey, Anand},
  title = {Walkability and {Voter} {Turnout}},
  date = {2025-09-11},
  url = {https://stoneneilon.github.io/research/final_walkability},
  langid = {en},
  abstract = {Do features of the built environment influence rates of
    political participation? In this paper we consider the relationship
    between walkability—i.e.,the ease of walking to amenities in an
    area—and turnout in the contemporary United States. Focusing on
    census block groups in the country’s 25 most populated Metropolitan
    Statistical Areas (MSAs), we leverage the Environmental Protection
    Agency’s (EPA) walkability indices and aggregate voting data from
    the 2016, 2018, and 2020 election cycles. We find that areas with
    higher walkability have higher official turnout; this association
    obtains across primary and general election contests, in the
    presence of controls for a variety of socioeconomic factors, and
    under different modeling choices. In subsequent analyses we bring in
    novel data on the difficulty of voting in states to consider whether
    the apparent benefits of walkability can be better understood
    through traditional notions of “cost-based” versus socially-grounded
    theories of mass behavior. Our results suggest that both
    explanations have purchase, though on balance we think the evidence
    points more towards social factors. We discuss the implications of
    our findings as they relate to both political geography and
    longstanding theories of democratic functioning.}
}
For attribution, please cite this work as:
Neilon, Stone, and Anand Edward Sokhey. 2025. “Walkability and Voter Turnout.” September 11, 2025. https://stoneneilon.github.io/research/final_walkability.