Community and Communality in Voting Participation

Abstract

Studies of voting participation have tended to focus on factors other than community per se. When community is the focus, it is usually represented by population size, density, or type (urban/rural). These measures have led to the conclusion that community type has little influence and city size has a slight negative influence on voting. A recent analysis, however, represented community by levels of attachments to the community, termed “communality.” Communality was strongly correlated with local voting for three small rural towns. This article tests the communality thesis with path analysis applied to the 1972 and 1974 Center for Political Studies national election surveys. These data reveal that communality is generally unrelated to voting except in rural communities and for elections that are likely to mobilize the politically more active.