Enclaves of Isolation: Violence and Political Participation in U.S. Cities

Does residential proximity to violence mobilize or depress individuals for political action?While many ethnographic studies have shed light on the various forms of social isolation that characterize high-violence American urban neighborhoods, the democratic implications of proximate exposure to violence have not been well understood. Merging voter files in U.S. cities and geocoded crime data, I test whether living in close proximity to sites of homicides affects ones likelihood of voting in federal elections. Employing a regression discontinuity in time (RDiT) design, I provide evidence that close residential proximity to homicide depresses turnout by roughly four to nine percentage points, with the strongest results being in plurality black block groups with a black victim. In further mechanism tests, I analyze 1) foot-traffic data aggregated by census block groups to examine how violent exposure affects population movement and 2) crime-linked survey data. Together, the analyses provide significant evidence that the unequal psychological burden of fear, shaped by an individual’s perception of their risk of victimization, may drive observed effects. Generally, I consider how persistently high and geographically concentrated rates of lethal violence in the United States shape patterns of political participation in race-class subjugated communities and democratic health more broadly.