Voting age, information experiments, and political engagement: Evidence from a general election

Abstract

This paper addresses voter incentives for political engagement in developing countries, using self-collected experimental and quasi-experimental survey data. Does voting eligibility create intrinsic incentives to become engaged and informed, or do voters remain rationally ignorant and apathetic? What motivations underlie political interest? Are voters knowledgeable about policy issues debated during election campaigns? To address these questions, we fielded a survey of high school seniors across thirty Mexican campuses a few weeks prior to a major general election. Age-based regression discontinuity indicates that the just-eligible measure higher on political motivation and actions than the just-ineligible. One survey experiment shows that information about the potential magnitude of the youth vote increases eligible respondents’ political interest in ways consistent with social incentives. In the second experiment, information about current policy challenges affects eligible respondents’ policy priorities less than the ineligible, reflecting eligibles’ pre-existing knowledge about salient policy issues.