The Effect of Descriptive Representation on Participation: Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Voter Turnout Across the States

Descriptive representation by race, ethnicity, or gender evidently increases political participation, but prior research pays less attention to how the intersectional identities influence participation. We assess the effect of descriptive representation in U.S. state legislatures on voter turnout in three elections (2000, 2004, and 2008). Collective representation does substantively increase turnout among previously excluded groups. However, the impact varies intersectionally. White women and black men respond the most consistently to representation. Black women vote more when represented by race, with inconsistent gender results. We find no ethnic turnout effect for Latinos, and a gender effect, only in 2008, for Latinas.