Terrorism and voter turnout in seven urban centers in the United States

Scholars have long held that terrorist attacks have a noticeable effect on citizens’ emotions such as anxiety and fear. Consequently, it is not surprising that researchers have discovered that terrorism influences vote choice in individual nation states as well as impacts voter turnout cross-nationally.

However, while scholars have analyzed the influence terrorism has on political behavior at the nation-state level, researchers do not currently understand how terrorism affects voter turnout in the specific urban centers where terrorist attacks occur. Thus, we examine the effect the number, severity, and types of terrorist attacks have on voter turnout in seven large urban centers in the United States from 1970 to 2012. The results indicate that terrorist attacks are nontrivial events that influence political behavior in the urban centers included in this analysis.