voting
Definition
Voting, as studied in political psychology, refers to an act of electoral participation whose antecedents include attitudinal and identity-based processes that translate into behavioral intentions before an election. In research with Black, Latino, and Asian American adults surveyed three weeks before the 2024 U.S. presidential election, shared discrimination appeals increased cross-racial solidarity but did not directly shift voting intentions. Instead, solidarity served as an indirect pathway, mediating the relationship between shared discrimination appeals and intentions to vote for a People of Color representative or for Kamala Harris.
Sources: Rogbeer & Pérez (2026)
Related Terms
- discrimination (1 shared article)
- inter-minority coalition (1 shared article)
- racial solidarity (1 shared article)
- intended behavior (1 shared article)
Applications
Voting and Solidarity
Solidarity, defined as a sense of shared commitment and collective responsibility among members of different marginalized groups, was positively associated with voting intentions in survey experiments conducted with Black, Latino, and Asian American adults. Making shared discrimination salient increased solidarity uniformly across racial groups, and solidarity in turn indirectly raised intentions to vote for both a PoC-aligned representative and Kamala Harris, with the mediation model showing good fit (CFI = .986, RMSEA = .027). The association between solidarity and Harris vote intentions was significantly stronger for Latino and Asian Americans than for Black Americans, a pattern consistent with a partisan ceiling among Black voters.
Sources: Rogbeer & Pérez (2026)
Voting and Shared Discrimination
Shared discrimination appeals, which make salient the experiences of discrimination common to racially minoritized groups, had no direct effect on voting intentions in nationally representative samples of Black, Latino, and Asian American adults. The indirect path from shared discrimination to voting intentions operated through solidarity, suggesting that discrimination salience shapes electoral engagement by first activating a sense of cross-racial identification rather than by altering vote choice on its own.
Sources: Rogbeer & Pérez (2026)
Voting and Political Engagement
Voting intentions function as a meaningful indicator of political engagement among People of Color, particularly in the period immediately preceding a presidential election. Although pre-election intentions can overestimate actual turnout, they remain a theoretically grounded and empirically supported measure of whether identity-based appeals translate into consequential political behavior.
Sources: Rogbeer & Pérez (2026)
