Voter Elasticity and Political Protest : A quantitative analysis in an American context

Abstract: The purpose of this thesis is to study the relationship between prevalence of swing voters and the occurrence of political protest. Taking a Rational Choice approach, I hypothesize that fewer swing voters will lead to more protests, because it would incentivize polarizing behavior by political candidates. The hypothesis is tested using protest data from US congressional districts during six months of 2020 as the dependent variable, and the concept of voter elasticity as the main independent variable in a multiple regression analysis, along with various control variables. The results tentatively indicate that the hypothesis is correct, but exhibit high levels of uncertainty, highlighting potential for future research.