'Stereotyping' the American Electorate: An Examination of what Drives Turnout in the Electoral Periphery

What motivates an individual to vote in one election but abstain in another? With its division of the electorate into core components (consistent voters or non-voters) and the periphery (inconsistent voters), Campbells core and periphery model provides a useful theory to investigate this question. Methodologically, Campbells approach not only relies upon self-reporting, but its operationalization of the electorate does not reflect the theory of the concepts being measured. This dissertation establishes a methodology to disaggregate the core and peripheral components of the electorate, enhancing the ensuing measurement schemes construct validity. Using a stereotype regression, a rarely-used class of logistic regression models designed to measure distances between ordered categories of a dependent variable, I validate this novel approach. This disaggregation scheme is then used to profile the core and peripheral electorates and investigate voting behavior of the dynamic periphery.