Attitudes towards Institutional Legitimacy among Individuals with Disabilities

• In Event: How Far Have We Come? Disability and Voting

Abstract

Well-known among disability politics scholars is the ‘voting gap’, or continually lower rates of voter turnout among those reporting a disability compared to those not reporting a disability. Although individual-level voter behavior has always been viewed through a variety of lenses, political engagement ultimately hinges upon one’s assessment or buy-in of the electoral system. The present paper investigates a severely understudied relationship within the disability politics literature: the intersection of disability status, perceived legitimacy of government institutions, and trust in the democratic process. Using data from a large, nationally representative sample, we replicate recent scholarship that finds commensurate levels of political interest, knowledge, and efficacy, traditional predictors of voter turnout, among both those who identify and those who do not identify as having a disability. Our results similarly indicate little differences in one’s level of confidence in the federal government, the military, and the courts system among individuals with and without disabilities. Notable, however, is that the predictive power of these attitudes on voting behavior is significantly greater among individuals with disabilities, particularly when the effect is moderated by one’s current health status and economic conditions. We position our results within the disability voting gap literature and discuss how elite discourse of electoral validity affects participation among the disability community.

Author

• April A. Johnson