Taxing, Spending, and Voting: Voter Turnout Rates in Statewide Elections in Comparative Perspective

politics, election studies have highlighted the influence of state context on political behav ior, suggesting that varying rates of voter turnout across the states may be explained by differences in states' institutional and en vironmental attributes (Hajnal and Lewis 2003; Mitchell and Wlezien 1995; Tolbert and Smith 2005). Although voter turnout in U.S. state elec tions is a subject that has come to the fore over the past decade, little attention has been paid to the factors that account for differ ences in voter turnout rates across the states