Racial Disparities in Voting Wait Times: Evidence from Smartphone Data

TL;DR

This study uses smartphone data to reveal significant racial disparities in voting wait times during the 2016 U.S. election, highlighting ongoing issues of access and equity in democratic processes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel geospatial data approach to quantify and analyze racial disparities in voting wait times at a nationwide scale.

Findings

Black neighborhoods experienced 29% longer wait times.

Residents in black neighborhoods were 74% more likely to wait over 30 minutes.

Disparities persisted within the same states and counties.

Abstract

Equal access to voting is a core feature of democratic government. Using data from millions of smartphone users, we quantify a racial disparity in voting wait times across a nationwide sample of polling places during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Relative to entirely-white neighborhoods, residents of entirely-black neighborhoods waited 29% longer to vote and were 74% more likely to spend more than 30 minutes at their polling place. This disparity holds when comparing predominantly white and black polling places within the same states and counties, and survives numerous robustness and placebo tests. We shed light on the mechanism for these results and discuss how geospatial data can be an effective tool to both measure and monitor these disparities going forward.