Contented People Are More Likely to Vote

Baylor political scientist Patrick Flavin thought contented people would be less likely to vote, and discontented people more. Just the opposite turns out to be true.

This makes sense to me. Bill Bishop argued in The Big Sort that voting is mostly a way of expressing solidarity with community values. People in the majority party or ideology are more likely to turn out to vote regularly, while the minority party or ideology is much harder to mobilize in any given constituency.