Title:      Partisanship, Voting, and the Dopamine D2 Receptor
Gene

Authors:    Christopher Dawes, James Fowler

Entrydate:  2008-02-01 02:07:19

Keywords:   partisanship, voting, turnout, genetic association,
dopamine, DRD2

Abstract:   Previous studies have found that both political
orientations (Alford, Funk & Hibbing 2005) and voting behavior
(Fowler, Baker & Dawes 2007, Fowler & Dawes 2007) are
significantly heritable. In this article we study genetic
variation in another important political behavior: partisan
attachment. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent
Health, we show that individuals with the A1 allele of the D2
dopamine receptor gene are significantly less likely to identify
as a partisan than those with the A2 allele. Further, we find
that this gene's association with partisanship also mediates an
indirect association between the A1 allele and voter abstention.
These results are the first to identify a specific gene that may
be responsible for the tendency to join political groups, and
they may help to explain correlation in parent and child
partisanship and the persistence of partisan behavior over time.

http://polmeth.wustl.edu/retrieve.php?id=731

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