WP 26-013: Native American and Alaska Native Voting Behavior Across the Electoral Process

Although scholarship on Native American and Alaska Native (NA/AN) political participation has expanded, most studies focus on voter turnout or a single election, leaving limited evidence on how Native citizens navigate the broader electoral process over time. Using six waves of the Current Population Survey Voting and Registration Supplement (2004–2024), this study compares Native electoral participation across multiple stages of the electoral process over six U.S. general elections spanning two decades. The analysis reveals a persistent turnout gap: single-race NA/AN respondents are consistently less likely than White respondents to vote, even after adjusting for demographic characteristics and state fixed effects, whereas multiracial NA/AN respondents are statistically indistinguishable from White voters. Beyond turnout, single-race NA/AN respondents were consistently more likely to vote on Election Day, while differences in voting by mail converged over time. Registration pathways and reported reasons for non-voting varied across elections. These findings demonstrate that aggregating Native Americans into a single racial category masks important heterogeneity in electoral participation, particularly between single-race and multiracial respondents. More broadly, the results underscore that democratic participation cannot be fully understood without attention to the institutional, historical, and sovereign contexts through which Native citizens engage in American democracy.

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Keywords: Native American politics; voting behavior; political participation; elections; race and ethnicity