Older Americans who show up at the polls seem to have a survival edge on those who sit elections out, according to a new peer-reviewed study that tracks people for as long as 15 years after they cast a ballot. The paper finds that adults who voted in the 2008 presidential race were substantially less likely to die in the following years than similar nonvoters, although the authors and outside experts stress this is an association, not proof that voting itself keeps anyone alive longer.
In research published in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, a team matched Catalist-verified voting records to decades of survey and health information from roughly 7,700 participants in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. After adjusting for factors such as socioeconomic status, earlier health conditions, volunteering and political affiliation, voters showed a 45% lower risk of dying within five years of the 2008 election, 37% lower risk at 10 years and 29% lower risk at 15 years compared with nonvoters.
How the team measured turnout and risk
According to a University of Pennsylvania press release, the researchers linked Wisconsin Longitudinal Study respondents with Catalist’s verified voting files and with national death records. They then ran survival analyses centered on participation in the 2004, 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, tracking outcomes through 2023. The release notes that peer reviewers requested several additional robustness checks, which the authors completed before publication, to see whether the patterns held up after taking prior health and other forms of civic engagement into account.
Who appeared to benefit most
The journal reports that the apparent mortality advantage was present regardless of political party and regardless of whether people voted in person or remotely; in the models, both ways of casting a ballot were linked with reduced risk. Participants who started out in poorer health seemed to gain the most over a 15-year window, a result the authors say deserves closer examination in future work.
The researchers are careful not to claim that voting directly causes longer life. “Because the results were so striking, we had to rerun and rerun the data,” co-author Femida Handy told Texas Public Radio. Outside experts quoted in the story say the findings fit into a large body of work linking health to purpose, social ties and feeling part of something bigger than oneself. “Voting isn’t a medication that extends your life,” neuroscientist and author Ben Rein told the outlet, arguing that going to the polls likely reflects broader engagement and connection…