On the Importance of Social Protest Before, During, and After Elections

Recent protests at U.S. universities have seized global attention. And now, with summer in full swing, a new protest wave is becoming visible on the horizon at the Republican and Democratic conventions in Milwaukee and Chicago. If those and other expected protests are as large as they’re anticipated to be, how will they affect the elections in November?

Among the many reasons activists organize protests is their desire to focus attention on a cause. Election seasons present opportunities for doing just that. Many people who otherwise do not tune in to policy debates begin to pay particular attention when the Oval Office is at stake.

At the same time, mainstream politicians and campaigns can be wary of election year street protests. Politicians, of course, generally want to avoid becoming the target of protests. More importantly, political operatives dislike volatility. They worry that protests will backfire and their candidate will be blamed for any disturbances of the peace.

Empirical research suggests that those relying on support from aggrieved groups may find it helpful to emphasize nonviolence, but that discouraging protest, in general, may be counterproductive.

Political operatives also employ a “dollars or votes” calculus that tells them not to let energy be wasted on things presumed not to deliver campaign donations or Election Day votes. For these reasons and others, the major parties sometimes pressure the officers of nonprofit organizations, unions, and activists to demobilize protest movements in election years.

Yet while it turns out that street protests do tend to influence elections, they more often do so in unexpected ways.

A 2021 study by John Holbein, Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, and Tova Wang examined Black Lives Matter, climate, and gun control protests, as well as protests for and against former U.S. President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2020. Their national study found that counties with more frequent and larger protests tended to see significantly increased registration and turnout among young voters, voters of color, and Democrats.

Taking a longer view, Daniel Gillion and Sarah Soule studied congressional elections over four decades from the 1960s to the 1990s. They concluded that liberal protests tended to benefit left-of-center candidates and that conservative protests tended to benefit right-of-center candidates. A protest on their respective side sometimes led to as much as 6% more votes for a candidate, or 6% less for an opponent, depending on the race.

Why might this be? One answer seems to be that protests impact those motivated to vote and those turned off from politics around election time. Street protests spill over into the polling place. Voting is a relatively low-cost activity compared to joining protests.

Another, perhaps more powerful, effect of street protests has to do with how they change the way people think about what’s at stake. Social scientists have long understood that human beings navigate our world by excluding excess information and by focusing on what really matters. By drawing attention to particular issues, protests can prompt large numbers of people to reconsider what the elections mean to them.

A study of Black civil rights movement protests of the 1960s shows how this kind of election year reframing can work. Omar Wasow found that nonviolent civil rights protests produced marked gains at the polls for liberal candidates, who benefited because people began to pay more attention than they would have otherwise to the question of equality. This was in part because nonviolent protesters were more likely to be portrayed sympathetically in the media. On the other hand, violent protests, which were likely to be described as “riots,” prompted people to think more in terms of a social order frame, benefiting conservative candidates.

This brings us to what might be the most unexpected insight about protests and elections. The protest waves of recent generations are often described as the acts of the alienated. Our own research shows that this is true, but only to a certain extent: Those who organize mass street protests are usually critical of the establishment and wary of being taken advantage of. This means people generally do not instigate protests in order to produce particular election results.

Nonetheless, protests impact elections. The mobilized tend to stay mobilized, they tend to mobilize others, and their actions may reframe what the elections are about. Indeed, longstanding research shows us that the kind of alienation expressed in protest more often leads not to disengagement, but to greater immediate and long-term political involvement.

This is an election year in which protests will continue to occur. At best, the major political parties may be able to influence what protesters do. Empirical research suggests that those relying on support from aggrieved groups may find it helpful to emphasize nonviolence, but that discouraging protest, in general, may be counterproductive. The protests of the excluded and alienated will count on and beyond Election Day.

After all, in this contentious moment, the relative momentum of movements is likely to matter not only in voter turnout but also in the potentially tumultuous events that may follow November 5.