People who smoke cigarettes are 60 percent less likely to vote than their non-smoking peers, according to a new study from the University of Colorado Cancer Center.
It's the first study linking a health-risk behavior to electoral participation, researchers said. A previous Swedish study found an association between smoking and political mistrust.
"On one hand, the result is intuitive. We know from previous research that smokers are an increasingly marginalized population, involved in fewer organizations and activities and with less interpersonal trust than nonsmokers," said Karen Albright, study author and assistant professor at the Colorado School of Public Health. "But what our research suggests is that this marginalization may also extend beyond the interpersonal level to attitudes toward political systems and institutions."
Researchers contacted 11,626 people through random digit dialing and asked a number of questions relating to demographic, social and behavioral factors, including smoking behaviors and whether the respondent had voted in a recent election.
Seventeen percent of respondents were smokers. With all other variables held constant, including socioeconomic status variables that were strongly associated with smoking, the study found that daily smokers were 60 percent less likely to vote than nonsmokers.
Albright said that her team hasn't been able to determine why exactly it is that smokers are less likely to vote, but noted that one possibility is that "smokers may view political institutions as oppressors, given widespread enactment of tobacco taxes and clean indoor air laws."
As of April 2, 2015, a total of 36 states and the District of Columbia had laws in effect banning smoking in non-hospitality workplaces, restaurants, bars and/or state-run gambling establishments, according to the American Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation. Nearly 82 percent of the population live in an area where smoking is prohibited in those establishments.
"Somewhat similarly, the stigma associated with smoking may create social withdrawal or feelings of depression or fatalism among smokers, which could decrease voting," according to the study.
Albright said researchers are "getting a clearer picture of the 'what' and soon hope it will be time to talk to individual smokers in the populations to start exploring the 'why.'"
