Student Loan Debt and Participation in American National Elections

More than 40 million American adults have student loan debt and collectively owe approximately $1.8 trillion. Despite the societal importance of student loan debt, we know little about its consequences for electoral behavior. I address this oversight here by testing the relationship between student loan debt and participation in American national elections. I do so with pooled cross-sectional survey data from the 2016–2020 Cooperative Election Studies (CES). Net of various demographics, political interest, and campaign contact, I find that Americans with student loan debt are significantly more likely to vote and engage electorally than their counterparts without student loan debt. In short, student loan debt appears to spur political engagement, rather than withdrawal. I attribute these findings to the nature of student loan debt, relative to other types of financial burdens, specifically its connection to the federal government. Overall, these findings help to advance collective knowledge regarding the political consequences of student loan debt and help us to better understand how economic burdens shape mass politics.