- November 02, 2026
- By Gregory Muraski
While political campaigns spend hundreds of millions of dollars on door-knocks, social media ads and phone banks to move voter turnout by a mere point or two, a new study co-authored by a University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business researcher points to a more decisive driver of civic engagement: the American workplace.
The working paper posted to SSRN by Assistant Professor Reuben Hurst — alongside co-authors from the University of Michigan, Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Columbia University — represents one of the largest empirical studies of workplace voter turnout to date.
To uncover how employer culture influences voting habits, the research team connected LinkedIn employment records to public U.S. voter files for 377,000 employers, covering 30 million American workers. Then they tracked 8 million workers who changed jobs to see if workplaces actually influence behavior, or if civically engaged people simply tend to cluster at specific employers.
Among the findings, people who move to a workplace with a stronger culture of civic participation become more likely to vote. Employees who move from employers with relatively low voter participation to those with much higher participation see an even greater increase in their likelihood of voting.
The impact was consistent across political affiliations and was especially strong in primary elections, where turnout is often low. The researchers also found that civic habits developed at work can influence household members and continue even after employees leave the company.
The study's practical implications were recently highlighted in a Fortune commentary by business leaders Tom Florsheim Jr. of Weyco Group and Adam Goodman of Goodmans Interior Structures. They pointed to straightforward steps employers can take to encourage civic engagement, including flexible work schedules, clear communication about voting deadlines, paid time off to vote or serve as poll workers, and workplace voter registration efforts.