Wednesday, November 12, 2025

Mass shootings spur local voter turnout but don’t sway presidential vote choices, study finds

UMass Amherst and Brennan Center researchers ID trends missed by earlier studies

University of Massachusetts Amherst

image:
Kelsey Shoub, associate professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Credit: University of Massachusetts Amherst

AMHERST, Mass. — Mass shootings can spur higher voter turnout in nearby communities, but the effect is highly localized and doesn’t appear to change how people vote for president, according to new findings from researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law.

The study, published today in Science Advances, analyzed whether mass shootings motivate Americans to vote—and if they change whom voters support at the polls.

“Mass shootings boost turnout generally, but especially in deeply blue areas [and] without changing minds,” says Kelsey Shoub, associate professor of public policy at UMass Amherst. “However, they do seem to move the needle on very specific gun-reform ballot initiatives.”

Using data from the Gun Violence Archive and nearly half a billion individual voter records, Shoub and Kevin Morris, senior research fellow at the Brennan Center, built one of the most detailed datasets yet to study this question. They compared turnout in neighborhoods located within 10 miles of mass shootings that occurred shortly before or after the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.

The results show mass shootings “mobilize local voters,” but their effects are limited in scope. Turnout surged by up to 10 percentage points in neighborhoods located within a half mile of a shooting in the weeks before an election. However, that boost disappeared beyond about five miles, indicating that the impact of mass violence on political behavior is highly localized.

The study also found that these turnout increases were concentrated in heavily Democratic areas. Voters in those communities were far more likely to cast ballots after a nearby mass shooting, while turnout in Republican-leaning neighborhoods barely changed.

Despite the increase in participation, the research found no evidence that mass shootings altered presidential vote choices. However, they did identify a potential link between shootings and support for gun-control measures.

In California, precincts located near a mass shooting before the 2016 election were significantly more likely to vote for Proposition 63, a ballot initiative requiring background checks for ammunition purchases and banning large-capacity magazines. The same pattern did not appear for other liberal ballot measures that year, suggesting that the effect was specific to gun policy.

Previous county-level studies found no connection between mass shootings and voter turnout. By analyzing smaller geographic units—census block groups and precincts—Shoub and Morris found that the political effects of mass shootings are real but geographically constrained.

While mass shootings may not reshape national elections, they can galvanize local communities and strengthen support for specific gun-reform efforts close to where tragedies occur, Shoub notes.

“For people who are looking for some sort of policy change, it might be better to pursue ballot initiatives than to pursue general voting strategies,” she adds.

Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adx5418

Article Title

The Effect of Mass Shootings on Voter Turnout in the United States

Article Publication Date

12-Nov-2025

The Quantum Cat: A Campaign For Science And The Culture Of Reason – OpEd

November 12, 2025
By K.M. Seethi

Image: From the author’s file

As the world’s technological frontiers race ahead of our collective understanding, science today stands both indispensable and contested. The twenty-first century has brought incredible progress in quantum computing, genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence, even as it has witnessed a resurgence of pseudoscience, denialism, and the ideological distortion of knowledge. The real challenge before modern societies is not simply to multiply discoveries, but to safeguard the very spirit of inquiry that makes discovery possibl

In the first week of November 2025, as the United Nations marks the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ 2025), the South Indian state of Kerala has added its own creative turn to the celebration. The Centre for Science in Society (C-SiS) at the Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) in collaboration with the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP) has launched the Quantum Cat campaign — a science exhibition and outreach movement that travels across ten districts. The exhibition opened on November 7 at CUSAT and will run through December, bringing to schools, colleges, and communities an experience of the “quantum century.”

But this is not just another science event. It gets underway at a critical moment when anti-science attitudes and pseudoscientific beliefs are gaining ground, encouraged by a political climate that seeks to rewrite knowledge through ideology. The Sangh Parivar’s attempts to dilute and distort scientific theories in curricula and promote mythical claims at official science events reflect a major crisis — the erosion of scientific temper, a constitutional duty that India once proudly upheld. Against this background, the campaign acquires crucial social meaning – it defends reason itself.

KSSP President Meera Bhai told this author that the initiative “seeks to promote science and scientific inquiry from the school level onwards,” continuing a long tradition that began with the Parishad’s legendary Halley’s Comet campaign in 1986. Then, too, KSSP fought superstition by turning fear into curiosity. Today, as irrationality resurfaces in new forms, such as astrology apps, miracle cures, WhatsApp “Vedic science,” the Quantum Cat becomes a new mascot of rational inquiry. Recent findings from Kerala Padanangal 2.0, KSSP’s statewide social survey, show that one in three people in Kerala still depend on astrology to make life decisions — a surprising figure in a state known for high literacy and human development. This coexistence of reason and belief, science and superstition, is precisely the paradox the campaign seeks to address.

The Century of Quantum Science

The International Year of Quantum Science and Technology commemorates a hundred years since the birth of quantum theory, the most successful and puzzling scientific framework ever devised. When Max Planck proposed in 1900 that energy comes in discrete “quanta,” he began a revolution. Einstein used that idea to explain light as particles, Bohr built his model of the atom, Heisenberg introduced the uncertainty principle, and Schrödinger described matter as waves. Together they showed that at the subatomic level, nature defies common sense. In the quantum world, particles exist in multiple states at once — a phenomenon called superposition — and remain mysteriously connected across vast distances through entanglement. Observation itself determines outcomes, making the observer part of reality. This radical idea — that measurement changes what is measured — has transformed every field of science.

Today, quantum principles underlie technologies that define modern life, from lasers, semiconductors, to solar cells, and GPS. They are now driving quantum computing and quantum communication, promising faster problem-solving and unbreakable data security. In chemistry and biology, quantum mechanics explains the structure of molecules, the efficiency of photosynthesis, and even how birds sense magnetic fields.

For some scientists, quantum mechanics defies classical explanation, operating in a realm where causality is uncertain and probability replaces determinism. Physicist Babu Joseph, former Vice-Chancellor of CUSAT, explains it more precisely: “The Schrödinger’s Cat captures the essence of quantum mechanics, which asserts that there is no observer-independent reality. The standard binary — exist or not — isn’t true. There can be combinations of varying degrees of possibilities until the observer interacts with the system.” That insight lies at the heart of the superposition principle, the backbone of quantum mechanics, he told this author.

Quantum science thus transforms how we see both matter and meaning. It teaches that reality is not fixed but relational, not given but discovered through interaction — a lesson as relevant to society as to physics.

The Cat in the Box: From Paradox to Possibility

Erwin Schrödinger’s famous cat was never real. Conceived in 1935, it was a thought experiment to expose the absurd implications of early quantum theory. In Schrödinger’s imaginary box, a cat’s life depends on a random atomic event. Until someone opens the box, the cat is both alive and dead — a paradox meant to question how far quantum laws can extend into the visible world.

Modern physics resolves the puzzle through decoherence: real cats interact with their environment, collapsing the ambiguity long before observation. However, the Quantum Cat survived in imagination, literature, and popular science — precisely because it dramatises the central mystery of observation and reality. It asks a timeless question: Can we know the world without changing it? For KSSP’s campaigners, this cat is a metaphor for scientific curiosity. It provokes questions — How can something be alive and dead at once? What does observation mean? — and in doing so, it invites thinking, reasoning, and dialogue.

The cat also teaches humility. It reminds us that nature does not always obey our common sense, and that our perceptions are limited. In a society where superstition often pretends as wisdom, such humility is a moral necessity. As Meera Bhai noted, “KSSP’s science campaigns have always connected wonder with reason — from Halley’s Comet to the Quantum Cat — to make people see the beauty of questioning.”

Used symbolically, Schrödinger’s cat bridges imagination and logic. It tells students that science is not dry or distant but full of wonder and paradox. It shows that curiosity and creativity belong together. And in public life, it becomes a counter-symbol — against fatalism, dogma, and blind belief.

The Quantum Imagination

Over the past century, quantum ideas have travelled far beyond the laboratory, shaping the way philosophers and social scientists think about knowledge, perception, and reality. Just as a quantum particle can exist in many states until observed, societies too can contain multiple, often contradictory realities — rational and irrational, secular and superstitious, progressive and reactionary — coexisting beneath the surface. These contradictions persist until some event, such as an election, a protest, or a crisis, forces them into view and “collapses” them into a single, visible outcome.

In this sense, Schrödinger’s Cat has become more than a symbol of physics; it is a metaphor for social life itself. People may believe in science yet rely on superstition, or support equality while practising exclusion. Sociologists have long explored such tensions. Émile Durkheim described societies as combining both mechanical and organic solidarity; Georg Simmel’s “stranger” is simultaneously near and distant; Karl Marx’s theory of alienation shows workers as both creative and estranged. These examples illustrate that ambiguity and coexistence, not clarity and uniformity, often define modern life.

Thus, quantum metaphors remind us that uncertainty is not the absence of understanding but a sign of complexity — and that observation itself, whether in science or society, changes what is observed. To recognise this is to accept responsibility: the act of looking, questioning, and interpreting is also an act of participation. In this sense, the observer effect is not limited to physics. Every social study, every public debate, every act of journalism alters what it observes. Recognising this responsibility — the role of agency — is a vital part of both scientific and civic inquiry. The Quantum Cat, seen in this light, becomes a symbol of reflective citizenship: one that questions, observes, and acts, knowing that observation affects reality.

The link between science and society defines KSSP’s legacy. Founded in 1962, it has grown beyond a science club into a people’s science movement connecting empirical reasoning with social progress. Its campaigns on environment, energy, health, and education have always sought to make knowledge democratic and life-oriented. The Quantum Cat campaign continues this mission, using a global scientific breakthrough to renew Kerala’s commitment to rational thought. From Halley’s Comet to Quantum Cat, the message remains the same – science belongs to the people. In 1986, KSSP volunteers explained that comets were celestial bodies, not omens, and forty years later, they travel again, showing that the cat is a metaphor for observation and reason. The persistence of astrology and pseudo-science reveals that education alone cannot ensure enlightenment. What is needed, as KSSP calls vijnanabodh, is the consciousness of science as a way of life—anchored in curiosity, scepticism, and empathy.

Toward a Culture of Reason

The Quantum Cat campaign, therefore, is not just a celebration of physics. It is a cultural intervention, telling that science and democracy share the same foundation – reasoned freedom. In an era when faith is marketed as fact and propaganda as knowledge, the defence of reason becomes a moral act.

Quantum theory offers a powerful metaphor for today’s struggle between reason and unreason. It shows that reality is not binary but a field of probabilities influenced by interaction, just as social progress depends on participation, dialogue, and openness. The spirit of quantum thought underlines democratic inquiry. In this sense, KSSP’s Quantum Cat invites young minds to look into the “box” of their own world, to question, observe, and think freely. It tells us that curiosity is not disobedience, doubt is not weakness, and imagination is part of knowledge.

As Babu Joseph says, “The Newtonian cat is either dead or alive; the quantum cat is both—until you look.” So too with society, it holds both reason and prejudice until we choose which to see. The campaign restores science’s humane meaning, not as apparatus but as a way of knowing that dignifies life and keeps curiosity alive amid ideological darkness.

K.M. Seethi

K.M. Seethi is is Director, Inter University Centre for Social Science Research and Extension (IUCSSRE), Mahatma Gandhi University (MGU), Kerala. He also served as ICSSR Senior Fellow, Senior Professor of International Relations and Dean of Social Sciences at MGU. One of his latest works is "ENDURING DILEMMA Flashpoints in Kashmir and India-Pakistan Relations."

Rainfall and temperature shape mosquito fauna in Atlantic Forest bromeliads, including malaria vectors

Results from a study conducted in a natural area in the municipality of São Paulo (Brazil) may help estimate the effects of climate change on disease transmission risk in the biome.

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo

The transmission of malaria by the Anopheles cruzii mosquito in the South and Southeast of Brazil was so alarming in the 1940s – with approximately 4,000 cases per 100,000 people – that the disease became known as bromeliad malaria. This is because the Kerteszia subgenus of the mosquito, which transmits the disease in the Atlantic Forest, develops only in bromeliads, plants that accumulate water and maintain conditions favorable for the development of this and other species.

Although malaria is now a minor concern in the region, it still has epidemiological importance. There were 77 confirmed cases in the state of São Paulo alone between 2017 and 2024. Therefore, understanding the life cycle of the vectors and the conditions necessary for their survival is essential to preventing the disease from ravaging this part of Brazil as well, since it is endemic in the Amazon.

In a study published in the journal Scientific Reports, a group led by researchers from the University of São Paulo’s School of Public Health (FSP-USP) monitored the presence of larvae in bromeliads in the Capivari-Monos Environmental Protection Area (APA) for two years.

The results indicate that rainfall and temperature directly affect the volume of water accumulated in the bromeliad tanks. This volume, in turn, modifies the physical and chemical characteristics of the water, such as pH and dissolved oxygen. These changes can influence which species of mosquitoes can develop inside the plants and in what quantities. The data may be useful for future epidemiological studies and for predicting possible disease outbreaks.

“There are studies that point to a change in malaria transmission patterns as a consequence of climate change. In these projections, some regions of East Africa and South America would become more prone, while current endemic areas could experience declines in rates due to excessive warming. For these and other reasons, it’s necessary to understand the factors that contribute to the success of vectors,” says Antonio Ralph Medeiros de Sousa, the first author of the study and a researcher at FSP-USP who received a scholarship from FAPESP.

The work also received support from the Foundation through two projects coordinated by Mauro Toledo Marrelli, a professor at FSP-USP: “Investigation of the climatic and landscape variations effects on the vectors and on the spatial and temporal dynamics of sylvatic yellow fever and autochthonous malaria in fragments of the Atlantic Forest in the State of São Paulo, Brazil” and “Biodiversity of mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) in Cantareira State Park and the Capivari-Monos environmental protection area, State of São Paulo”. The latter project was funded through FAPESP’s Research Program on Biodiversity Characterization, Conservation, Restoration and Sustainable Use (BIOTA).

Data

The data were collected from 2015 to 2017 during Sousa’s doctoral studies. During this period, the researcher visited the same nine bromeliad specimens at three points in the Capivari-Monos Environmental Protection Area in the Parelheiros neighborhood in the southernmost part of the municipality of São Paulo.

During each of the ten collections, the amount of water accumulated by each plant was measured, as well as the pH, salinity, and dissolved oxygen levels. Larvae from the present mosquitoes were collected. Later, in the laboratory, the larvae were developed, and the species, or when this was not possible, the genus of each mosquito, was identified. The dataset also included rainfall and maximum and minimum temperatures in the 30 days prior to collection.

The researchers analyzed the data using statistical models that tested a cascade effect, in which an initial disturbance (variation in rainfall and/or temperature) affects other components in a sequence of connected processes. First, they analyzed the effect of accumulated rainfall and average monthly temperature on the volume of water stored in bromeliads. Then, they examined the relationship between volume and variations in the physical and chemical properties of the water, such as pH, salinity, and dissolved oxygen.

Next, they investigated the relationship between these parameters and the occurrence, richness, and abundance of mosquitoes in bromeliads, considering only species that occurred five or more times during the study period. Finally, they explored the direct and indirect effects of precipitation and temperature on physical-chemical parameters and mosquito fauna.

A total of 523 individuals belonging to 23 species were collected, including Anopheles cruzii, a malaria vector; Culex; and Wyeomyia. The latter two genera are not involved in disease transmission cycles, but their bites can cause discomfort when they are abundant. Each bromeliad contained between seven and 15 species, only ten of which occurred five or more times throughout the study.

The richness and abundance of mosquitoes varied in relation to pH, salinity, and the interaction between these two parameters. In general, pH was the parameter most associated with the presence of five of the ten species tested, including the malaria vector.

“In a scenario of changing rainfall and temperature patterns, there may be an increase in the abundance of the malaria vector, with consequences for public health. However, it’s important to remember that Anopheles cruzii is wild, unlike the dengue vector, Aedes aegypti, which is urban. Therefore, the way to deal with it is different,” Sousa points out.

The researcher refers to control measures since insecticides cannot be used, as with the dengue, Zika, and chikungunya vectors, nor can bromeliads be uprooted, as was done during past malaria outbreaks in the Southeast to control mosquitoes.

On the other hand, it is important to consider the natural controls of mosquitoes in the wild, such as predation and competition with other species. “Perhaps the effect of the increase in Anopheles isn’t as drastic as it’d be for an urban species,” the researcher notes.

Nevertheless, it is important to understand and monitor mosquitoes because malaria in the Atlantic Forest may be zoonotic, meaning it can infect non-human primates, such as howler monkeys. These monkeys can then infect mosquitoes that could transmit the disease to humans.

While the study does not suggest an imminent risk of malaria spreading, it sheds light on how the environment influences vector populations. This knowledge is essential for predicting possible future scenarios, especially in the context of climate change.

“Climate change, urban expansion, deforestation, and biodiversity loss are all factors that could interfere with transmission dynamics in the future. That’s why it’s important for public authorities to be vigilant,” the researcher concludes.

About São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)
The São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) is a public institution with the mission of supporting scientific research in all fields of knowledge by awarding scholarships, fellowships and grants to investigators linked with higher education and research institutions in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research can only be done by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, higher education, private companies, and research organizations in other countries known for the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration. You can learn more about FAPESP at www.fapesp.br/en and visit FAPESP news agency at www.agencia.fapesp.br/en to keep updated with the latest scientific breakthroughs FAPESP helps achieve through its many programs, awards and research centers. You may also subscribe to FAPESP news agency at http://agencia.fapesp.br/subscribe.