Changing the Scope of Conflict? Voter Registration and George Floyd’s Murder

Prior work has often studied how focusing events---in particular police killings of unarmed people---affect citizens' attitudes. Do focusing events also affect citizens' behaviors---changing the scope of conflict by incorporating prospective voters into the political system? We take as an empirical case the murder of George Floyd. Using nationwide voter file data from the U.S. ($N$ $\approx$ 200 million), we leverage regression discontinuity in time methods to show Floyd's murder noticeably increased voter registration. These effects are present across many individual subgroups---both on the left and the right---and geographic locations. Floyd's untimely death sparked many people from previously marginalized backgrounds to register, but simultaneously also increased registrations among the politically advantaged---thus mitigating any impact on the partisan balance of power. In short, high profile traumatic events like Floyd's death do not appear to disproportionately advantage groups seeking reforms to change the circumstances surrounding his death.