Decline of Voter Turnout

The greatest challenge for the oldest representative democracy in the world, the United States, is that of decreasing levels of voter turnout. The modus operandi of democracy is that in some fashion the citizenry are sovereign, and the political system gets its legitimacy from their opinions alone. Yet over the last four decades the percentage of voters turning out for elections has been on a long term decline, beginning albeit more slowly during the early twentieth century and accelerating after the 1960s. The reasons given for this phenomenon are numerous, everything from expansions to voter franchise to the decline in community participation. A larger theory for such a major and continuous trend is what is needed to make sense of these explanations, to discern a general reason for the decline in voter turnout. An examination of these explanations jointly demonstrates that the rise of non-voting in the United States is due to rational decision making by a significant part of the population to changes in the political system and American society itself. These decisions have major consequences for the future of American democracy, the greatest being a distortion of which policy preferences the political system pays attention to and by exacerbating political polarization despite a lack of matched polarization of the public.

Since the 1960s the United States has undergone dramatic social change. De jure segregation has been abolished, we are more tolerant of different lifestyle choices, and community participation has declined. Some of these changes matter more than others for explaining the decline in voter participation. The twenty sixth amendment lowered the voting age to 18 from 21 in time for the 1972 Presidential election. More people are in prison or have been incarcerated than in the 1960s following a rise in crime levels and the expansion of the War on Drugs among other things. This has increased the population of those who are not eligible to vote. The increase in immigration particularly the illegal variety since the 1980s has also increased the population of those living in America who cannot vote, even though they are counted by the census. These demographic factors aren't enough to explain the decline however. The estimated ineligible population is only 3-5% of the population, if they were included the turnout rate for the 2012 election would rise from 53.6% to 58.2% (Flanigan 2015). Even with the rise in the ineligible population, turnout is still lower even if at a lower percentage.

The social changes which have influenced turnout are the decline of political machines, the dwindling of competitive races, and declining union membership. These changes affect the benefits of voting for the eligible population by making political participation not in the voter’s interest or convincing them it isn’t. The decline in voter participation began in the early twentieth century, partly due to Southern states disenfranchising black voters, but mostly due to anti-corruption reforms. The introduction of the secret ballot, replacing party-line ballots, and voter registration laws reduced the incentive to vote as a public display of loyalty to a political machine and made it harder for immigrants and the poor to vote. Also during this time elections became less competitive. Republicans held the Presidency for 28 years from 1896 to 1932 and held Congress for all but 10 years in the House, and the Senate for all but 8 of those 36 years. In recent years Presidential elections by state and most Congressional races are not competitive. In 1992 the number of swing districts, those within five percentage points of the Presidential vote, was 103. By 2012 the number is 35 (Silver 2012). In Presidential races the number of swing states is now eight or ten out of fifty. Turnout was 9% lower in 2012 than in 2008 in the forty non-competitive states, while turnout stayed the same or increased in the swing states (Silver 2012). Also reducing the incentive to vote is the decline in union membership. Labor union membership peaked at 28% in the late 1960s and today is at less than 12% (Madland and Bunker 2012). There is a positive correlation with union membership and voting, other nations with a higher percentage of the workforce unionized have higher turnout levels as do states with higher levels of unionization. This is because unions decrease the cost of voting and increase the benefits by providing organization and money. Unions educate and organize workers much like political machines used to do.

These changes have reduced voter turnout because they reduce the incentives to vote. The barriers to voting have been reduced over the last several decades without increasing turnout. The Motor Voter Act of 1993 made it easier to register to vote by providing registration forms at government offices, several states adopted voting by mail in the 1990s, and after the 2000 election Congress enacted the Help America Vote Act which allowed provisional ballots and gave states money to move to electronic voting. Still turnout has not increased significantly. The result has been that the political system reflects the preferences of the wealthy and business, who vote and spend more on politics. Studies on government policy outcomes for the last 20 years show that the preferences of average and low income citizens have little to no influence. The preferences of economic elites were 15 times as important (Bartels 2014). This also reflects the growing amount of money in politics, but is partly attributed to the drop off in voting among ordinary Americans. Polarization is also affected by non-voting. While Washington has become more polarized, the majority of Americans remain in the center. Only 21% of Americans are consistently liberal or conservative, while 39% are mixed in their opinions (Steenkiste 2014). Ideological voters are much more likely to vote, creating a feedback loop where political parties and candidates spend and campaign to reach these voters. Those with mixed opinions regularly vote less than 40% of the time, while conservatives and liberals regularly vote more than 60% of the time. Both these trends bode poorly for the world’s oldest democratic republic and are exacerbated by the decline in voter turnout.

(For a political behavior and elections class)