Voter turnout in the 2010 midterm election

Forum

Volumn 8, Issue 4, 2010, Pages

  McDonald, Michael P ^a  

^a GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

2010 midterm election; political participation; turnout; voting

Indexed keywords

EID: 79951528319     PISSN: None     EISSN: 15408884     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2202/1540-8884.1406     Document Type: Article

References (28)

1. As of this writing, seven states have not reported their certified election results. For updated turnout statistics, see: http://elections.gmu.edu/ Turnout-2010G.html (accessed Dec. 12, 2010).
2. A portion of the lower contemporary levels of voter turnout is due to extension of voting rights to eighteen- year-olds through adoption of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. In 2006, according to the Current Population Survey, eighteen- to twenty-year-olds constituted 8.9% of the citizen population. Of these, only 20.8% reported voting. If these young people are removed from the voting-eligible population and those who voted are removed from the electorate, the 2010 turnout rate would have been approximately 42.6%. So, the extension of voting rights to younger voters explains some, but not all, of the lower turnout by comparison to the world pre-1972. For reports and access to CPS data, see: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/socdemo/voting/ index.html (accessed Dec. 12, 2010).
3. See: http://elections.gmu.edu/2010-vote-forecasts.html (accessed Dec. 12, 2010).
4. Residual vote in the 2008 and 2004 presidential elections was equally 1.0%, compared to a 1.9% residual vote rate in 2000. This post-HAVA reduction in residual vote is consistent with the midterm election patterns. However, note that residual vote in presidential elections is lower than in midterm elections, perhaps because fewer voters intentionally abstain from the high-profile presidential election.
5. State turnout rates are not exactly comparable to the national turnout rate because I do not apportion an estimate of the overseas citizens among the states. I provide an estimate of the overseas citizens apportioned among the states starting in 2008. Since I make comparisons to 2006, I do not apply the state-level overseas citizen adjustment to the analysis here.
6. Note that Texas has not certified its elections results as of this writing. The state's turnout rate may change when the certified results are reported, but it unlikely to change significantly. Thus, Texas is likely to have the lowest state turnout rate or near it.
7. E.g., see: Benjamin Highton. 1997. "Easy Registration and Voter Turnout." The Journal of Politics 59(2): 565-75;
8. Stephen Knack. 1995. "Does 'Motor Voter' Work? Evidence from State-Level Data." The Journal of Politics 57(3): 796-811;
9. Michael P. McDonald. 2008. "Portable Voter Registration." Political Behavior 30(4): 491-501;
10. Glenn E. Mitchell and Christopher Wlezien. 1995. "The Impact of Legal Constraints on Voter Registration, Turnout, and the Composition of the American electorate." Political Behavior 17(2): 179-202;
11. Staci L. Rhine. 1992. "An Analysis of the Impact of Registration Factors on Turnout in 1992." Political Behavior 18(2): 171-85. (Pubitemid 126309670)
12. These states are Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota (no registration), Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
13. I review the extensive and somewhat conflicting literature on early voting in my written testimony to the U.S. Senate Rules and Administration Committee on May 3, 2010. See: http://elections.gmu.edu/McDonald-Senate- Testimony-2010.pdf (accessed Dec. 13, 2010).
14. These states above the median state turnout rate are California, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington. Arizona was below the median.
15. E.g., see: Jeffrey A. Karp and Susan A. Banducci. 2000. "Going Postal: How All-Mail Elections Influence Turnout." Political Behavior 22(3): 223-29;
16. Adam J. Berinsky, Nancy Burns, and Michael W. Traugott 2001 "Who Votes by Mail? A Dynamic Model of the Individual-level Consequences of Vote-by-Mail Systems." Public Opinion Quarterly 65(2): 178-97;
17. Priscilla L. Southwell and Justin Burchett. 2000. "The Effect of All-mail Elections on Voter Turnout." American Politics Research 28(1): 72-79.
18. E.g., see: Jan E. Leighley, and Jonathan Nagler. 1992. "Socioeconomic Class Bias in Turnout, 1964-1988: The Voters Remain the Same." The American Political Science Review 86(3): 725-36;
19. Raymond E. Wolfinger and Stephen Rosenstone. 1980. Who Votes? New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
20. Data is for educational attainment among persons age 25 and older drawn from the 2009 American Community Survey. See: http://www.census.gov/acs/www/ (accessed Dec. 13, 2010).
21. For a meta-analysis, see: Andre Blais. 2000. To Vote Or Not To Vote? The Merits and Limits of Rational Choice. Pittsburgh: Univ. Pittsburgh Press.
22. The three states below the median were Mississippi, New Jersey, and Virginia. The state above the median was Montana, which has Election Day registration and a highly educated electorate. Although I do not perform a multivariate analysis here, Montana is illustrative of the benefit of controlling for multiple confounding factors using statistical tools.
23. In Mississippi's District 1 the 2010 margin of victory was 14.4 percentage points compared to 31.9 in 2006; 219,093 votes were cast for U.S. House candidates in 2010 compared with 144,272 in 2006. In District 4 the 2010 margin of victory was 5.1 percentage points compared to 59.6 in 2006; 203,384 votes were cast in 2010 compared to 139,113 in 2006. Turnout also increased slightly in the state's other two congressional districts, which also experienced slightly greater electoral competition.
24. See Texas State Statutes 13.143(a).
25. For reports and access to CPS data, see: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/ socdemo/voting/index.html (accessed Dec. 12, 2010).
26. An excellent source for exit polls is the New York Times, which provides several easy to use interfaces to explore the data. See: http://elections. nytimes.com/2010/results/house/exit-polls(accessed Dec. 13, 2010)
27. E.g., see: Gregory B. Markus. 1983. "Dynamic Modeling of Cohort Change: The Case of Political Partisanship." American Journal of Political Science 27(4): 717-39
28. M. Kent Jennings and Gregory B. Markus. 1984. "Partisan Orientations over the Long Haul: Results from the Three-Wave Political Socialization Panel Study." The American Political Science Review 78(4): 1000-18.