John E. McNulty

Partisan Effects of Voter Turnout in Senatorial and Gubernatorial Elections

Conventional wisdom holds that higher turnout favors Democrats. Previous studies of this hypothesis rely on presidential and House elections or on survey data, but senatorial and gubernatorial elections offer better conditions for directly testing turnout effects in U.S. politics. In a comprehensive analysis of these statewide elections since 1928, we find that the conventional theory was true outside the South through 1964, but since 1965 the overall relationship between turnout and partisan outcomes has been insignificant. Even before the mid-1960s, the turnout effect outside the South was strongest in Republican states and insignificant or negative in heavily Democratic states. A similar but weaker pattern obtains after 1964. In the South, which we analyze only since 1966, higher turnout helped Republicans until 1990, but in 1990–94 the effect became pro-Democratic. The conventional theory cannot account for these complex patterns, but they are impressively consistent with DeNardos (1980) theory.

Turning Out to Vote: The Costs of Finding and Getting to the Polling Place

Could changing the locations of polling places affect the outcome of an election by increasing the costs of voting for some and decreasing them for others? The consolidation of voting precincts in Los Angeles County during Californias 2003 gubernatorial recall election provides a natural experiment for studying how changing polling places influences voter turnout. Overall turnout decreased by a substantial 1.85 percentage points: A drop in polling place turnout of 3.03 percentage points was partially offset by an increase in absentee voting of 1.18 percentage points. Both transportation and search costs caused these changes. Although there is no evidence that the Los Angeles Registrar of Voters changed more polling locations for those registered with one party than for those registered with another, the changing of polling places still had a small partisan effect because those registered as Democrats were more sensitive to changes in costs than those registered as Republicans. The effects were small enough to allay worries about significant electoral consequences in this instance (e.g., the partisan effect might be decisive in only about one in two hundred contested House elections), but large enough to make it possible for someone to affect outcomes by more extensive manipulation of polling place locations.

Phone-Based GOTV—What’s on the Line? Field Experiments with Varied Partisan Components, 2002-2003:

Most of the recent literature that investigates voter turnout and mobilization finds little or no impact on turnout as a result of get-out-the-vote (GOTV) phone drives. This article describes four field experiments embedded within GOTV phone drives conducted in the San Francisco Bay Area in November 2002 and October 2003. One of the drives was strictly nonpartisan, two were explicitly partisan (Democratic), and the last was quasi-partisan in that it was explicitly in opposition to a municipal proposition. These experiments were designed to investigate whether GOTV phone drives are effective tools for increasing turnout. None of the GOTV phone drives with a partisan or quasi-partisan component resulted in a detectable increase in voter turnout. The overall results raise serious questions about the efficacy of GOTV phone drives, particularly those with the intent of affecting electoral outcomes.

Partisan Effects of Voter Turnout in Presidential Elections

Previous studies of turnout effects in U.S. elections have reported perplexingly different results for presidential as opposed to major statewide (senatorial and gubernatorial) contests. By justifying and applying a consistent methodology, the authors find that results for both types conform to the pattern previously reported by Nagel and McNulty for senatorial and gubernatorial races. Outside the South, higher turnout helped Democratic presidential candidates from 1928 through 1964. In 1968 through 1996, however, the impact of turnout in straight two-party contests was insignificant, except in the South, where Democrats benefited from higher turnout. In the earlier period, high turnout helped Democrats most in states where Republicans usually prevailed. Its effects became weaker or even pro-Republican in the most strongly Democratic states. All of these findings uphold DeNardos mathematical model, which provides an empirically supported theory of the partisan effects of turnout in U.S. presidential, senatorial, and gubernatorial elections.

Punch Card Technology and the Racial Gap in Residual Votes

Votomatic-style punch card voting systems produce higher rates of residual voting than other technologies, but the effect of punch card voting systems is not uniform. Minority voters are less likely to have their votes properly recorded with punch card systems than are nonminorities. This racial gap occurs, for the most part, because punch card systems lead to higher rates of “undervoting” by minorities. When election administrators switch to other systems, such as optical scan systems, the racial gap is significantly reduced. Punch card voting systems, then, constitute a disproportionate obstacle to minority voting. This effectively gives less weight to votes cast by minorities than to votes cast by nonminorities, and arguably violates constitutional requirements for equal voting rights. The mechanism is similar to the literacy tests that were abandoned after the 1970 amendments to the Voting Rights Act. The authors are grateful to UC Berkeleys Survey Research Center for research support and are deeply indebted to Henry E. Brady. Our thanks also to the anonymous reviewers and to the editorial staff at Perspectives on Politics for their helpful suggestions and hard work on our behalf.