Chilly turnout for a hot election
Despite all the heat in this week's 23rd Congressional district special election, turnout was quite low--only 30% of registered voters turned out to cast their ballots--125,000 out of 410,000 registered voters, acoording to unofficial results.
While presidential years usually have higher turnout--48.5% in NY-23 in 2008 and 55% in 2004, turnout was still way down from the last midterm vote, 2006, when 41.2% come out for an uninspiring rematch between a popular incumbent, John McHugh, and the Democratic candidate, Bob Johnson, whom McHugh had easily defeated in 2004.
Despite the unprecedented amount of money and rhetoric expended on the 2009 campaigns a huge number of voters just stayed home.
What does this say about the effect of the national spotlight that was turned on NY-23? Did the massive negativity of the ad war and the incessant robo-calls actually suppress turnout? Did this amplify the impact of get-out-the-vote efforts? Did the results accurately reflect the views of the district? Does low turnout undermine the importance of the vote when trying to extrapolate its import for NY politics in the future?
Plenty of room to read it either way.
Labels: election09
posted by Dale Hobson @ 11/05/2009 09:17:00 AM
16 Comments
16 Comments:
With so many union households in the district and their massive GOTV machines that could have accounted for a disproportionate part of the total votes.
I'm sure the overwhelming negative tenor of the recent campaign inspired a certain amount of "a pox on all 3 of your houses" reaction in some (non)-voters but the continuing downward trend in participation is a concern.
Theunderlying reason must be that people just don't see that whoever wins or loses, the results just don't affect them.
George Will points out that in early 1930's elections in Germany, turnout was over 90 percent because people understood that the winners would decide who went to concentration camps.
OTOH in the late 19th century in a series of presidential elections that no one but history buffs remembers today, turnout was routinely over 80 percent. One theory is that in those pre-TV, movies, internet days, campaigns were a major source of public entertainment.
Apathy. Sheer apathy. How many people have you run into that know everything about sports or some tv show but can't tell you who the Sec State is much less who their Congressman is or what national or local issues are on the table.
Apathy. It's a product of the times and culture.
I'm with Bret....Apathy is the best explanation. And most youngsters could care less about anything as long as they have the latest sleek, cell phone in their palm. It's sad as to how uninformed most of them are.
Dale,
48.5% turnout in a special election is actually higher than what is often reported. Most of the time when turnout is reported the denominator is either VEP (voting eligible population) or VAP (voting age population); using registered voters actually increases the product of the calculation. This said, the typical turnout in midterms and special elections is a little above or below 30% (vep).
Low turnout can't be explained by the negativity of the campaigns. Contrary to other posts or conventional wisdom, negative ads and "negative" campaigns actually increase voter knowledge of issues, candidates, parties, and positively influence turnout.
What drives turnout up is competition, strong party attachments (partisans understand that elections matter), and information (particularly people who obtain their news by reading newspapers). There are lots of others too but these are arguably most important for this discussion.
JPM
Bret: Apathy might explain low turnout in general, but does not explain the extraordinarily low 30% turnout in a hot election like this, compared with 42.5% turnout for a dull one in 2006.
Anon 1:20 pm said "48.5% turnout in a special election is actually higher than what is often reported."
Yes it would be, except that 48.5% was the turnout in 2008 in NY-23 during the presidential contest. This week's Special Election in NY-23 only turned out 30%.
John McHugh's re-election in 2006 may have been pro forma, but with Hillary Clinton and Spitzer on the ballot, you can't really say the 2006 midterms were ithout star power.
Fred--Good point about Spitzer and Clinton--they did enliven the 2006 contest. But to get turnout numbers as low as this week's special election, you have to go back to the midterm election of 2002, when McHugh ran unopposed.
Let's remember that this was a 35 day campaign. It resembled a Canadian snap election more than a regular campaign over several months where ideas and issues can be developed and discussed. Another factor is that there have been millions of words written about NY-23, and most of them are about ism's, and national politics, not the region and what is important to citizens.
Dale,
Oops, my mistake on referencing the 48.5% turnout figure.
Taking the 30% figure for this election(registered voters in the denominator) suggests greater turnout than what's often reported (VAP or VEP). And, this was the point of my earlier post except that the commonly reported data are actually worse. VAP turnout for this week's 23rd CD special election is 20.5%.
[note: 476,034 persons of voting age in the 23rd CD NYSboard of elections data].
Getting in on the discussion of the 2006 Spitzer Fasso race, Spitzer's lead in the polls depressed turnout. Spitzer was so far ahead in the race that the outcome was a foregone conclusion weeks before election day. His vote share was 70% (69.5). His "starpower" might have enlivened the contest, whatever that means, but it didn't drive turnout, competition, particularly in first order elections, encourages turnout. And there was a lack of it in 2006.
What's surprising is that with the level of competition in the 23rd race (albeit a second order election) is that turnout was so low. It's rather depressing.
jpm
It was to be expected once Dede dropped out. My opinion. A lot of her supporters just did not vote and I think that is the reason it did not hit the 40% range.
An earlier Sienna Poll showed that only 2% of Hoffman supporters would even bother to vote if he dropped out. Why would anyone not think Dede's supporters were as committed to her?
Anon 9:05 may have a good point. Unless you had something special going on in your own town election, there really wasn't anything else noteworthy (I know - I'll get flack for not giving the 2 propositions more cred but they were a couple of no brainers anyway) So, if you're a Dede supporter and couldn't bring yourself to vote for anyone else and nothing special on the ballot in your town, why go? (that's a rhetorical "why go?"... even if you don't flip a lever, showing up and going into the booth is a right and responsibility)
My town had a hotly contested election for 2 board seats and supervisor - very large turnout for an off year election - over 60% of registered voters.
Mark, town of Franklin
I think outside money really distorted this race. Dede wins 5 Assembly races by large margins. People knew her, liked her, felt she is one of us even when we disagree with her. Suddenly we have outsiders and outside money tearing her down and telling us she isn't for us. It all became about ideology, not us and our issues. We the citizens were not well served by this election.
Am I mistaken or didn't Dede take a large amount of money from the RNC? I kept hearing $900,000.00 If that's correct, then why is Dede's outside money okay, but Owens and Hoffmans isn't?
All sides took in outside funds. I guess the question should be what percentage of the overall funding received by each candidate came from outside of the district and from whom?
To be fair, perhaps the bulk of Doug's funding had to come from heavy hitting "Conservative" think tanks and organizations because he got involved in the race only a few months back. This may explain why Doug didn't or couldn't fall back on fundraising the "old fashioned way."
The other equally valid explanation as to where the bulk of his funding came from could be that Doug had initially backed
Dede and then turned on her. This certainly could have resulted in a lot of potential donors holding onto their hard earned cash as way of punishment.
Next year will be interesting...
It was all fair because Nobody lacked funding. They all spent and spent big.
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