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The Effects of Turnout on Partisan Outcomes in U.S.
Presidential Elections 1960–2000
Michael D. Martinez
University of Florida
Jeff Gill
University of California—Davis
It is commonly believed by pundits and political elites that higher turnout favors Democratic candidates, but the extant research is inconsistent in finding this effect. The purpose of this article is to
provide scholars with a methodology for assessing the likely effects of turnout on an election outcome
using simulations based on survey data. By varying simulated turnout rates for five U.S. elections
from 1960 to 2000, we observe that Democratic advantages from higher turnout (and Republican
advantages from lower turnout) have steadily ebbed since 1960, corresponding to the erosion of class
cleavages in U.S. elections.
While there are volumes in the scholarly literature explaining why some
individuals vote and others do not, as well as explaining variations in aggregatelevel turnout between countries and between states, the literature on whether
turnout matters in political outcomes is less well developed. There is, however,
an enduring question about whether turnout has substantial effects on who wins
and loses partisan elections. In this paper, we review the theoretical foundations
of the debate about whether higher election turnout advantages leftist parties,
suggest a method of assessing the effects of turnout within a single election, and
provide evidence from five U.S. elections that the partisan effects of turnout have
eroded, concurrent to the decline in the class cleavage in partisanship in the
United States.
Conventional political wisdom conveyed by practitioners and pundits suggests
that there is an obvious relationship between turnout and partisan electoral outcomes. To most amateur observers, prodding, cajoling, coaxing, mobilizing, or
forcing more people to vote should bring a larger proportion of poorer and less
educated into the electorate, which should naturally benefit leftist parties that
support more liberal social welfare benefits (Erikson 1995). Conversely, conservative parties should generally benefit from institutional factors that depress
turnout, including restrictive registration laws (Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980),
less convenient voting options (Southwell and Burchett 2000), and the fractured
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THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, Vol. 67, No. 4, November 2005, Pp. 1248–1274
© 2005 Southern Political Science Association
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The Effects of Turnout on Partisan Outcomes
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responsibility that results from indecisive elections (Blais 2000 27–32; Jackman
1987).
Empirical investigations into this simple question have produced widely
varying results. There is support for the conventional wisdom that higher levels
of participation are associated with greater success of Democrats in Presidential
elections (Radcliff 1994), at least in some states (Tucker, Vedlitz, and DeNardo
1986). Some scholars claim that this finding travels well, based on cross-national
analyses of turnout and support for left-leaning parties in 19 western democracies (Pacek and Radcliff 1995), and analyses of the impact of turnout on support
for Communist successor parties in fifteen post-Communist countries (Bohrer,
Pacek, and Radcliff 2000) and left parties in elections for the European Parliament (Pacek and Radcliff 2003). On the other hand, there is also some evidence
that indicates a negative relationship between higher turnout and Democratic vote
shares in California Assembly Districts, 1992 Clinton vote shares in U.S. states,
and Democratic gains in Congressional elections (Wuffle and Collet 1997).
A few analyses suggest that the relationship between turnout and election outcomes is variable (Citrin, Shickler, and Sides 2003), contingent on the party-class
linkage (Pacek and Radcliff 1995; Przeworski and Sprague 1988), or on the partisan composition of the district and the strength of the short-term forces which
cause peripheral voters to defect (DeNardo 1980; Grofman, Owen, and Collet
1999; Nagel and McNulty 1996, 2000). Finally, some investigations based on
presidential election results in non-Southern U.S. states (Erikson 1995) and comparisons across eighteen nations (Tóka 2000) suggest either null or very minimal
partisan consequences stemming from normal variations in turnout. Most simply
of all, DeNardo’s (1980, 407) scatterplot of turnout and the Democratic presidential candidates’ share of the vote (which we extend through the 2004 elections
in Figure 1) shows wide variations both above and below a flat regression line.1
Such a simple and obvious question (which is not even a question to many lay
observers) has created a muddle of findings.
Theory
In essence, the conventional “lay” wisdom rests on the foundation of the
Columbia school of electoral analysis. To borrow Lipset’s (1960) title, “political
man” is defined by his social status. When the less wealthy, less educated, manual
workers vote, they are generally more supportive of redistributive policies advocated by left parties than are wealthier, better educated professionals and managers. The left’s numerical advantages are usually thwarted, however, by two
related factors. First, weaker participatory skills and limited access to resources
depress the rates of participation among the lower class. Second, other crosscutting social cleavages, such as religion, can undercut the political conscious1
It is interesting to note from the figure that the 2000 and 2004 were entirely typical of the relation, despite widespread journalistic claim otherwise.
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Michael D. Martinez and Jeff Gill
FIGURE 1
An Update of DeNardo’s Turnout Graph: 1932–2004
R2 = 0.0022
1936
60
1964
55
1940
50
1944
1976
1948
1996
1960
2000
2004
1988
45
Democrat’s Share of Vote (%)
1932
1952
1992
1956
1980
1968
40
1984
1972
52
54
56
58
60
62
64
Rate of Turnout Among Eligible Voters (%)
Data in addition to DeNardo (1980): Turnout 1980–2000 from McDonald and Popkin (2001), Partisan vote 1980–2000 from Statistical Abstract of the United States, all 2004 from
http://elections.gmu.edu/voter turnout.htm (McDonald’s estimates).
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ness of the working class (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet 1948), demobilizing
the left’s electoral base.
Thus, this perspective suggests that a very low turnout election is likely to
produce electoral results favorable to the right, as participants with higher socioeconomic status, especially those with rightist partisan tendencies, should comprise a larger proportion of smaller electorates. As turnout increases, that
predicted configuration dissipates as the rightist core voters are joined by an
increasingly disproportionate share of the lower socioeconomic status voters who
generally have leftist leanings. Thus, the standard story, based on the Columbia
school’s sociological portrait of voters, predicts that left’s partisan advantage from
higher turnout stems from the difference in the tilt of the underlying partisan predispositions between core voters and peripheral voters.
An alternative theoretical foundation, introduced by DeNardo (1980), rests on
the basic tenets of the Michigan model in which the core electorate is mainly
comprised of “true believer” strong partisans from both the right and the left.
Higher interest elections both stimulate participation by political Independents
who are swayed by short-term issue and candidate factors, and weaker partisans
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The Effects of Turnout on Partisan Outcomes
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in both camps who are more likely to defect than are the core strong partisans.
(See A. Campbell 1960 for the classic surge-and-decline model, and J. Campbell
1987 for an elegant revision.) The behavior of cross-pressured partisans is
expected to vary with the partisan stimulus of the election. In low stimulus elections, cross-pressured partisans may not vote at all, because of indecision or an
inability to bring themselves to vote for the opposing party’s candidate. High
stimulus elections (particularly close elections) provide a greater incentive or
pressure to vote, but the cross-pressures make them less likely to be faithful to
their own party. DeNardo concludes that roughly comparable defection rates of
weaker partisans should, in fact, work to the advantage of the minority party in
an election, since a high stimulus election would produce a larger absolute
number of defecting majority partisans than defecting minority partisans. Thus,
from DeNardo’s perspective, higher turnout should work to the Democrats’
advantage in heavily Republican districts with more potential Republican defectors, but will advantage Republicans in heavily Democratic districts with more
potential Democratic defectors (DeNardo 1980, 413–16).2 From DeNardo’s perspective, higher turnout brings higher defection rates, which should normally
work to the advantage of the minority party.
While DeNardo’s logic helps us understand how defections resulting from
short-term electoral forces might mitigate or vitiate any advantages that the left
would derive from increased turnout, it does not follow that the relationship
between turnout and partisan advantage should be contingent on the balance of
the long-term partisan distribution in any electoral district. The faulty conclusion,
we think, stems from DeNardo’s assumption that weak partisans on both sides of
the political spectrum would defect at comparable rates. They might, if candidates from the two parties were approximately equally popular (or unpopular),
neither party was advantaged from a dominant issue on the political agenda, and
retrospective evaluations of the economy were neither enthusiastically positive
nor severely negative.3 But short-term forces vary from election to election, and
could benefit either the existing minority or majority. One could easily imagine,
for example, that majority Democrats might be less likely to defect than minority Republicans when a popular Democratic incumbent controls salient issues and
is blessed with widespread concerns about the Republican challenger (Converse,
Clausen, and Miller 1965). But Democrats might be more likely than Republicans to defect when a popular Republican incumbent presides over a booming
economy. Thus, the contingent factor motivating the prevailing direction of par2
DeNardo also notes that dealigning processes might erase the concept of partisan core voters, and
thus vitiate any relationship at all between turnout and partisan outcomes. Presumably, a restoration
of mass partisanship (Bartels 2000; Hetherington 2001) would strengthen the relationship. Furthermore, higher turnout may bring in the more volatile crosspressured partisan abstainers who would
normally resolve their dissonance simply by not voting at all.
3
DeNardo mentions the essential flaw in treating “the level of turnout and rates of defection as
independent quantities” (1980, 418), so it makes sense from the same logic not to generalize across
parties.
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Michael D. Martinez and Jeff Gill
TABLES 1
Class Voting, Selected 1960–2000
Class voting
Among whites
Among entire electorate
1960
1964
1976
1984
2000
12
13
19
20
17
21
8
12
-6
2
Entries represent % working class that voted Democratic minus % middle class that voted Democratic (Abramson, Aldrich, and Rohde 2002, 109).
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tisan defections is not the underlying distribution of partisanship in the electorate,
but the public’s evaluation of candidates, issues, and the “nature of the times.”
From either the conventional wisdom or DeNardo’s perspective, the strength
of the relationship between turnout and the left vote might be contingent on the
strength of the partisan class cleavage (Pacek and Radcliff 1995). The addition
of manual workers to the electorate helps the left if their votes are based on their
class, but are less likely to help the left if their votes are based on more traditional religious values or other factors not associated with class interests. If this
is indeed the case, the weakening of the class-party cleavage in the United States,
as illustrated in Table 1, should have also resulted in a weakening of the relationship between turnout and partisan outcomes in U.S. elections.
The muddle of empirical findings that we noted at the outset of this paper may
reflect our collective desire as social scientists to seek generalizable results across
elections (either across time, states, or countries) when the underlying relationship is situationally contingent. Grofman, Owen, and Collet (1999) argue that
part of the existing confusion arises from the fact that we are not really addressing a single simple question, but have tangled three logically independent
questions.
Grofman, Owen, and Collet’s (1999) first question is whether peripheral voters
have greater Democratic proclivities than core voters. The second question, which
is quite different from the first, is whether elections with higher turnout should
provide more favorable results to Democratic candidates. Even if peripheral
voters are more Democratic than core voters, DeNardo’s logic suggests the same
contingent factors that motivate peripheral Democrats to vote may also motivate
them to defect from their partisanship. Both of those questions are logically independent from the third question: if turnout were increased in some given election, would Democrats have done better? Grofman, Owen, and Collet seem
satisfied that the literature has provided answers to the first two questions (peripheral voters may have been more Democratic in previous eras, but that’s less true
now, and partisan defections by peripheral voters tend to obviate any advantage
that Democrats would gain by higher turnout), but the third question still awaits
a sufficient means to answer it. We seek to answer this question by using survey
data to simulate the likely effects of turnout on the partisan composition of the
electorate and its aggregate electoral choice.
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The Effects of Turnout on Partisan Outcomes
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The Research Question and Strategy of Inquiry
Our central concern is to determine whether or not increased levels of voter
turnout in specific elections would have aided the Democratic party and whether
decreased turnout would have aided the Republican party in U.S. presidential
elections over the past 40 years. In the process of addressing this question, we
will assess:
• whether higher levels of turnout are associated with a greater tilt toward the
Democrats into the electorate (consistent with the conventional wisdom);
• whether higher levels of turnout are associated with greater defection rates
(consistent with DeNardo’s hypothesis); and
• whether the strength of the relationship between turnout and partisan outcomes
has declined concomitant with the decline in the class-party cleavage in the
United States.
The difficult issue that has faced the study of voter turnout has not been with
inadequate or poorly developed theory, so much as with uncertainty over how
best to “test” a hypothetical question about the possible effects of changes in
turnout on partisan outcomes. Political scientists cannot rerun elections, as laboratory experiments. However, students of contemporary elections have a great
advantage over those who study elections prior to World War II. Owing to the
National Election Studies surveys, we have a rich compendium of data on voter
choice and electoral participation in virtually every major national election, with
considerable continuity in questions and methods. These data open the possibility for simulations of election outcomes, based on estimations of the structure of
electoral choice and turnout in each election.
Our basic approach, which is similar to Lacy and Burden (1999), is as follows.
We posit that U.S. citizens generally have three unordered choices in each election: vote Democratic, vote Republican, or abstain. We first estimate vote choice
(including abstention) as an unordered multinomial logit function of standard
variables associated with both candidate preference and the likelihood of voting.
From that estimation, we derive probabilities for each respondent’s selection of
each of the three choices (abstain, vote Democratic, or vote Republican). We simulate higher turnout by starting with the actual voters in a given election and progressively adding actual abstainers who had the lowest estimated probability of
abstaining. We simulate lower turnout by progressively subtracting actual voters
who had the highest probability of abstaining from the pool of voters. The simulated results allow us to make informed estimates about the most likely consequences in any given election as if turnout had been different. (Methodological
details are provided in Appendix A of the website ancillary materials).
Citrin, Shickler, and Sides (2003) also use a simulation methodology to address
the same question with respect to U.S. Senate elections in 1994, 1996, and 1998.
Using exit poll data, they calculate the additive effects of age, income, education,
gender, ethnicity, union membership, and veteran status on voter choice among
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Michael D. Martinez and Jeff Gill
observed voters (exit poll respondents). As we do here, they estimate the impact
of increased turnout on electoral outcomes by assuming that parameters of candidate choice among voters would have been the same among nonvoters if the
latter had actually voted. Despite this basic similarity, there are important differences in our methods. Citrin, Shickler, and Sides’ comparisons between voters in
exit poll surveys and to census distributions constrain them to a Columbia school
(sociological) model of voter choice (2003, 79), while our estimation allows for
the potential effects of a variety of attitudinal and other nondemographic variables on both the decision to vote and candidate preference. Second, our methodology yields estimated probabilities of abstention and candidate preference,
enabling us to examine the likely impact of turnout at smaller discrete increments
of turnout change. Third, since we can also estimate the probability of abstention
among actual voters, our methodology allows us to estimate the likely effects of
lower turnout as well as higher turnout, an aspect of the relationship which has
been neglected by much of this literature. Thus, our simulation methodology
offers a different approach to understand the entire turnout-partisan effects question than that proposed by Citrin and his coauthors. To the extent that the results
of the two approaches converge, we can be more confident that our conclusions
are not dependent on the assumptions inherent in each.
We examine five presidential elections (1960, 1964, 1976, 1984, and 2000)
which represent the variation in conditions that might affect the relationship
between turnout and partisan outcomes. While our primary purpose is to understand partisan behavior in two-party presidential races going forward in time, we
do not focus purely on the last one or two elections since it is easily possible
in this study to generalize “across space” as advised in King, Keohane, and
Verba (1994, 219). The unit of space here is time, and we include previous
cases that address the same hypotheses and retain the same general characteristics. There are three important driving considerations for the case-selection
methodology.
First, the period covers the decline of class polarization in the U.S. party system
noted by many authors (Abramson, Aldrich, and Rohde 2002, 113–15; Dalton
1996; Nieuwbeerta and de Graaf 1999). Table 1 (taken from Abramson, Aldrich,
and Rohde 2002, 109) shows that among voters, the party-class cleavage was
moderate in 1960, relatively strong in 1964 and 1976, but weakened considerably by 1984 and dwindled even further in 2000. If the relationship between partisan outcomes and turnout is conditioned on the party-class cleavage (cf. Pacek
and Radcliff 1995), we would expect to see diminishing effects later in this time
span.
Second, our cases include elections which appeared to be (and were) close, as
well as a couple of landslides. The anticipated closeness of an election might very
well change the strategic behavior of elites and potential voters, which could
affect both the likelihood of voting and in some circumstances, voter preferences.
While it is unlikely that slight variations in the underlying conditions would have
altered the outcomes of landslide elections, we include two such cases both to
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The Effects of Turnout on Partisan Outcomes
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serve as contrasts to close elections and to examine whether variations in turnout
might have affected the winner’s margin of victory (which might, in turn, expand
or contract his electoral coattails).
Third, changes in election laws over this time period generally eased registration requirements in an attempt to lower the costs of voting and increase turnout.
Two of our selected cases precede the 1965 federal Voting Rights Act, which eliminated some significant state restrictions on voter registration. Over this period,
many states also eased voter registration requirements (either reducing or eliminating residency requirements or otherwise making registration more convenient), and the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 mandated many other states
to take similar actions. Thus, the costs of voting should have abated somewhat
over this time period.
In sum, our selected cases represent a diverse set of electoral conditions and
outcomes. The 1960 election was a landmark contest between a photogenic young
challenger and the ultimate political insider, eventually decided by a razor-thin
margin. The Democratic partisan majority was at its post-war peak in 1964 and
contributed to a landslide victory for President Johnson and congressional
Democrats. Twelve years later, the subsequent Democratic majority had eroded
considerably, and Jimmy Carter eked out a close victory over President Ford. By
1984, a surge in Republican partisanship precipitated (or was precipitated by)
President Reagan’s landslide reelection. The 2000 presidential election was the
closest presidential contest in the twentieth century, so we were naturally curious
about the possible effects of turnout on its outcome. Thus, in order to gain some
leverage in understanding the effects of underlying partisan distributions and
short-term forces on the relationship between turnout levels and electoral outcomes, we have selected a Democratic landslide year (1964), a Republican landslide year (1984), two close Democratic victories (1960 and 1976), and an
election in which the Republican won a razor-close electoral college vote while
losing an equally close popular vote (2000).
While there is variation in the underlying conditions of these elections, they
all were contested primarily between the two major-party candidates and thus
provide a clean look at the electoral ramifications of simulating changing turnout
in two-party elections. There is no doubt that George Wallace, John Anderson,
and Ross Perot significantly affected electoral environments during this time
period, not least by stimulating participation by some people who would have
otherwise abstained. Nevertheless, the choice alternatives in the elections of
1968, 1980, 1992, and 1996 were fundamentally different, and the presence of
those third-party candidates obscures direct comparisons of the effect of varying
levels of turnout on the partisan advantages of the two major parties. Such effects
of third-party candidacies on turnout and partisan choice are interesting questions (and perhaps subjects for future studies), but here we seek to retain a focus
on two-party competition in the context of recent presidential elections that we
hypothesize having similar characteristics to future contests. As Collier and Brady
note “Increasing the number of observations to gain leverage in addressing rival
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Michael D. Martinez and Jeff Gill
explanations is not always helpful, in part because it may push scholars to
compare cases that are not analytically equivalent” (2004, 8). Thus, we confine
this analysis to two-party contests over this time period, while recognizing the
potential significance of third parties in affecting electoral outcomes.
The Data and Estimation
We base our analyses on the 1960, 1964, 1976, 1984, and 2000 American
National Election Studies.4 In each year, we classify respondents as abstainers,
Democratic voters, or Republican voters. Voter participation is determined
by self-report in 1960 and 2000 and by voter validation in 1964, 1976, and
1984.5 Candidate choice is based on self-reported presidential votes in each
year. We exclude the few NES respondents who voted for minor-party candidates, as well as those who did not know or refused to report if or for whom they
voted. Details on the full coding for the 1984 data are contained in Appendix
C of the website ancillary materials, as an example of our work in the other
elections.
Table 2 shows the distribution of the outcome variable in each year. As is
usually the case, NES survey self-reports of turnout are much higher than the
actual turnout of eligible voters in the presidential election, due to NES’s difficulty in finding some secluded abstainers, the greater post-election survey participation rates of politically interested voters as compared to uninterested
abstainers (especially after enduring the NES preelection survey), and abstainers’ misreporting. NES’s estimates of voters’ choices were much closer to the
actual election outcomes (and easily within 95% confidence intervals) in 1960,
1976, 1984, and 2000, but there was a significant overreport for Johnson and
under report for Goldwater in 1964.
In order to derive probabilities of individuals voting Democratic, voting
Republican, and abstaining, we estimate multivariate models based on a wide
variety of variables. Since the outcome variable represents both the decision to
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4
The principal investigators of the American National Election Studies used in this paper were the
Political Behavior Program at the University of Michigan (1960, 1964), Warren E. Miller and Arthur
Miller (1976), Warren E. Miller and the National Election Studies (1984), and Nancy Burns, Donald
R. Kinder, Steven J. Rosenstone, Virginia Sapiro, and the National Election Studies (2000). The 1960,
1964, 1976, and 1984 NES Data were taken from CD0010 (issued May 1995) by the Inter-university
Consortium for Political and Social Research and the National Election Studies. 2000 NES Data were
made available to us by ICPSR (Study 3131). Neither the principal investigators, NES, nor ICPSR
bear any responsibility for our analyses and interpretations.
5
In cases in which the NES voter validation efforts yielded ambiguous results, we relied on respondents’ self-reports. Thus in the 1976 study, we followed the procedure described by Abramson and
Claggett (1984, 737) for determining validated voters and nonvoters. Among those respondents, there
were 1,053 abstainers (49.4%), 521 Carter voters (24.4%), and 557 Ford voters (26.1%). NES was
unable to validate 347 respondents as either voters or nonvoters. For those respondents only, we used
self-reports of voting to classify 24 as abstainers, 18 as Carter voters, and 23 as Ford voters.
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The Effects of Turnout on Partisan Outcomes
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TABLE 2
Abstentions and Two-Party Votes
ANES
1960
Presidential
Election
1964
Presidential
Election
1976
Presidential
Election
1984
Presidential
Election
2000
Presidential
Election
Abstainers
Kennedy voters
Nixon voters
Total cases
Abstainers
Johnson voters
Goldwater voters
Total cases
Abstainers
Carter voters
Ford voters
Total cases
Abstainers
Mondale voters
Reagan voters
Total cases
Abstainers
Gore Voters
Bush Voters
Total cases
329
699
722
1,750
532
682
338
1,552
1,077
539
580
2,196
706
502
712
1,920
426
550
507
1,483
18.8%
39.9%
41.3%
34.3%
43.9%
21.8%
49.0%
24.5%
26.4%
36.8%
26.1%
37.1%
28.7%
37.1%
34.2%
Population Estimates
39,072,000
34,227,000
34,108,000
107,407,000
41,897,000
43,130,000
27,178,000
112,205,000
67,168,000
40,831,000
39,148,000
147,147,000
69,298,000
37,577,000
54,455,000
161,330,000
84,064,900
50,999,897
50,456,002
185,520,799
Source
36.4%
31.9%
31.8%
a
c
c
37.3%
38.4%
24.2%
a
c
c
45.6%
27.7%
26.6%
a
c
c
43.0%
23.3%
33.8%
a
c
c
45.3%
27.5%
27.2%
b
d
d
a: Voting Eligible Population minus total number of votes cast for President (McDonald and Popkin
2001, 966). b: Voting Eligible Population (McDonald and Popkin 2001, 966) minus the total number
of votes cast for the president (FEC Report of the 2000 Presidential Election). c: Statistical Abstract
of the United States, 2000 edition (Table 452), http://www.census.gov/prod/www/statisticalabstract-us.html. d: Federal Election Commission Report of the 2000 Presidential Election
(http://www.fec.gov).
vote or not to vote and the candidate choice (Democrat or Republican) for voters,
we chose explanatory variables that we expect to be associated with turnout or
candidate preference, or both. Exact question wordings and variable constructions varied somewhat due to the evolution of the NES between 1960 and 2000,
but in general, we expected turnout to be motivated by demographic variables
(age and education), mobilization variables (contact by each party), social connectedness variables (married, children living in the household, church attendance), and attitudes toward the campaign (knowledge of the issues, interest, and
caring about the outcome of the election) and the political system (belief that
there are important differences between the parties, internal efficacy, external efficacy, and political trust).
Similarly, we selected a range of variables that might affect candidate preference, including partisanship, retrospective evaluations of the economy and the
president’s job performance, demographic variables (dummies for Black,
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Michael D. Martinez and Jeff Gill
Catholic, Born-Again Protestant), issue preferences (which varied from year to
year), and evaluations of candidates. Incorporating these and other independent
variables, we utilized a multinomial logit model to generate estimates of the
effects of each explanatory variable on the probabilities of voting Democratic and
voting Republican compared to the baseline category of abstention.6
There are few surprises in the estimated coefficients themselves (shown in
Appendix B of the web site ancillary materials). Negative evaluations of the president’s handling of the economy are a strong motivation to vote for the challenger
party, more so than the overall sociotropic evaluation of the economy itself. Party
identification also has a very strong influence in each model, reflecting its pervasive influence in the vote choice (Markus and Converse 1979), as well as the
possibility that current party identification reflects short-term influences contemporaneously associated with the vote choice (Page and Jones 1979). Trait evaluations of presidential candidates also had sharp effects of the vote choice in
1984 and 2000.
We found a variety of issues with significant direct effects (Medicare and job
guarantee in 1964; environmental spending, aid to blacks, and level of services
and spending in 1984; and indices of moral issues, service issues, and race issues
in 2000). Regular church attendance, high levels of education, external efficacy,
perceiving differences between the parties on issues, age, interest in the campaign, and caring about the outcome of the election all generally improved the
likelihood of voting for either candidate over abstention in each year under study.
In most instances, Republican and Democratic contact appeared to stimulate
turnout for both candidates, underscoring the effects of mobilization (Gerber and
Green 2000; Rosenstone and Hansen 1993) and reflecting relatively intense
efforts on both sides to convert voters. In 1960, 1964, and 1984, the contact coefficients suggest that Republican mobilization efforts appeared to be more efficacious than Democratic efforts, but Democratic efforts were equally successful in
1976 and 2000. In the 2000 election, we were able to observe the mobilizing
effects of increasing numbers of political discussion partners and the effects of
homogeneous networks on the individual vote choice.
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6
The multinomial logit model generates estimates of the effects of each explanatory variable on
the probabilities of voting Democratic and voting Republican compared to the baseline category of
abstention. The most direct way to understand the magnitude of these coefficient estimates is to evalÈp ˘
uate the log ratio of the predictors given by: log Í ij ˙ = X i b j , which is just the log of the ratio of
Î pi0 ˚
probability of selecting choice j to the probability of selecting the baseline choice. The fact that it is
given by multiplying the jth coefficient vector by the respondent’s explanatory variable values makes
this a particularly easy quantity to obtain. At first the restriction to the baseline comparison seems
restrictive, but based on the properties of logs, any desired comparison can be obtained since:
È pij ˘
È pij ˘
Èp ˘
Xi(bj - bk) = Xibj - Xibk = log Í ˙ - log Í ˙ = log[pij] - log[pi0] - log[pik] + log[pi0] = log Í ij ˙ ,
Î pi0 ˚
Î pi0 ˚
Î pik ˚
where j and k represent two arbitrarily chosen choice categories. Therefore we can estimate any relative probabilistic comparison desired.
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Simulation of Turnout Based on the MNL Models
Our interest is in the expected behavior of individuals given the estimated coefficients reported in Appendix B of the website ancillary materials. Since the
product of the estimated coefficients and the explanatory variables for the ith individual is equal to the log of the odds of i selecting choice j (either Democrat or
Republican) divided by the odds of abstaining, then we can algebraically
rearrange to produce the probabilities of abstaining, voting Democratic, and
voting Republican, based on the fact that the sum the three probabilities equals
one for every respondent.7 Accordingly, for each respondent, we calculated a conditional probability of voting for each candidate, excluding the probability of
abstention by
p(Dem vote) =
p(Dem)
1 - p(abstain)
p(Rep vote) =
p(Rep)
1 - p(abstain)
To simulate the aggregate vote choice at a given level of turnout, we sum the
conditional probabilities, p(Dem|vote) and p(Rep|vote), across a specific set of
respondents. Table 3 shows that we generally did better at predicting a voter’s
choice between candidates than in predicting an abstention. For the NES respondents who voted, the sums of the conditional probabilities are again very close
to the actual reported votes. Thus, while we acknowledge that any individual’s
conditional vote probability is measured with error, the model’s overall fit is reasonably good, and it appears to predict Democratic and Republican votes about
equally well.
Of course, we are still faced with one of the banes of survey research in U.S.
elections: overestimation of turnout. Survey estimates of turnout are almost
always inflated by overreports of voting (Bernstein, Chadha, and Montjoy 2001;
Silver, Anderson, and Abramson 1986) due to stimulation of political interest by
multielection panels and preelection surveys (Bartels 2000), and differences in
survey participation rates between voters and nonvoters. We used voter validation studies (where available) to partially alleviate the problems associated with
the first of those factors, but are limited in our ability to go much beyond that.
Nevertheless, our purpose in this exercise is to determine whether the distribution of the two-party votes would have been substantially altered by any change
in turnout above or below the actual level. Thus, in our pursuit of an answer to
7
Â
p
This is done using log ÈÍ ij ˘˙ = Xibj, and this underlying individual accounting identity,
p
Î i0 ˚
J
j =1
p ij = 1, we obtain the marginal individual vote probabilities:
J
ˆ
Ê
pi1 = Á1 + Â exp[X i b j ]˜
¯
Ë j =2
-1
pik = exp[X i b j ] pi1 , " j Œ[2, . . . , J ].
This approach allows us to compare actual voting and abstaining outcomes to predicted outcomes,
although other approaches were tried. See Appendix A of the website ancillary materials).
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Michael D. Martinez and Jeff Gill
TABLE 3
Predicted and Actual Choices
1960
1964
1976
1984
2000
Correlations of Actual Versus Predicted
Abstention
.58
Vote Democratic
.86
Vote Republican
.89
.46
.72
.78
.57
.68
.70
.54
.81
.81
.72
.85
.82
Reported Two-party Totals Versus Sum of Conditionals
Reported Democratic
49.2%
66.9%
Average Predicted Democratic
50.2%
67.7%
P
48.5%
48.4%
41.4%
41.4%
52.0%
52.7%
Grofman, Owen, and Collet’s third question (if turnout were increased in some
given election, would Democrats have done better?), we are not so much interested in the absolute level of turnout as in the effects of changes in turnout relative to the baseline. For the moment, then, we accept the distribution of turnout
as indicated by each NES survey as the baseline.
Higher levels of turnout are simulated by the set of respondents who actually
voted, plus the nonvoters who had the lowest probability of abstaining. In the
2000 presidential election, an electorate with a 81.79% turnout rate is represented
by those respondents who actually voted (71.3%) plus the nonvoters who had no
more than a .4945 probability of abstention. An electorate with a 87.63% turnout
rate includes those who actually voted, plus the nonvoters who had no more than
a .6984 probability of abstention. And so on.
Lower levels of turnout are simulated by sequentially removing actual voters
with the highest probability of abstaining. For example, in 2000, an electorate
with a 54.85% turnout rate is simulated by the set of actual voters who had no
more than a .2411 probability of abstention. Lower levels of turnout are simulated by lowering the thresholds of abstention probabilities. For each of twenty
subsets of respondents (simulating turnout rates from 6.41% to 100% in 2000),
we calculate the vote distribution between the Democrats and Republicans by
summing p(Dem|vote) and p(Rep|vote) and calculating percentages based on
those sums.
This methodology and others like it assume that the factors which motivated
voters to choose between the Democratic and Republican candidates would have
similarly influenced nonvoters, if nonvoters had actually voted. These are hypothetical votes (or, more precisely, sums of conditional probabilities based on estimations), so we will never know for sure how any abstainer would have voted in
that counterfactual condition. Indeed, it is possible that our parameter estimates
are derived from a set of relatively high information voters, and the factors that
are salient to their vote choices might not be salient in the choices of “peripheral” voters who could have been seduced to polls.
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Our data suggest that is not the case, however. Nonvoters’ reports of their own
candidate preferences provide validation of the methodology and justification of
the assumption. Using the 2000 Presidential election as an example, among actual
abstainers who expressed a post-election preference for Gore, the sums of the
conditional probabilities tilted heavily in his favor (75% to 25%). Among the
actual abstainers who favored Bush in the post-election survey, the sums of
the conditional probabilities heavily favored Bush (73% to 27%). Among the
actual abstainers who expressed no candidate preference in the post-election
survey, the sums of the conditional vote probabilities were split almost right down
the middle (50.2% to 49.8% in Bush’s favor).8 Thus, the abstainers themselves
provided some concurrent validation of our estimates.
1960: Heavy Turnout Helps the Democrats, and They Needed It
Does the level of turnout affect the distribution of the votes for Kennedy and
Nixon in 1960? Panel 1 of Figure 2 arrays the simulated two-party vote percentages for Kennedy against the twenty levels of turnout,9 and shows that simulated
increases in turnout would have benefited the Democratic candidate. Among the
NES respondents who voted, Kennedy received 49.0% of the vote. Above that
baseline, his vote share increases with increased turnout, though the rate of
growth is small. For example, a 10-point increase in turnout would have raised
Kennedy’s vote share less than one-half percentage point, to 49.4%. Sharper
effects are evident in our simulation of reduced turnout in the 1960 election. A
20-point decline in turnout would have reduced Kennedy’s vote share by three
points (to 45.7%), and the rate of Kennedy’s loss increases as turnout declines
further. Over a 40-point range of simulated turnout (from 51.2% to 91.2%), we
estimate that Kennedy’s vote share would vary about 5.8%. The closeness of the
actual result in 1960 suggests that Kennedy could not have afforded any significantly reduced turnout in the 1960 presidential race.
Lower turnout would have spelled trouble for Kennedy because, as predicted
by the conventional model, the electorate quickly would have become far less
Democratic in its partisanship. Table 4 shows that the Democrats enjoyed a 13.2%
tilt (excluding leaners) in the electorate at the baseline turnout rate of 81.2%, but
that advantage shrinks rapidly and eventually disappears as turnout declines. In
the smaller electorates, partisans of both stripes are significantly more loyal to
their party’s nominees, and in very small electorates, Republicans enjoy a numerical advantage and are stunningly loyal to Nixon. Turnout above the high baseline increases the Democratic tilt slightly and marginally increases the defection
rate among both parties.
8
These validating analyses were based on the tenth replicate dataset from the multiple imputations
in our analysis of the 2000 NES. See Appendix A of the website ancillary materials for an explanation of the multiple imputation procedure for dealing with missing data in R.
9
As turnout increases, by definition, the sample size of voters increases. Thus, the 95% confidence
bands around the estimated vote for Kennedy become narrower with higher levels of turnout.
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Michael D. Martinez and Jeff Gill
FIGURE 2
The Effect of Turnout on Percent Votes for Democrats
5 15 25 35 45 55 65 75 85 95
5 15 25 35 45 55 65 75 85 95
Sum of Conditional Probabilities of Voting for Democrat (%)
5 15 25 35 45 55 65 75 85 95
5 15 25 35 45 55 65 75 85 95
1960
1964
1984
2000
5 15 25 35 45 55 65 75 85 95
1976
95% Confidence Bands Included
Vertical Line at Actual Turnout
Simulated Turnout Rate from ANES Sample
1964: Heavy Turnout Helps the Democrats, But They Apparently
Did Not Need It
P
Panel 2 of Figure 2 shows a similar relationship between simulated turnout and
partisan outcomes, but Johnson’s landslide victory made those effects basically
moot. Among the 65.7% of NES respondents who voted, Johnson wins 67.4% of
the vote. Above that baseline, LBJ’s vote share steadily increases with increased
turnout, though the rate of growth is small. For example, a 20-point increase in
turnout (to 85.7%) would have raised Johnson’s vote share a little over one percentage point, to 68.7%. Much sharper effects are evident in our simulation of
reduced turnout in the 1964 election. A 20-point decline in turnout (to 45.7%)
would have reduced Johnson’s vote share by almost four points (to 63.4%), and
the rate of Johnson’s loss increases as turnout declines further. The overall effect
of turnout on partisan choice is neither nontrivial nor overwhelming. Over the
40-point range of simulated turnout (from 45.7% of to 85.7%), we estimate that
Johnson’s vote share would vary only about 5.3%. Put another way, the magnitude of the actual Democratic victory in 1964 means that Johnson would have
likely won the popular vote with any turnout rate above an abysmal 24%, though
his considerable presidential coattails almost surely would have been reduced by
a substantially smaller electorate.
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The Effects of Turnout on Partisan Outcomes
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TABLE 4
Partisan Composition and Partisan Voting Behavior in 1960
Simulated Turnout
15.6
31.6
47.9
89.0
92.4
96.0
100
Partisan Self-Identification Among Voters at Varying Levels of Turnout
Strong Democrat
15.3
20.5
21.4 20.8 21.6 21.4 20.9
Weak Democrat
9.0
15.1
18.8 22.1 24.3 24.2 25.0
Lean Democrat
2.5
4.2
4.4
4.8
5.7
5.9
6.1
Independent
4.3
5.2
6.7
8.0
8.1
8.3
8.4
Lean Republican
6.1
6.0
6.9
7.2
7.6
7.5
7.7
Weak Republican
17.1
16.9
16.4 15.9 14.7 14.9 14.6
Strong Republican
45.7
32.2
25.5 21.2 18.0 17.8 17.2
21.2
25.1
6.3
8.4
7.6
14.4
17.0
21.1
25.5
6.5
8.7
7.4
14.1
16.9
20.9
25.7
6.6
9.0
7.2
13.9
16.6
Democratic Tilt (%Dem–%Rep)
Including Lean
-42.1 -15.1
Without Lean
-38.5 -13.4
-4.2
-1.7
64.6
85.4
11.3
13.2
11.3
12.9
12.6
14.2
13.6
14.9
14.7
15.6
15.6
16.2
Partisanship and Vote Choice at Varying Levels of Turnout
Democrats loyal
23.6
34.6
37.7 39.6 41.8
Democrats defect
3.2
5.2
6.8
8.1
9.8
Indep. Voting Democrat
2.1
2.4
2.8
3.6
3.8
Indep. Voting Republican
2.2
2.8
3.8
4.4
4.4
Republicans defect
1.2
1.5
2.2
3.2
3.4
Republicans loyal
67.7
53.5
46.5 41.1 36.9
41.5
10.0
3.9
4.4
3.5
36.6
41.7
10.4
4.0
4.5
3.5
36.0
42.0
10.6
4.1
4.4
3.5
35.5
42.2
10.8
4.2
4.4
3.5
34.9
42.2
11.1
4.5
4.6
3.5
34.2
Percent of Partisans Defecting
Dem. Defection Rate
12.0
Rep. Defection Rate
1.7
19.3
8.8
20.0
8.9
20.1
8.9
20.3
9.1
20.8
9.3
13.1
2.7
15.3
4.6
3.5
5.8
81.2
17.0
7.1
19.0
8.5
The 1964 election fits the conventional wisdom to a tee. Table 5 shows that, at
high levels of turnout, Johnson benefits from an increasingly Democratic electorate. Among the actual voters in 1964, self-identified Democrats outnumbered
self-identified Republicans (excluding leaners) by a margin of 25.2%. At a simulated turnout rate 20 points higher than actual, the Democratic tilt increases by
nearly three points (to 28.1%). At lower levels of simulated turnout, the effects
on the partisan tilt are even more evident. At a very low level of turnout (26.3%),
the electorate is about evenly divided between self-identified Democrats and
Republicans. As turnout increases, the Democratic tenor of the electorate
becomes increasingly pronounced, though the rate of change is marginally
decreasing above the baseline turnout of 65.7%.
Contrary to DeNardo’s hypothesis, the defection rate among both Democrats
and Republicans hardly budges at all as simulated turnout increases above the
actual turnout rate of 65.7%. The lower panel of Table 5 shows that Democratic
partisans were slightly less likely to defect at the simulated turnout rate 20 points
higher than actual, and the Republican defection rate increased by only one-tenth
of 1%. At lower simulated levels of turnout, the core Republican voters were significantly more loyal, but Democrats were only slightly so. Thus, 1964 provides
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Michael D. Martinez and Jeff Gill
TABLE 5
Partisan Composition and Partisan Voting Behavior in 1964
Simulated Turnout
13.1
26.3
79.4
86.3
93.1
100
Partisan Self-Identification Among Voters at Varying Levels of Turnout
Strong Democrat
15.3 25.5 30.7 31.4 29.2 30.5 30.2
Weak Democrat
12.5 19.0 20.3 21.6 23.8 23.5 24.6
Lean Democrat
1.4
2.7
4.5
6.0
7.3
6.8
6.9
Independent
.2
.9
2.3
3.8
5.4
5.1
5.3
Lean Republican
15.9 11.0
8.4
6.9
6.5
6.3
6.3
Weak Republican
24.4 19.3 17.4 15.9 14.9 14.9 14.4
Strong Republican
30.1 21.6 16.4 14.3 12.9 12.9 12.4
29.3
25.0
7.7
5.8
6.0
14.4
11.8
28.2
25.1
8.3
6.7
5.9
14.2
11.5
27.2
25.2
9.5
7.6
5.7
13.6
11.2
Democratic Tilt (%Dem–%Rep)
Including Lean
-41.1
Without Lean
-26.6
4.6
3.7
39.4
72.6
26.7
26.3
28.7
28.0
29.9
28.1
30.0
27.6
31.3
27.6
Partisanship and Vote Choice at Varying Levels of Turnout
Democrats loyal
27.2 43.0 50.0 52.9 53.3
Democrats defect
2.1
4.3
5.6
6.1
7.0
Indep. Voting Democrat
.2
.5
1.7
2.8
4.1
Indep. Voting Republican
.0
.5
.6
1.0
1.4
Republicans defect
8.3
9.0
9.2
9.4 10.0
Republicans loyal
62.1 42.8 32.9 27.7 24.3
54.0
6.8
3.8
1.3
9.7
24.4
54.8
6.9
3.9
1.3
9.5
23.5
55.0
7.0
4.3
1.5
9.4
22.7
54.4
7.2
5.1
1.7
9.5
22.1
54.6
7.2
5.8
1.9
9.5
21.1
Percent of Partisans Defecting
Dem. Defection Rate
7.2
Rep. Defection Rate
11.8
11.1
28.5
11.2
28.7
11.3
29.3
11.7
30.2
11.7
31.0
10.0
21.9
21.8
22.8
65.7
26.0
25.2
9.1
17.3
13.4
17.3
52.6
10.3
25.4
11.5
29.2
no support at all for DeNardo’s conjecture that the minority party should benefit
from higher turnout.
1976: Ford Should Have Prayed for Rain
P
In contrast to the 1964 Democratic landslide, the presidential election of 1976
was extremely close. Republican Gerald Ford’s succession to the Presidency
ended, in his words, “our long national nightmare” of Watergate, but his unpopular pardon of his predecessor and a sluggish economy put him far behind at the
beginning of the campaign. Despite these factors, Ford rallied until the mother
of all debate gaffes stifled his momentum, and he barely lost the popular and electoral vote to his Democratic challenger, Jimmy Carter.
Panel 3 in Figure 2, showing the overall relationship between turnout and
outcome in 1976, is a little flatter than the curve for 1964, but the closeness of
the actual election meant that the effects were substantively important. As in
1964, as simulated turnout increases above the actual turnout rate, support for
the Democratic presidential candidate slowly increases. If turnout was 25 points
higher than actual, we estimate that Carter’s margin of victory would have
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TABLE 6
Partisan Composition and Partisan Voting Behavior in 1976
Simulated Turnout
9.6
19.7
29.8
70.7
80.3
90.1
100
Partisan Self-Identification Among Voters at Varying Levels of Turnout
Strong Democrat
14.4 15.7 16.5 17.2 16.1 16.3 16.2
Weak Democrat
12.9 16.1 18.3 20.3 22.2 22.1 22.5
Lean Democrat
9.4 10.0 10.1 10.3 10.9 10.8 11.2
Independent
3.3
4.2
6.0
8.1 10.5 10.9 11.5
Lean Republican
14.5 14.7 14.1 12.5 11.3 10.9 11.0
Weak Republican
15.6 17.6 16.6 16.1 15.8 16.1 16.0
Strong Republican
30.0 21.7 18.5 15.5 13.2 12.9 11.7
16.0
23.5
11.3
12.1
10.7
15.7
10.7
15.4
24.7
11.7
13.0
10.4
15.1
9.8
14.8
25.2
11.9
14.3
10.3
14.4
9.0
Democratic Tilt (%Dem–%Rep)
Including Lean
-23.4 -12.2
Without Lean
-18.3 -7.5
-4.3
-.3
40.3
60.8
8.8
9.2
9.2
9.4
11.1
10.9
13.9
13.2
16.5
15.3
18.2
16.6
Partisanship and Vote Choice at Varying Levels of Turnout
Democrats loyal
29.7 34.0 35.8 37.7 38.4
Democrats defect
6.9
7.8
9.0 10.1 10.8
Indep. Voting Democratic
1.5
2.2
2.9
3.4
4.4
Indep. Voting Republican
1.8
2.0
3.1
4.7
6.1
Republicans defect
4.7
5.3
5.4
5.5
5.8
Republicans loyal
55.4 48.6 43.8 38.6 34.5
38.7
10.5
4.3
6.6
5.6
34.4
39.2
10.6
4.6
6.9
5.4
33.3
39.9
11.0
4.9
7.2
5.3
31.7
40.3
11.4
5.5
7.5
5.4
29.8
40.4
11.5
6.4
7.9
5.6
28.2
Percent of Partisans Defecting
Dem. Defection Rate
18.9
Rep. Defection Rate
7.7
21.3
14.0
21.2
14.0
21.6
14.4
22.0
15.4
22.2
16.5
18.6
9.9
20.1
10.9
3.7
5.9
50.8
21.2
12.4
22.0
14.5
increased by 1 percentage point. Lower levels of turnout would have benefited
President Ford, as we estimate that Carter would have lost his 1.1 percent margin
of victory if turnout had been only 5.3 points lower, and a 20-point reduction in
turnout would have lowered Carter’s share of the two-party vote by just over four
percentage points. Over the 40-point range of simulated turnout from 40.2% to
80.3%, the spread of support for the Democratic candidate is 3.6 points. That
effect is slightly less than 1964, but politically significant because of the closeness of the actual outcome.
The compositional analysis in Table 5 presents much the same story as in 1964.
Under the assumptions of our simulation, the effects of turnout on Carter’s
increasing advantage stems from the increasingly Democratic partisan tilt in the
electorate under higher turnout scenarios, and even more so, an increasingly
Republican tilt under conditions of lower turnout. Among actual voters in 1976,
self-identified Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 8.8 percentage points.
That advantage increases to 16.5 percentage points at a 90.1% turnout rate, and
it decreases to 3.7 percentage points at a 50.3% turnout rate.
Also as in 1964, the Democratic defection rate moves hardly at all with simulated turnout. As turnout increases above the actual rate, both Democrats and
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Republicans initially become slightly more loyal, followed by an increase in the
defection rate for both at very high levels of turnout. At lower levels of turnout,
defections by Democrats decrease slightly, and as in 1964, core Republicans
become remarkably loyal. Our simulations of the 1976 election provide no
support for the DeNardo hypothesis that higher levels of turnout should be associated with greater defections among the majority party. Score another for the
conventional wisdom.
1984: Rise of the Reagan Democrats
In the 20 years after Johnson’s landslide victory, the electorate changed in two
significant ways. First, widespread perceptions of Carter’s failures and a resurgent America under the leadership of a popular Republican president, combined
with the sense that both parties were losing relevance in the political system,
resulted in an electorate that was much less Democratic and more Independent
(Craig 1985; Wattenberg 1986). Second, and relatedly, the electorate shrank as a
percentage of those who were eligible to cast ballots. In 1964, 62.8% of the eligible population turned out, but in 1984, only 57.2% of eligible Americans voted
in the Presidential election (McDonald and Popkin 2001, 966).10
Following the conventional wisdom, one might naturally wonder whether
(or how much) the decline in turnout contributed to Reagan’s landslide reelection. Not much, according to our analysis. Panel 4 of Figure 2 is much flatter
than the corresponding figures for 1964 and 1976. Mondale, the Democratic
challenger, had the support of only 41.4% of the electorate at the baseline turnout
rate of 63.2%. Increasing turnout 20 points (to 83.2%) nudges Mondale’s
vote share up only a little more than one-half percentage point, to 42.0%.
Mondale’s support continues to increase as turnout increases, but the rate of
growth is glacial. Lower turnout in 1984 would have increased Reagan’s advantage over Mondale somewhat more. If turnout had been 20 points lower, we estimate that Mondale’s vote share would have declined about three points (from
41.4% to 38.4%). Over the 40-point range (20 points above and below the actual
turnout rate), the spread of support for Mondale is 3.66 percentage points, a significant reduction from the 4.47 point spread in 1976 and the 5.28 point spread
from 1964. While the direction of the effect of turnout on the partisan vote distribution in 1984 is in line with conventional wisdom, the association is weak, to
put it mildly.
Table 7 shows that, as in 1964, higher turnout is associated with increasing
Democratic partisanship in the electorate. At the baseline turnout rate of 63.2%,
the Democrats held a 4.7 point advantage over Republicans in the electorate. The
tilt becomes more Democratic as turnout increases (up to a 7.8 point advantage
at a turnout rate of 83.2%). Even more impressively, the tilt becomes Republican
P
10
Only a quarter of the drop in turnout between 1964 and 1984 was attributable to the relaxation
of the suffrage requirements in the 26th Amendment (McDonald and Popkin 2001, 967).
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TABLE 7
Partisan Composition and Partisan Voting Behavior in 1984
Simulated Turnout
12.7
25.3
37.9
78.0
85.3
92.7
100
Partisan Self-Identification Among Voters at Varying Levels of Turnout
Strong Democrat
29.7 26.9 24.5 23.1 21.3 21.3 21.2
Weak Democrat
4.1
7.5 10.5 14.3 17.9 18.1 18.7
Lean Democrat
4.8
5.8
6.9
7.8
8.6
8.7
8.7
Independent
3.5
3.7
4.4
4.4
5.0
4.7
5.0
Lean Republican
7.9 10.7 11.4 12.2 12.8 12.9 13.2
Weak Republican
15.3 15.3 16.4 16.2 15.9 16.2 16.1
Strong Republican
34.7 30.2 25.9 22.0 18.5 18.1 17.2
20.3
20.1
8.9
5.4
13.3
15.8
16.3
19.3
21.4
9.4
5.6
13.3
15.5
15.5
18.3
21.9
9.9
6.2
13.7
15.3
14.7
Democratic Tilt (%Dem–%Rep)
Including Lean
-19.3 -16.1 -11.8
Without Lean
-16.2 -11.2 -7.3
50.6
-5.2
-0.8
63.2
70.6
.5
4.7
.8
5.1
2.1
6.6
4.0
8.3
5.9
9.8
6.5
10.2
Partisanship and Vote Choice at Varying Levels of Turnout
Democrats loyal
35.6 35.2 35.7 37.1 37.9
Democrats defect
3.0
4.9
6.3
8.1
9.9
Indep. Voting Democratic
.2
.5
.8
1.0
1.3
Indep. Voting Republican
3.3
3.2
3.6
3.4
3.7
Republicans defect
.9
1.2
1.3
1.9
2.3
Republicans loyal
57.0 55.1 52.4 48.5 45.0
38.1
10.0
1.1
3.5
2.3
45.0
38.4
10.2
1.2
3.7
2.3
44.2
38.5
10.8
1.3
4.0
2.2
43.1
39.0
11.1
1.4
4.2
2.3
41.9
38.7
11.5
1.8
4.4
2.9
40.7
Percent of Partisans Defecting
Dem. Defection Rate
7.8
Rep. Defection Rate
1.5
20.7
4.8
20.9
4.8
21.8
5.0
22.2
5.3
22.9
6.7
12.3
2.0
14.9
2.4
17.9
3.7
20.7
4.9
as turnout decreases from the baseline (yielding a GOP advantage of 4.6 points
at a turnout rate of 43.2%).
But even the small advantage that Democrats might hope to have gained from
the changing partisan character of the electorate is minimized by defections. At
the baseline turnout rate, one-fifth of Democrats defected to Reagan, and as
Democrats came into the electorate at higher levels of turnout, they were increasingly disproportionately Reagan Democrats. That, of course, is the basic Catch22 of DeNardo’s model: higher turnout means that more Democrats might come
into the electorate than Republicans, but those who do would be more likely to
defect. Higher turnout also promotes greater participation by the few “Mondale
Republicans” in the public, so the net effect of higher turnout on the vote is faintly
pro-Democratic. Overall, the relatively flat line points to a weakening of the conventional wisdom.
2000: The Perfect, and Almost Perfectly Stubborn, Tie
The extraordinarily close elections for the Presidency and control of both
Houses of Congress in 2000 brought 55.6% of the voter-eligible population to
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Michael D. Martinez and Jeff Gill
the polls. That figure was a return to post-26th Amendment normalcy, following
the rather stunning increase in turnout in 1992 and, for many, an alarming decline
in 1996. Even very small partisan effects of turnout might have had important
consequences, given the closeness of the presidential election nationally and in
the pivotal state of Florida. For the Republicans, a slightly larger share of the twoparty vote might have averted a constitutional crisis and lingering questions of
President Bush’s legitimacy in the minds of some people, as well as preserved
control of the Senate in spite of Senator Jeffords’s switch in May 2001. For the
Democrats, a slightly larger share of the two-party vote might have given them
unified (but razor-thin) control of the executive and legislative branches.
The final panel of Figure 2 shows another remarkably flat relationship: turnout
had only the slightest effect on the two-party race for the presidency. Gore does
ever so slightly better with higher levels of turnout. If turnout was five points
higher, at the 1992 level, we estimate that Gore’s share would have improved only
a scant .04% (from 52.47% to 52.51%), and had it been 20 points higher, Gore’s
share of the vote would have increased only .31%. If turnout had been eight points
lower, we estimate that Gore’s share of the vote would have declined .73% (from
52.47% to 51.74%), and had it been 20 points lower, it would have declined only
.51%. In general, the relationship between turnout and the Democratic share of
the vote in 2000 is positively sloped, but it is very weak and nonmonotonic. Gore’s
high point is at 81.8% turnout, and his low point is at 20% turnout. But the range
of possible Gore two-party shares of the vote across our simulation of 20 levels
of turnout is only 4.27%. Within the 40-point range (20 points above and below
the actual turnout level), Gore’s share of the vote varies only from 52.0% to
52.8%.
Table 8 shows that the weak relationship results from the refrain of 1984:
higher turnout brings out more Democrats, but they defect at higher rates.
Whether or not leaners are counted as partisans, the Democratic partisan advantage generally increases with higher simulated levels of turnout. Above the 71.3%
baseline turnout, the Democratic advantage in the electorate steadily increases,
and below that baseline, it fades fairly quickly. At the lowest simulated turnout
levels, the Republicans enjoy a slight partisan advantage.
However, as DeNardo predicted, defections undercut the small compositional
advantage that Democrats enjoy from higher levels of turnout. At very low levels
of turnout, about 5% of Republicans defect and the Republican defection rate
doubles at the highest simulated level of turnout. Among Democrats, the defection-turnout slope is even steeper. At low levels of turnout, Democrats are remarkably loyal, but Democrats who enter the electorate at high levels of turnout
defected to Bush at an even higher rate than peripheral Republicans defected to
Gore. A comparison of the baseline turnout rate of 71.3% to the 81.8% in the
second section of Table 8 illustrates the Democrats’ dilemma. Over this interval,
a greater number of Democrats come into the electorate than do Republicans,
increasing the overall Democratic tilt by 1.6%. But 15% of these “peripheral”
Democrats defect to Bush, increasing the overall Democratic defection rate .8%.
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The Effects of Turnout on Partisan Outcomes
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TABLE 8
Partisan Composition and Partisan Voting Behavior in 2000
Simulated Turnout
12.9
81.8
87.6
93.5
100
Partisan Self-Identification Among Voters at Varying Levels of Turnout
Strong Democrat
30.1 26.1 24.9 24.1 22.1 22.1 21.7
Weak Democrat
10.5 12.2 14.1 15.3 15.5 15.5 16.1
Lean Democrat
7.6
8.0
9.2 11.6 12.8 13.2 13.2
Independent
.6
1.4
3.3
4.8
7.3
7.1
7.6
Lean Republican
9.5 12.4 13.0 12.0 12.9 12.8 12.9
Weak Republican
12.0 10.7 10.8 11.6 12.3 12.2 12.2
Strong Republican
29.7 29.2 24.7 20.5 17.2 17.1 16.2
20.8
16.4
13.4
8.3
13.1
12.7
15.2
20.4
16.2
13.9
9.3
13.1
12.7
14.4
19.5
15.7
14.8
11.1
13.1
12.3
13.5
Democratic Tilt (%Dem–%Rep)
Including Lean
-3.0
Without Lean
-1.1
26.4
-5.9
-1.6
40.2
-.3
3.5
54.9
76.3
8.0
8.1
8.6
8.3
9.6
9.3
9.5
9.2
10.4
9.6
11.1
9.5
Partisanship and Vote Choice at Varying Levels of Turnout
Democrats loyal
47.3 45.1 46.1 47.2 45.0
Democrats defect
.9
1.3
2.1
3.9
5.4
Indep. Voting Democratic
.5
1.0
1.7
2.2
3.3
Indep. Voting Republican
.1
.4
1.7
2.7
3.9
Republicans defect
2.8
2.7
2.9
3.2
4.2
Republicans loyal
48.3 49.5 45.6 40.9 38.2
45.1
5.6
3.3
3.8
4.1
38.1
45.2
5.8
3.6
4.0
4.1
37.3
44.4
6.2
4.0
4.3
4.3
36.8
43.9
6.6
4.4
4.9
4.4
35.8
42.8
7.2
5.3
5.7
4.4
34.6
Percent of Partisans Defecting
Dem. Defection Rate
1.9
Rep. Defection Rate
5.6
11.1
9.6
11.4
9.8
12.2
10.4
13.1
10.9
14.4
11.2
2.8
5.2
4.3
5.9
7.0
7.3
71.3
7.6
7.3
10.6
9.8
By comparison, 10% of the “peripheral” Republicans defect to Gore, resulting in
no effect on the overall Republican defection rate. The net result is that Gore’s
share of partisans’ votes over this interval changes hardly at all (from 53.0% to
53.3%). Combined with a slight tilt of “peripheral” independents to Gore, the net
result is a very modest increase in his overall vote share (from 52.5% to 52.9%).
By 2000, the “joke” really is on the Democrats!
Discussion
The relationship between turnout and partisan outcomes in the five U.S. presidential elections we observe is characterized by both regularities and change over
time. As a rule, Democrats do benefit from higher turnout—and probably would
have lost both the 1960 and the 1976 elections had turnout been much lower.
Similarly, the Republicans benefit from low turnout, and conceivably could have
lost the 2000 election legally as well as empirically with some slight and wellplaced increases in turnout. On the other hand, there is a limit to the explanatory
or determinative power of turnout: no realistic shift in turnout could have cost
LBJ the 1964 election, nor could any realistic shift have threatened Reagan in
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Michael D. Martinez and Jeff Gill
1984, though in each case, alternative turnout patterns could have had significant
effects on each party’s margin of victory and length of electoral coattails.
Perhaps most notably, these findings suggest that the Democratic advantage
from increased turnout (and the Republican vulnerability from it) has changed
over time. In 1984 and 2000, Democrats’ benefits from higher turnout (and
Republican benefits from lower turnout) were limited by the propensity for
peripheral Democrats to defect, as DeNardo predicted. In the 2000 presidential
election, the relationship between turnout and Gore’s share of the vote was very
nearly flat. Gore would have benefited slightly from higher turnout and Bush
would have benefited slightly from lower levels of turnout, but that the overall
effects of turnout on the aggregate vote choice are pretty small. Compositional
analyses of the electorates at varying levels of turnout show that Democrats do
comprise a greater proportion of the electorate at higher levels of turnout, but in
2000, almost all the advantage that might have accrued to Gore was wiped out
by the greater defection rates of these peripheral Democrats.
Taken together, our results across these five elections provide partial support
for both the conventional SES-based model and the alternative defection-based
model, though neither model’s predictions are completely born out empirically.
As predicted by conventional thought, we find that the electorate has a greater
Democratic tilt at higher levels of turnout, although that relationship has significantly weakened over time. In 1960 and 1964, a simulated small electorate was
notably Republican and a simulated large electorate was very Democratic. By
2000, the slope flattened out considerably, with the result that a small electorate
would only be slightly more Republican than a large electorate. The flattening of
the turnout—outcome curves, showing an erosion of support for the conventional
model, corresponds to the weakening of the class-based partisan cleavages in the
United States and is broadly consistent with DeNardo’s speculation and findings
by Nagel and McNulty (1996) that a shrinkage of the “core” partisan electorate
might weaken the overall relationship between turnout and vote choice.
DeNardo (1980) apparently was more right than wrong, owing to his insights
about the relationship between turnout and partisan defection rates. In general,
the relationship between turnout and defection is positive for both Democrats and
Republicans, but the strength of the relationship varies a great deal. Peripheral
Democrats in 1964 and peripheral Republicans in 1984 were very nearly as loyal
as their copartisans were, but the slightly higher defection rates among peripheral Democrats in 1984 and 2000 stymied whatever compositional advantages
Democrats gleaned from higher turnout in those elections.
On the other hand, we did not find support for DeNardo’s proposition that
minority parties would be advantaged by low turnout. DeNardo suggested that
high stimulus elections would result in more votes for minority Republicans,
since a majority of defectors would be Democrats voting for Republican candidates. In our analysis, the election in which the Democrats held the strongest partisan advantage (1964) was also the one in which Democrats enjoyed the greatest
advantage from high turnout. In that year, we estimate that peripheral Democrats
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The Effects of Turnout on Partisan Outcomes
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were as loyal as core Democrats, but peripheral Republicans were much more
likely to abandon Goldwater than were core Republican voters.
Thus, the alternative model proposed by DeNardo helps us to understand why
Democrats are often not advantaged by high turnout, but we found no instance
of Republicans being advantaged by heavy turnout when they were the minority
party. While the short-term forces tend to deflect the compositional advantages
Democrats would have realized from higher turnout in 1984 and 2000, the shortterm forces in 1964 reinforced those advantages by motivating a disproportionate number of Republican defections.
A few caveats are in order. Obviously, partisan mobilization can matter a lot
more than our results suggest. Increasing turnout among Democrats or among
Republicans can dramatically alter election outcomes much more than simply
making it a little easier or a little harder to vote. However, mobilization efforts
by one side are often met with countermobilization efforts on the other side, as
in the case of increased mobilization by Southern whites in reaction to the mobilization of blacks (see, for example, Faw and Skelton 1986, 212–15; Stanley
1986), and the effects of those efforts on the turnout rate is dependent in part on
the relative ease of registration and voting. Moreover, our motivation was to
develop a method to estimate the possible effect resulting from altering turnout
in a single election, necessarily conditioned on the existing party and campaign
strategies, and to suggest how turnout might have mattered in five elections in
the United States. Obviously, conditions in other elections in other settings
(including a highly energized American election) could be very different.
The results provided here depend on the plausibility and fit of our multinomial
logit models, including the assumption that voters and nonvoters weigh their considerations in voter preferences similarly (Gant and Lyons 1993) and that preference orders between choices are not affected by the inclusion (or elimination)
of other choices. We think that this is a very reasonable model choice since the
IIA condition is not important given the elections we study. Moreover, the multinomial logit estimates from these five elections did reasonably well in predicting
vote choice among voters, as well as candidate preference among abstainers.
As we and others (Pacek and Radcliff 1995) have suggested, the weak partyclass cleavage in the United States may make it a particularly difficult setting in
which to find a significant relationship between turnout levels and partisan outcomes. Though class cleavages appear to be declining throughout western democracies (Franklin 1992), class cleavages remain strong in some old democracies
(Britain and the Scandinavian countries; see Nieuwbeerta and De Graaf 1999),
and are becoming significant in some new ones, such as Russia and the Czech
Republic (see Evans and Whitefield 1999; Mateju, Rehakova, and Evans 1999).
Those countries may be more fertile grounds for finding support for the conventional model’s predictions, though we do not yet know how much potential partisan defections may weaken that relationship, as it does in the United States. We
hope that scholars of other democracies will find the methodology we propose
here helpful in making that assessment.
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Michael D. Martinez and Jeff Gill
Acknowledgments
Michael D. Martinez (communicating author), Associate Professor, Department
of Political Science, University of Florida, 234 Anderson Hall, Gainesville FL
32611, [email protected], (352) 392-0262x282. Jeff Gill, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of California-Davis, Department of Political Science, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616,
[email protected], (530) 752-3077. We appreciate helpful comments from
Larry Dodd, Jason Gainous, Jan Leighley, and Joe Stewart on earlier drafts of
this paper.
Manuscript submitted October 4, 2004
Final manuscript received June 9, 2005
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Michael D. Martinez ([email protected]) is associate professor of political science, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-7325.
Jeff Gill ([email protected]) is associate professor of political science, University of California—Davis, Davis, CA 95616.
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