Election Participation

How does the turnout vary among the states?  In an earlier blog, I noted that Florida cast more votes than California, a state that is nearly twice its size.  One can easily argue that Californians deserve less say - proportionally - if they don't bother to vote.  The electoral college helps to mitigate the turnout problem.  But what is that turnout?  I crunched some numbers.

I broke the states into 6 groups, half representing Trump and half Hillary.  From here, I categorized them as either strong, majority, or marginal.  A strong state saw the candidate receive 60% or more of the vote, a majority saw the candidate get more than 50%, and marginal are those states won by a plurality of votes.  To determine participation, I divided the number of votes cast by the population of the state.  That is going to under report the participation rate since it includes people not eligible to vote but gives a ballpark figure to use.  I will list them by lowest participation rate to highest.

 

38.9% Strong Hillary consists of 4 states and DC.  California, at 36.2% is a big drag here.

 

40.2% Majority Trump consists of 14 states.  Texas had a paltry 32.7% turnout, worse than CA!

 

40.3% Strong Trump consists of 9 states.

 

42.2% Majority Hillary consists of 9 states.

 

46.3% Marginal Trump covers 7 states.  Wisconsin had 51.6% turnout.

 

48.7% Marginal Hillary covers 7 states.  Maine saw a 56.2% turnout.

 

The states that were won by pluralities are also the states where the candidates spent most of their time.  Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.  Clearly, the more competitive the state is, the bigger the voter turnout.  You want more people to vote?  Be a competitive state.  If one candidate has no hope, the voters for the other candidate won't turn out either.  Republicans are wasting their time in New York or California while Democrats need not apply in Oklahoma or Utah (yes, though on the marginal win list, that is on account of a strong third party showing; Hillary didn't break 30%).

 

So how do we make states more competitive?  That's a question for another blog.