[EL] Iowa Turnout

[Michael McDonald]

Caroline Tolbert and I have a forthcoming piece in Public Opinion Quarterly
that demonstrates perceptions of competitiveness are a factor in voting
decisions. For the old school out there, this challenges a 1974 APSR article
by Ferejohn and Fiorina that destroyed the rational choice approach to
studying voter turnout. They found in a simple cross-tabulation no
relationship between perceptions of competition and turnout. The key
confound uncontrolled for in their study is that those who are most likely
to know an election is uncompetitive are the same who have high levels of
political knowledge and thus fit a likely voter profile. As this also
implies, individuals' perceptions are based on the political circumstances,
too, which we also show. Where I would like to go with this is to take
Charles’ point 2 further to do an entire perceptions workup of the calculus
to vote.

I’ve also been noting for some time in my series of turnout articles for The
Forum that competitive elections tend to have higher turnout, which can be
seen in all manner of contexts (e.g., turnout increases in new battleground
states in 2008 vs. 2004, turnout declines when a state lacks a contested top
of the ticket race in a midterm election, etc.). Of course, as I note in
these articles, electoral competition is not always the determinative
factor. For example, Christine O’Donnell’s Senate election was
uncompetitive, but her positions inflamed people to vote.

I've posted my thoughts on Iowa's turnout here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-p-mcdonald/the-tea-party-fever-has-b_b
_1183794.html?ref=@pollster

============
Dr. Michael P. McDonald
Associate Professor, George Mason University
Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution

                             Mailing address:
(o) 703-993-4191             George Mason University
(f) 703-993-1399             Dept. of Public and International Affairs
mmcdon at gmu.edu               4400 University Drive - 3F4
http://elections.gmu.edu     Fairfax, VA 22030-4444

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Charles
Stewart III
Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2012 5:26 PM
To: Doug Hess; Election Law
Subject: Re: [EL] Iowa Turnout

1.  There is an old article in the Journal of Politics by Gary Cox and Mike
Munger showing that close congressional races induce greater turnout in
those races.  I reproduced their results in both editions of Analyzing
Congress, for more recent House races.  The interesting thing is that you
get turnout increases in House districts when the House race is close, even
in presidential election years, when we tend to think that turnout is driven
only by interest in the presidential race.
2. The closest thing to an answer to this question is based on looking at
self-reported turnout in House elections as a function of where survey
respondents place congressional candidates on ideological scales. 
Respondents who report that they perceive a big ideological difference
between candidates are more likely to report voting in the race than
respondents who report that they perceive a small (or no) ideological
difference between candidates.  I’m sure you can spot the problems with
causal inference in this regularity.
3. I hope to post up something soon about where the “non-of-the-above” vote
in Iowa came from, at least geographically.

Charles

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Doug
Hess
Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2012 4:11 PM
To: Election Law
Subject: [EL] Iowa Turnout

Some thoughts/questions on the IA turnout (from a native of the tall corn
state):
 
1. Is it generally true that when the public perceives an election to be
close that turnout rises? If so, was that the case in IA? The press coverage
I heard...well, ok, NPR (hi, Overby!)...seemed to portray it as "too close
to call", etc. 
 
2. What about diversity in choice, is that believed to boost increased
turnout? Assuming moderates in the GOP generally support Romney (Huntsman
provides an alternative for those voters to Romney, but he didn't really run
in Iowa), it seems there was a range of candidates for non-moderates to pick
from. That is to say: Santorum, Paul, and Romney seem to 
have little in common. Perhaps no more than what campaigns in the past have
had, but it does seem a crowded field. 
 
3. Unrelated to the above: that the candiates outside of the top three got
29% of the vote, which might be an interesting indication of diversity
itself, you wonder how much of that adds up to anti-Romney votes. One can
imagine a gulf between Paul supporters and others, but how does the 15% that
Perry and Bachman received breakdown for Romney and Santorum? If the trend
runs against Romney, is the real data from the caucus spelling bad news for
Romney? 
 
Doug 
 
============
From: Michael McDonald <mmcdon at gmu.edu>
To: law-election at uci.edu
Cc: 
Date: Wed, 04 Jan 2012 03:21:23 -0500
Subject: [EL] Iowa Turnout
I posted the turnout numbers here:
http://elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_2012P.html
There are a total of 122,255 votes in the Republican caucus according to the
Google data table provided in partnership with the Iowa Republican Party and
the Democrats report "more than 25,000" people turned out for their
caucuses.
The Google site reports the Cain and Roemer votes, too. Cain's 54 votes and
Roemer's 31 votes are more that the 8 vote victory margin. One of the things
that is perplexing me is that there are 252 votes unaccounted for when all
the candidate votes are tallied...Write-ins? Uncommitted?
My take is that participation in the Republican caucus kept pace with the
population growth of the state over the past four years. Furthermore, as a
likely consequence of an uncontested Democratic nomination, the entrance
polls report that this year independents comprised 23% of caucusgoers while
four years ago they constituted 11%. Thus, there appears to be a small dip
in enthusiasm among Republicans compared to 2008. Perhaps the Tea Party
enthusiasm from 2010 has run its course, so Republicans should not count on
a replication of 2010 conditions in 2012. Still, overall levels of
participation remain elevated, so if there is a retrenchment in turnout from
the high 2008 levels, there is no indication of a wholesale collapse. Of
course, Iowa is only one state with a caucus system. The upcoming primaries
may provide better indicators and we have a lot of territory to cover before
November.
============
Dr. Michael P. McDonald
Associate Professor, George Mason University
Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution