Demographics and the Electorate

[Virginiá]

More generally, are the Likely Voter screens really doing their job this year?  This is not the same sort of race we've had for the last few cycles.

That's the billion dollar question, isn't it? I feel like there is a better chance this year than others that the screens could be off noticeably, but to which candidate's benefit, who knows? Maybe Millennial turnout plummets and hurts Clinton. Or maybe non-college whites don't have a surge and Trump is swamped by reliable college-educated white voters and high minority turnout.

What I do know is that historically non-college whites are less reliable in terms of voting than college educated whites, and that there is enough reason to believe Hispanics will see very good turnout this year. There is also little-to-no precedent for a demographic like African Americans seeing their turnout plummet 6+ points in 1 cycle while others maintain/increase, as some think might happen.

Good post though! Enjoyed reading.

[Virginiá]

Black turnout was about 10% higher in 2008 and 2012 with Obama running compared to 2004. I don't see why they wouldn't return to voting patterns that match 2004.

Do you have the data for this? Articles/other resources seem to give varying numbers for turnout, but the one I believe I've seen most frequently is the federal data's version:



Which is essentially a total of 6.2% increase since 2004. The trend here is pretty obvious: Black turnout was already increasing prior to 2008, and I do obviously believe Obama had an effect, but who is to say black turnout wouldn't have increased more (if modestly) even if it was Clinton on the ballot? Previous trends certainly suggested it would have been possible.

Further, studies do show that people who vote once have a reasonably good chance of voting again, with the habit strengthening every time they vote thereafter. Why would all these African Americans just buck that trend because Obama isn't on the ballot?

I would have to ask - is there any precedent for one demographic's turnout to plunge so significantly while other demographics experience comparatively little, if any, drop?

I frequently see this 'disappearing black voter' theory, and I just don't understand why the default assumption after so many consecutive cycles of increasing turnout would be that these voters are not actually engaged in the process more than before, and will suddenly suffer a dramatic collapse in turnout.

[Virginiá]

To add to my post above, I would expect the black vote will converge to the white vote, if adjusted for socioeconomics. That is I would expect the college educated black vote to mirror the college educated white vote, and similarly for the non-college educated population.

Unrelated, but is it just me or does it seem like some of our biggest states are weighing down national turnout averages?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2013/03/12/the-states-with-the-highest-and-lowest-turnout-in-2012-in-2-charts/

The worst ones are the biggest (based on eligible voters):

California (55.9%)
New York (53.6%)
Texas (50.1%)

If we could get better election reforms in New York and Texas, and maybe Pennsylvania as well, it seems like we could stop looking so pathetic to the world on this!

I omited California because they have been going hard at election law changes since 2012, with SDR/automatic registration to begin in 2017-2018, and a mail voting bill I think might have been signed into law already with a slow phase in for 2020+. All the states with poor turnout have no favorable voting laws at all really. I expect Illinois' ranking to move up too with their introduction of SDR in 2014.

In New York, I imagine if Democrats can finally take the State Senate from Republicans/Independent Democrats, a raft of voting reforms there could boost turnout.

[Virginiá]

This is not going to be a low turnout election...

People are "turned off" because it has lasted so long. There's been an endless stream of news coverage for a year now. This doesn't mean that they aren't going to vote; they almost certainly will. The Brexit campaign was nasty, depressing and disappointed everyone who was involved; turnout was very high though. Elections that have consequences motivate people, even if they're irritated by the shape of those consequences.

This is why I can't help but shake that this may be a high turnout election. Look at the "thought about" polls - they do loosely correlate with the final turnout rates. When more people "thought about" the election, more people turned out. Obviously we don't have a whole lot of data points, and I'm not implying >= 2008 levels, but certainly given that particular question and others, there is some basis for believing this to be a high turnout election.

This was interesting:
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2016/07/08/why-clinton-and-trump-may-increase-voter-turnout-in-2016/



The 3 first questions appear to track final voter turnout, and for 2016 those poll questions are sky high. Higher than any year since 1992 (except for 'more interested than 4 years ago', but still around 2008-levels!)

Of course maybe I'm just overly willing to believe this idea, but isn't it plausible that even despite such negativity, people perceive an election as so important that they do indeed turn out anyway? We haven't actually had an election like this in the modern era.

At the very least, this data can't be quickly ignored/dismissed.

[Virginiá]

Well that is the conundrum with the data. The interest level is at a record high, but the dissatisfaction is only surpassed by 1992 when Perot had a big showing as an independent. Without the big vote for Perot the turnout in 1992 would have been abysmal. Indeed in 1996 when Perot's vote dropped from 19% to 8% turnout dropped from 58% to 52%. This is consistent with half of the Perot voters from 92 staying home in 96.

Well, to be fair, I wasn't trying to put too much emphasis on any one single question there. I was more amazed at how all 3 of those are crazy high, and the first 2 are record setters for at least the past generation.

For your point, yes, there is significant dissatisfaction, but also note that in 1996, the interest level was a lot lower than this election when they were not happy about their choices. The situation is much different now, with huge interest but somewhat higher levels of dissatisfaction compared to 1996.

We could probably fill a decently-sized cubicle with different interpretations of this data, but from my view, I don't think it's unreasonable to say we might see turnout anywhere from 2012 levels to maybe somewhere between 2012 and 2004 (based on that chart)... Or not. Who knows.

On another note, if we see turnout levels like 1996 or 2000, we'll know that these questions aren't all that reliable in all cases. Win-win for us prognosticators!

[Virginiá]

The latest Bloomberg / Selzer poll had 62 non-college - 38 college in their latest poll, very similarly to ABC/WaPo. Again, this is a huge difference from the 2012 exits (53 - 47).  

Though it should be noted that it's less of a departure from previous years (56 - 44 in 2008 and 58-42 in 2004, and I believe 58-42 in 2000).

...

Must say, 62% non-college sounds incredibly unlikely, especially when considering that the number of non-college voters is decreasing by the year. To see those numbers, like you said, would require a huge drop in college-educated voters, which would be a massive reversal of reliable voting trends.

I just don't get why college educated voters would be expected to stay home en masse even when we've had elections in the past where the choice of candidates was not well-received, like 1996. Further, I'd expect college educated voters to better understand what is at stake here, and thus show up.

I don't know. These assumptions about massive non-college white voter surges sounds highly implausible. A spike in turnout? Sure. But not like this. I suspect some polling firms might have a lot of soul-searching to do after this cycle is finished.

[Virginiá]

Gallup poll seems to indicate that

http://www.gallup.com/poll/195806/americans-less-sure-vote-president.aspx?g_source=Election%202016&g_medium=lead&g_campaign=tiles

Turnout this year will be below 2012 which is a surprise.

Do they have numbers from other months as well? The data I had posted above was from Pew and the results for interest levels was considerably higher than this (for some of the questions). However, that was from June, and it's possible that people were a lot more interested then than they are now.

Given the Gallup data, it doesn't look good for Democrats, given how much support they derive from Millennials. Old people are very interested, as usual, and that's fantastic for Republicans. But, finally, I think worth mentioning at least is the the disparity between Republicans/Democrats on "will definitely vote" is not that much greater than in 2012. Republicans have +2 more points on this right now.