Today we'll start to talk about voting and elections by taking up the topic of voter turnout. Then, we'll circle back to our discussion of biases in individuals' ability to process and respond to political information to explore the extent to which American's system of political representation is biased as well (Foreshadowing: There's a surprise ending.)
But, to start out on voter turnout, I thought I would throw a little data at you. Michael MacDonald is a professor of political science at George Mason University and one of the experts on voter turnout. His website has tons of turnout data, which is loads of nerdy fun. But, I wanted to point out two data points to you in particular.
The first is US voter turnout for the 2008 presidential election, which was 61.7%, a high figure in modern US presidential elections. Of course, pre-election media speculation had suggested that then-Senator Obama's presence in the election would mobilize large numbers of new voters into the electorate. This did not happen.
US voter turnout in 2004 was 60.1%, though that year's election represented a marked increase in turnout from 2000, which was only 54.2%. (For those of you who are interested, Professor MacDonald's complete state-by-state and national turnout data going back to 1980 are here.)
This is not to say that an extra 1.6% voter turnout is small. That figure represents about 2 million new voters.
Yet, it is clear that voter turnout was already on the way up after the 2000 election and that 2008 didn't fundamentally re-make the electoral landscape. Despite the presence of a very high quality candidate in President Obama and very high stakes issues, voter turnout only inched up from previous levels. The interesting question for us is, why? Which we will get to today in class.
