10.6: Voter Behavior

The The word ballot comes from the white and black ballotte (Italian for “small balls”) used to cast anonymous votes in the Republic of Venice—and in the early United States, as in the case of this ballot box from a social club in Washington, D.C. key to winning any elected office in the United States, from city council all the way up to the presidency, is votes. Every election cycle, millions of dollars are spent trying to predict and influence American voters. As with public opinion, it may be impossible to fully explain any individual American’s vote, but it is possible to identify trends in voter participation and choice that tend to persist from one election to the next.

Voter participation, or turnout, varies across demographic groups. Older, richer, and more educated Americans are likelier to vote than their younger, poorer, and less educated counterparts. Whites vote at a higher rate than members of other racial and ethnic groups. Women, who could not vote in most states prior to the Nineteenth Amendment, now vote at a higher rate than men.

Electoral rules and campaign contexts also affect turnout. Strict voter registration and voter ID laws make voting harder; mail-in and no-excuse absentee ballots make voting easier. General elections tend to draw higher turnout than primaries. More Americans vote in presidential elections than in midterm elections held halfway between presidential ones, as shown in Figure 10.2 below. Even fewer vote in “off-year” elections, when typically only a handful of state and local races are on the ballot.

Figure 10.2: Turnout among eligible voters, 1789-2024 (Source: United States Elections Project)

The strongest predictor of how Americans will vote is partisanship. The Democratic and Republican parties count on the backing of distinct voting blocs (as depicted in Figure 9.2). Democrats tend to earn more support than Republicans do from young voters, racial and ethnic minorities, union members, and residents of the East and West coasts. Republicans earn more support than Democrats do from old voters, whites, religious conservatives, and residents of the South and Midwest. None of these voting blocs is monolithic: there are young Republicans and old Democrats, black Republicans and white Democrats. Nor are party coalitions permanent over time. Realignments occasionally occur when existing blocs shift their loyalties or new blocs emerge. Still, these patterns are reliable enough to help both average Americans and political practitioners understand and anticipate electoral outcomes.

Voters do not decide whether and how to vote in a vacuum. Candidates, parties, and other organizations actively campaign to influence voter behavior. Broadly speaking, campaigns engage in two categories of politicking to influence voter choice and participation. Persuasion is the act of encouraging citizens to support a particular candidate, party, or issue position. This can include both positive campaigning, such as extolling the qualities and virtues of a candidate, and negative campaigning, such as criticizing an opponent for extreme views or scandalous behavior. Mobilization is the act of encouraging citizens to turn out to vote, which often entails voter registration drives or even physically transporting voters (with their permission) to polling stations. The most effective campaigns use these tools efficiently, focusing their persuasion efforts on the voters who are most swayable to their side and their mobilization efforts on citizens who already favor them but need encouragement to actually vote.