Abstract
Voter turnout in the United States is perhaps the most studied topic in electoral politics. Questions over who votes and why, along with how and why turnout rates have changed over time, have received so much attention over such a long period of time that many academics could be forgiven if they find themselves tired of the topic. Against this backdrop, some scholars have wondered (and doubted) whether there’s anything new under the sun.
Enter Lyn Ragsdale and Jerrold G. Rusk and their new book, The American Nonvoter. They take as their point of departure the large body of research that focuses on voters and argue that a focus on nonvoters can yield new insights and clarify old tensions. It’s time, they argue, to stop treating nonvoters as the reference category in a binary regression model. Instead, Ragsdale and Rusk argue, nonvoters deserve a starring role—they need to be coded as the ones.
From the authors’ point of view, the shift from voters to nonvoters is more than just simple semantics. Ragsdale and Rusk argue that the factors that propel voters to the voting booth—for example, their education and economic resources—are different from the factors that compel nonvoters to stay home. To understand the differences between these two groups, Ragsdale and Rusk focus on the’amount of uncertainty that surrounds the broader campaign. They argue that uncertainty—at both the individual and campaign level—drives individuals to vote.
In highlighting the role of uncertainty, Ragsdale and Rusk identify a novel mechanism that links changes in the broader environment to individuals’ motivations for voting. Economic, political, social, and technological change introduces uncertainty over the future and raises the potential for negative outcomes. Individuals participate in elections to reduce this risk and create stability. As a result, periods of dramatic change should be associated with lower levels of nonvoting, while periods of relative stability should be associated with higher levels of nonvoting.
To evaluate their theory, Ragsdale and Rusk mine several data sources, including state-level data on certified vote counts and individual-level survey data on voters and nonvoters. The results from an initial set of multivariate analyses provide support for their argument that uncertainty drives trends in nonvoting. Economic conditions, in particular, seem to exert a strong influence on turnout, with nonvoting increasing during periods of economic stability.
Chapters Four through Seven provide a more detailed investigation of trends in nonvoting since 1920 (which is a welcome departure from the standard focus among analysts on post-1960 trends). The authors find evidence that nonvoting can be categorized into four periods. The first period (from 1920 to 1944) is characterized by low nonvoting and driven by uncertainties over new social programs, the Great Depression, and the rise of radio technology. The second period (from 1946 to 1972) also witnessed low rates of nonvoting. However, the drivers of uncertainty during this period are different from the first period. Economic growth, the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and television technology came together to create a broad-based sense of insecurity over the future.
The third period (from 1974 to 1990) saw a dramatic increase in nonvoting. As national scandals and international crises retreated from the national conscience, uncertainty over the future ebbed, and a general malaise set in. The fourth and final period (from 1992’to 2012) witnessed a return to low levels’of nonvoting. In this period, internet technology—along with economic restructuring, globalization, and party polarization—created new uncertainties that propelled individuals to the voting booths.
A common theme in these chapters is how historical forces have combined in different ways to either increase or decrease uncertainty within the population. For example, international conflict does not always produce uncertainty. Instead, it can produce uncertainty, and whether it does depends on the presence of other conditions, such as new technologies that “bring the war home.” Similarly, institutional change and conflict can create uncertainty at certain points in time (as they did with the women’s suffrage and civil rights movements), but not others (as with youth voting in the 1970s).
Also relevant is how Ragsdale and Rusk conceptualize uncertainty in historically contingent terms—some periods are calm only by comparison to the periods that come before them. Without Watergate, the Iran Contra scandal might have been more disconcerting and might have convinced more people to vote. By contrast, without Vietnam, the Iraq War might not have seemed as indeterminate and might not have convinced people to head to the voting booth.
Overall, The American Nonvoter is impressive. It enters a research area—the study of voter turnout—that has been a focus of political analysts for decades and manages to make a strong contribution, in both theoretical and empirical terms. The proposition that uncertainty—rather than habits, pocketbooks, political parties, or college degrees—drives individuals to vote is novel and compelling. It provides scholars with a new way to look at old questions and lays the groundwork for future scholarship to glean additional insights into the causes of voter turnout.
The focus on voter turnout from 1920 to 2012 is also important. By expanding the scope of study to include elections prior to 1960, Ragsdale and Rusk deftly show that the low turnout levels that correspond to the “post-1960 turnout decline” were actually deviations from a more general pattern of robust turnout levels and that recent elections have more in common with the elections of the 1950s and 1960s than elections of the 1970s and 1980s.
The American Nonvoter is also timely. Over the past few years, individuals in the United States and other affluent democracies have been forced to come to terms with the rise of nationalist social movements. These movements have become more popular, and several right-wing political parties have adopted their messages. While it remains unclear what will happen to these movements, The American Nonvoter suggests more individuals will help decide their electoral fate.