Traditionally, Democrats and progressives have been sympathetic to policies aimed at increasing voter turnout, while conservative Republicans have been highly skeptical. Even supporters of the most extreme policy of this kind – compulsory voting – have mostly been left-wing. Notably, then-President Barack Obama endorsed the idea in 2015.
Both sides in this debate cite noble and even-handed reasons for their positions. For example, supporters of compulsory voting traditionally argue that voting is a civic duty. Opponents argue that this violates individual freedom. But cynics have long wondered whether the real motive was partisan gain: Perhaps liberal Democrats supported efforts to increase turnout because it would help them win, while conservative Republicans opposed it for the same reason .
There was disagreement among scholars about the extent to which the increased turnout actually helped Democrats. The effect was probably not as great as many partisans imagined. However, conventional political wisdom held that higher voter turnout would at least benefit the political left on the fringe.
Recent polling trends may test both cynical and idealistic explanations for these views. In the Trump era, it is increasingly Republican candidates – especially Trump himself – who benefit from higher voter turnout.
Dan Hopkins recently summarized some of these trends on the 538 website, in an article titled “The fewer votes, the more you support Trump”:
In 2016, former President Donald Trump was a political outsider seeking the GOP nomination for president. In part, his campaign sought to appeal to voters disenchanted with politics.
Despite this, however, Trump was not significantly more popular among infrequent voters than among consistent voters….
Between February 20 and March 18, 2024,* Gall Sigler and I oversaw a survey, conducted by NORC, of 2,462 English- and Spanish-speaking adults living in the United States. According to public records, 63% of our respondents said U.S. citizens went to vote in 2020…
And when we broke down respondents by their voting history, we found dramatic differences in who they support for president in 2024. President Joe Biden performed much better among repeat voters, while Trump had a wide lead among people who have not voted recently. Specifically, among respondents who voted in the 2018, 2020, and 2022 general elections, Biden outperformed Trump 50% to 39%. But among respondents old enough to vote but who didn’t vote in any of those three elections, Trump crushed Biden 44% to 26%.
Hopkins goes on to point out that this model helps explain why Democrats performed relatively better in the final elections of 2018 and 2022, with comparatively lower voter turnout, compared to the 2020 presidential election year.
One obvious explanation for the Democrats’ newfound advantage among heavy voters is the widening “high school graduation gap,” whereby voters — especially white voters — with higher levels of education have become more likely to support Democrats, while less educated voters have moved towards the majority. opposite direction. Education is highly correlated with voter turnout, as more educated citizens are much more likely to vote.
Perhaps the educational attainment gap – and the resulting differences in voter turnout – will diminish or disappear. But if it persists, it will be interesting to see whether the attitudes of intellectuals and political activists towards voter turnout will change. Will Republicans become advocates for higher voter turnout or even embrace compulsory voting? Will Democrats become more skeptical of such measures? Time will tell.
I myself have long been skeptical of the importance of increasing voter turnout and am also a long-time opponent of compulsory voting (see, for example, here, here and here). I think most people do Not they have a duty to vote, even in high-stakes elections. And I have argued that relatively ignorant citizens can often do more good by abstaining from voting than by casting poorly informed votes (though I am also skeptical of arguments that the government should try to purge ignorant voters, mainly because I doubt they can be trusted its). do so impartially). This latter skepticism also makes me wary of “epistocracy.”
In addition to libertarian objections to the coercion inherent in compulsory voting, the main reason for these positions is that nonvoters and infrequent voters tend to be even more ignorant about government and public policy than those who vote more often. Therefore, a sharp increase in voter turnout risks exacerbating the already serious problem of political ignorance. Compulsory voting would be even worse. I held these views when it was generally believed that higher voter turnout benefited Democrats, and I continue to hold them today.
The problem is not just that a more ignorant electorate is likely to make worse choices among the options before them. Such options are likely to be worse from the start. Parties facing relatively ignorant elections are likely to select lower quality candidates and policies than those facing more informed elections. I describe the logic behind this more fully in my book Democracy and political ignorance.
This connection between voter knowledge and relatively good political outcomes is not an iron law. In Chapter 2 of my book, I examine some scenarios in which voter ignorance can actually be beneficial. But I also explain why such situations might be unusual.
You might still support higher voter turnout or compulsory voting if you think political ignorance doesn’t matter much; for example, some scholars argue that ignorant voters can use “informational shortcuts” to make good decisions, or that “miracles of aggregation” lead the electorate to make good aggregate judgments even though most individual voters know very little.
I am a long-time critic of such optimism about voter knowledge, for reasons discussed in detail in Chapter 4 of Democracy and political ignorance. In this regard, I notice more sympathy for my pessimism among left-liberals after Trump’s rise than before. At the very least, it may be difficult for leftists to praise higher voter turnout and dismiss concerns about voter knowledge in a world where less frequent and more ignorant voters tend to support candidates like Trump, whose agenda they believe ( often) for a good reason!) to be horribly awful.
Conversely, right-wing intellectuals and activists sympathetic to Trumpism could potentially become supporters of policies that increase voter turnout, or even compulsory voting. They might also downplay or dismiss concerns about ignorance, perhaps adopting traditionally leftist and miracle-of-aggregation arguments. The latter may be a natural extension of the MAGA right’s embrace of populism. I think we already see some elements of this in the right’s tendency to ignore the dangers of political misinformation.
I’m not sure the left and right will completely switch sides on voter turnout issues. Long-standing attitudes can be “sticky.” But I wouldn’t be surprised to see at least some significant movement in that direction.