Election results & Post-election 21 Nov 2006 01:14 pm
Low voter turnout and its impact
Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee pointed out in an excellent column on November 14 that any serious analysis of the results of the election this year needs to take into account the low turnout.
Low turnout was predicted, and low turnout happened. About 7.5 million Californians cast ballots this year. That’s well under 50% of all registered California voters. It’s only a third or so of all eligible voters (the state has roughly 22.7 million eligible voters). Walters writes, “Whatever the final number turns out to be, it will be much lower than even the most pessimistic pre-election forecasts.”
In addition to the sheer low numbers, Walters cites data from the Los Angeles Times exit polls that show that even though whites have dropped to below 50% of the state’s population, voter turnout this year was almost overwhelmingly white and non-Latino (75%). Similar disparities exist between people who are most likely to vote and the rest of the population in terms of income and college education.
As Walters points out, “The numbers underscore the fact that California is two parallel political universes, forcing politicians to simultaneously appeal to voters who are an ever-narrower slice of society and confront issues that are largely generated in the nonvoting universe.”