The American Voter
Why can't politics capture the public's attention? Once eager and excited to take part in a process that has formed the very backbone of the republic, many of today's Americans are bored and indifferent — snoozing, not choosing, when it comes to presidential politics.
by Lory Hough
In fact, turnouts on Election Day have been steadily falling since the 1960s. And it's not just the smaller city council or town selectman races feeling the snub. Even highly publicized, big-money presidential elections are failing to pull in voters. In 1996, the presidential primaries netted only 16 percent of eligible voters and less than 50 percent on election day — one of the lowest turnouts ever recorded. In all of the 20th century, only the 1920 and 1924 presidential elections drew a smaller crowd. Voting, although some would argue one of the most important rights a citizen can exercise in a democratic society, has become, it seems, not worth bothering with.
Such apathy doesn't bode well for the nation says Kennedy School Professor Tom Patterson who points out that elections are about voters. And if voters aren't interested, as he notes in his 1993 book, Out of Order, "...the legitimacy of the presidential selection system is shaky."
Which is why Patterson and his colleagues at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy decided to launch the Vanishing Voter Project — a year-long undertaking devoted to getting inside the minds of the American voter and shedding light on what can be done to turn apathy into action.
The project officially kicked off, with funding from Pew Charitable Trusts, in November 1999, a full year before the 2000 presidential election. Each week since then, roughly 1,000 Americans aged 18 or older have been randomly surveyed (see sidebar) by telephone in an attempt to determine what makes them tick and why they follow or ignore the campaign. Questions have focused on how informed Americans are about candidates, whether or not they thought the race had started too early, and whether the tone of the campaign had been particularly negative during a given week.
In addition, the project also includes a "voter involvement index" that tracks the public's involvement based on the following four measures: whether they are currently paying close attention to the campaign, whether they are thinking about the campaign, whether they are talking about the campaign, and whether they are following it in the news. The project also tracks news coverage of the candidates and campaign on a daily basis and has tapped outside sources involved in election research.
How'd We Get Here?
Americans didn't always cast presidential ballots. Early in the nation's history, candidates were nominated by party leaders ("King Caucus") and elected by electors chosen by the state legislators. It wasn't until after Andrew Jackson was elected in 1829, under the slogan "Let the people rule," that universal voting rights were given to white males. At the same time, the power of political parties ballooned. By 1840, voter participation levels reached 80 percent and remained high throughout the 19th century — attributed by many researchers to the increasingly partisan nature of campaigns. Parties became highly mobilized "machines" holding parades, distributing propaganda, and as author and Century Foundation Fellow Ruy Teixeira notes, "orchestrating a voter's visit to the polling booth."
By the end of the 19th century, turnouts had dropped due in part to new barriers — literacy tests, poll taxes, and longer residency requirements, for example — that made voting more difficult, particularly for black voters, poor whites, and immigrants, as well as the decline of powerful political parties. When women voters came on board in 1920, increasing the total electorate, election turnout figures dropped from nearly 62 percent in 1916, to 49 percent. It was not until 1936, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected, that a majority of women exercised their right. During the next few decades, voter turnout figures held steady. When the 1950s hit, voter turnout started to rise, peaking with the 1960 race between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon. By the time Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater battled it out in 1964, voter interest again started to decline, reaching its nadir in 1996, despite the passage of several acts and amendments during the 1960s and 1970s that removed some of the barriers to voting created at the beginning of the century.
At What Cost?
Today, American voters give all kinds of reasons for not voting. The "cost" of being involved in the voting process is among them. On the one hand, many find it difficult to register and stay registered (moving means having to reregister), despite efforts like the federal motor-voter bill, which allows Americans to register while renewing driver's licenses, and popular pushes like MTV's "Rock the Vote" campaign.
Others get turned off by the enormous time commitment needed to follow the race. This year's presidential election, for example, saw candidates jockeying for position nearly two years before the actual election. Unfortunately, instead of giving Americans more time to absorb the issues, according to results from the Vanishing Voter Project, the long campaign has them tuning out.
"You can make an argument for a long campaign," acknowledged Patterson, "but our data show it's a disincentive." During the second week of the project's polling — a full year before the election — only 5 percent of Americans said they were paying "a great deal of attention" to the campaign. Roughly 60 percent said they were paying "little" or "no" attention. By week three, despite heavy news coverage, Americans' interest in the campaign actually declined.
"The public's attention to the campaign is a scare resource," Patterson said, "and we ought to treat it that way. We want people to follow the campaign, but we have to ask whether they can be expected to do it for a year or more. The interests of Iowa, New Hampshire, and the other front-loading states ought not to outweigh the interests of citizens. If the effect is to dull people's appetite for the election, then we ought to listen to them and find ways to shorten it.
"America's changing," he explained."It's a postindustrial society. This isn't 1950 America with two parents in every home. It's a busier time for people."
Part of the change has to do with how we communicate with one another.
"This is key for young people," Patterson explained. "I don't think kids today have an appetite for news. There was a time when the newspaper was in virtually every stable home and kids did acquire an appetite. Citizenship is a connection. It's learned."
Today's teens and young voters, he notes, are spending lots of time on the Internet, but few are seeking out political sites. Studies, including one by Elaine Kamarck, executive director of the Visions Project at the Kennedy School, show that despite the pluses the Internet has provided when it comes to political campaigns — it's powerful and inexpensive — it has yet to compete with television, a medium "that goes out and 'pulls' often reluctant citizens into contact with the candidates."
The end result, the project reports, is that today's young adults are paying almost no attention to the presidential campaign. The steepest decline in voter turnout during the past 25 years, in fact, has been among the youngest of adults. Of the eligible 18-to-24-year olds, 50 percent voted in 1972, compared with only 32 percent in 1996. During this same time period, turnout among those 45 and older also declined but much less dramatically, from 68 to 65 percent.
Now What?
What Patterson says we need to do is focus on the "key moments" of campaigns — events like debates and conventions, which once brought the nation together for one night and reignited voter interest in a campaign.
"Elections are punctuated by moments when citizens sit up, take notice, and actively listen, learn, and decide," explains Marvin Kalb, executive director of the center's Washington, DC office and co-director of the project.
"The best example," says Patterson, "is the general election debates. In a bad year, 60 million Americans watch them on TV. In a good year, 90 million watch. That's a real community event and research shows that most people who tune into a debate stay with it from beginning to end. People get excited."
The presidential primaries, Patterson added, are also key moments. "We've seen record-high turnouts in some of the 2000 election primaries," says Patterson. "That could be taken as a sign that Americans are awakening from their apathy. The irony is that the jump in turnout is largely attributable to John McCain, and his message that the political process is broken. In other words, by tapping into people's disgust with politics as usual,' McCain is stimulating turnout by appealing to the same discontent that, in the past, has discouraged participation. We'll have to wait and see what the longer-term effects of the McCain candidacy will be."
The Vanishing Voter Project, Patterson noted, is trying to address whether the current campaign is taking full advantage of its key moments. "The audience for the general election debates is probably about as large as could be expected. But the audience for party conventions has been shrinking, and the audience for primary election debates has always been tiny. Perhaps there is a better way to structure these key moments.
"We don't have any illusions that this project can turn the tide," Patterson explained of the Vanishing Voter's mission, "but we assume that the structure of campaigns matters and that campaigns can be made more exciting."
Patterson said that the project will hold a conference after the primaries, then another after the national conventions that begin in July, and a final one after the election in November. And, he says, although they will not make specific recommendations, once they release their findings, they will open up discussion on various issues, such as starting the campaign later, establishing re-gional primaries or a national primary, having polls open 24 hours a day, and Internet voting. "We want to get a dialogue going among the people who make the decisions," said Patterson. "We want to foster a network."
For more information about the project and to follow ongoing, weekly analysis, check out the Vanishing Voter Web site at www. vanishingvoter.org. To sign up for weekly e-mail updates from the project, go directly to www.ksg.harvard.edu/vvoter/update.shtml.
