Big City, Big Turnout? Electoral Participation in American Cities

ABSTRACT:

This article seeks to describe and explain variation in voter turnout in American big city municipal elections using data from 332 mayoral elections in 38 large U.S. cities over 25 years. In my cross-sectional time-series analysis of turnout in mayoral elections, I find that city-level demographic factors are only weakly correlated with turnout. By contrast, institutional and campaign factors explain much of the variation. The effect of Progressive era reforms on depressing turnout is greatest in the most competitive elections. I conclude by discussing the implication of the overall downward trend in turnout and changes cities can make to increase participation.

Notes

1 Two other recent studies, Hajnal and Lewis (2003) and Kelleher and Lowery (2004) look at the impact of a host of political structures on municipal turnout. Unfortunately, both samples consist exclusively of cities with nonpartisan elections. As such, the authors were unable to estimate the impact of nonpartisan elections.

2 Portland primary elections where one candidate received a majority of votes cast are coded as final despite the fact that there always is a general election, because, in this case, the primary winner runs uncontested in the general election.

3 The 2004 mayoral election in San Diego shows some of the possibilities of drawing extra voters into municipal elections. In this overwhelmingly conservative city, the mayoral election was almost won by a write-in candidate, Donna Frye, who was running as an outsider to the city’s establishment. In the 2005 mayoral election, which was not held concurrently with any major elections, Frye lost by 8 percentage points in an election with much lower turnout.