Do Ballot Initiatives Boost Turnout?

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11/04/2004

Do Ballot Initiatives Boost Turnout?

I mentioned this in a parenthesis in my previous post, but I want to say a little more as the consensus seems to grow that the anti-gay marriage initiatives increased the turnout of white evangelicals. I think it is extremely unlikely that the initiatives drew significant numbers of people to the polls who would not otherwise have voted in the most polarized election of their lifetimes. It is hard to imagine that there are white evangelicals who could not be motivated to vote on Bush v. Kerry, but needed the added bonus of a constitutional amendment that would not even have any immediate effect on the rules in their states in order to get off their butts.

A year and a half ago, I spent some time helping a friend look into the idea of pushing some initiatives on environmental issues in order to increase turnout and/or call attention to some of the Bush rollback's of regulation. For example, we were thinking of initiatives that might set clean water standards in a state back to the federal level that prevailed under Clinton. In the course of this, I asked several experts whether they could think of examples where a ballot initiative had measurably increased turnout in a way that affected other things on the ballot. Only a California consultant who has probably run more initiative campaigns than anyone in history had an answer: in 1982, when L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley lost the race for governor by 53,000 votes, it is generally thought that a gun-control initiative on the ballot that year drew at least that number of pro-gun voters to the polls who then also voted against Bradley. But that was 22 years and many initiatives ago, and even that one generated turnout in opposition to the initiative, rather than in support. Also, it was in an off-year election, not a presidential election. It's harder to boost turnout in a presidential year, because a much larger percentage are going to vote anyway.

Not much came of our environmental-initiative scheme, but liberals did have at least one initiative on the ballot that was designed not only to achieve its stated aim but also to increase turnout of underrepresented voters: the Florida initiative to raise the state's minimum wage. A lot of money and energy went into the initiative, and it passed by a large margin. Maybe it increased turnout of low-income voters, but not enough to win the state for Kerry or for Betty Castor. I don't know the best method to determine whether either this initiative or the anti-gay marriage initiatives actually caused turnout to be higher than it would have been otherwise, but I know we don't have that information at the moment.

That's not to say that the anti-gay initiatives weren't key to the Bush victories in red states. I don't think it was turnout so much as a way to send the message to their voters that the key issue in the election was gay marriage. And it did so in a subtle way, without forcing the president to make it the issue or inducing much of a backlash among younger voters, who were probably indifferent to the initiatives. In fact, they even left the president free, when he realized that he was losing younger voters, to explicitly endorse civil unions, the very policy on which the White House planned to excoriate Howard Dean a year ago, and which was explicitly prohibited by many of the initiatives. We also need to know a lot more about how information about the initiatives was conveyed -- was it mailings, calls, church-based interventions?

Finally, there seems to be some concern that trying to figure out the role that these initiatives played in the Bush reelection constitutes "blaming the gays." For my part, I want to be very clear that there's nothing that gay rights advocates or the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court should have done differently. They didn't choose to put these initiatives on the ballot; the right did. This was not a matter of gays claiming their equality, it was others trying to restrict that equality. If the right didn't have the Massachusetts ruling as an excuse, they would have found another, just as they did in 1996. Let's not worry about blame, and really find out what happened. I suspect it will be less significant than it seems right now, but nonetheless important to Bush and a brilliantly executed shadow campaign.

Posted by Mark Schmitt on 11/04/2004 at 11:24 PM in 2004 elections, Decembrist archives | Permalink

Comments

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Isn't it possible that gay marriage ballot initiatives are an order of magnitude more mobilizing than, say, some random environmental thing?

Posted by: praktike | 11/05/2004 at 07:54 AM

Whether Evangelicals would be pushed out of their chair to vote against gay marriage or 'teaching homosexuality in the schools' when they wouldn't otherwise go vote for Bush isn't the point. Rather, the initiatives were very likely used to prod them, give them an extra nudge. As Bush might have said (or been prompted to say), "it's a Multi-Pronged Strategery."

In other words, I find it hard to believe that these initiatives did not contribute to increasing the turnout of Bush supporters.

Posted by: HaroldHardcore | 11/05/2004 at 09:49 AM

Hi Mark:

Good point. Ultimately, this is an empirical question, and someone with time and data could compare states with anti-gay initiatives versus those without and look at turnout differences, controlling for other stuff. Also, in Colorado, there were many ballot initiatives, several of them progressive, including requiring utilities to produce 15% of their electricity by renewable means (passed), a big new mass transit system (passed), a big cigarette tax hike for public health funding (passed), and an arts/cultural sales tax continued increase (passed), even while Bush won the state fairly handily.

Posted by: paul teske | 11/05/2004 at 10:21 AM

Perhaps we need to rethink defining every discontent or even every wrong as a "right" and start thinking strategically. Had the advocates of gay marriage adopted an incremental strategy and pushed for civil unions on a state by state basis they would have eventually prevailed. DOMA should have clearly demonstrated that nationalizing this issue was suicide. The Mass. decision and the flurry of local officials gave Rove the opportunity to nationalize the issue. We now have 11 more states with constitutional amendments that preclude GM and, in some, civil unions and we also have a lost election. Court decidions short circuit the political process and leave opponents feeling enraged and powerless. And then we have the blowback.

Posted by: alan aronson | 11/05/2004 at 10:27 AM

The Southwest and the Midwest are the main areas of the nation in political play (right?). It seems to me that in the Midwest especially the Repubs are going to play the same (of course when it suits coded) heterosexual/regular-guy/white/christian/moral values/moral authority/family values/anti snobbish liberal elistist/anti 'pc police' message. (It's why Hillary looks like such a bad choice.) Again, the Dems have to think very carefully (and strategically) about how they counter this.
BTW, as an aside, I strongly suspect (perhaps this is just wishful thinking) that Bush and Blair are going to split over the middle east peace plan. Many reasons for this -- no time to explain here (should perhaps be obvious). This might be very useful for the Dems given how useful Blair has been for Bush.

Posted by: Dan | 11/05/2004 at 11:45 AM

I very much agree with your overall discussion of the moral corruption of the current incarnation of the right wing. It is however, the natural progression of a party that begins and bases its rise to power on absorbing the dixie-crats and all they stood for.
Moreover, it is equally clear to me that the 2-3 reasons real this administration went to war had nothing to do with anything they put forward. Rather one of the actual reasons was almost certainly a cynical calculation that "war is a good issue for us". I doubt very much that this was an afterthought. Yet another example of the same disgusting cynical manipulation of the electorate by the most vile means imaginable.
I do not entirely agree however, with the last paragraph of your note. Assuming that the progress of the legal case in Mass was a broader effort than individuals specifically affected, i think that effort is culpable for a monumental strategic blunder. One can not simply blindly pursue a social (therefore political) agenda without considering the political consequences of the action and particularly its timing. The cost to all of the progressive agenda and specifically their own social agenda is incalculable given the near certain effect on the future hard right composition of the supreme court.

Posted by: David C. Mace | 11/05/2004 at 10:46 PM

I agree that the analysis on same sex marriage and its impact in the election is being overplayed and now Democrats are getting on the bandwagon to avoid looking at their own failures not related to the presence of these ballot measures. The notion that there’s a conservative mandate is also falling a bit flat when you look at voter behavior and opinions - especially on other ballot measure noted by the post about CO. Gay marriage as one of the most important factors in swinging the election is a simplistic analysis and one that may not be accurate. Every state with same sex marriage ballot measures was expected to pass – no surprise there. Oregon was the only state where there was a remote chance to beat it back. As for the state’s that mattered in the Presidential, there were only 3 of the 11 that could have had some kind of impact on Bush or Kerry – MI, OH, OR. Kerry won MI and OR and the bans passed there – so – little impact. OH is where it probably mattered. Although with an election so close, it’s hard to say what worked or what didn’t in that state or anywhere else for that matter. We’re doing polling to look at the impact of same sex marriage in OH so we have some real data rather than journalistic and pundit speculation. In the other red states, there could have been some kind of effect down ballot. With competitive Senate and House races (KY and OK) in the states with bans on the ballot, there could have been some effect on Democrats even thought candidates took the same position (i.e. against the ban) in those and other states. Now, of course taking an issue like this and nationalizing as part of a Republican, right-wing agenda, is remarkable and significant in some way – I just don’t want to give it all the credit until we have some real research to back it up.

As for initiatives increasing turnout, there's plenty of evidence that they do increase turnout (although it is more pronounced in off year elections). Washington minimum wage - 4% more voters came out just because of that measure being on the ballot in 1998. As for FL's campaign this year - we'll see what the impact was soon (NV also had a minimum wage). These camaigns could have done as much as they were suppose to, and the rest may have been out of their control, but this is not to suggest that they didn't matter. We just don't know that yet.

In NV, the minimum wage campaign targeted two senate districts (Lee and Schneider who both won), and 14 assembly districts (12 wins, 2 losses). (By targeted, I mean that the campaign focused on bringing out low propensity voters through the minimum wage in certain districts) The campaign targeted 6 assembly districts where Democratic candidates received between 42-52% in 2002. In all 6 districts, the Democratic candidate outperformed the 2002 result.

On another note, there's a lot to be learned about a populist economic issue passing in Red states. We can now try to understand something about the 1.2 million voters who voted both for the minimum wage and for Bush in FL. Who were they (lower income whites and latinos who are part of our natural economic justice constituency but voted for Bush on other grounds?) Are these voters who might very well have seen the contradiction between voting for 5 and voting for Bush if Kerry had decided to make raising the minimum wage a front and center issue when he was in FL? Had he done so, and done so in a highly aggressive and visible way, could he have pulled at least some of those 1.2 million over to his side? What does the Castor campaign tell us? Can our polling indicate to what extent voters rewarded her because of her highly visible pro-5 stand?

We need data - and will have it soon. Celinda Lake is doing polling for us looking specifically at the moblization and motivation of ballot measures (conservative and progressive) in FL, NV, CO and OH. There is a way to measure this.

Posted by: Kristina Wilfore | 11/06/2004 at 09:51 AM

I'm very interested in Kristina's stats. I'm particularly interested on the impact of the referendum on black churchgoing regular voters' presidential choices.

Also, although I don't have the stats myself, the referendum in NYC regarding Staten Island secession is widely seen as boosting turn-out for then 1-time mayoral challenger Giuliani, who went on to defeat incumbent David Dinkins.

Posted by: Ludovic | 11/06/2004 at 11:26 AM

If we look at the numbers in those states where anti-gay marriage amendments were on the ballot the responses show that almost as many Kerry supporters voted in favor of the amendment as did Bush supporters. This suggests one of tow things. One, that a large number of liberals and/or other progressives weren't as liberal as people thought since they voted for Kerry and anit-gay initiatives.
Or two, progressives and liberals didn't vote for the anti-gay initiative in large number, but a large number of conservatives and/or republicans did vote for Kerry while also voting for the initiative.
This last option would suggest that our assumption that a nearly 50/50 split in the electoral vote is false. That there aren't nearly as many liberals and progressives as we thought. Merely that many people who despised Bush enough to cross the aise and vote against him. This point should be worth remembering come the 06' elections.

MYOB'
.

Posted by: MYOB | 11/07/2004 at 06:27 AM

Interesting that here in Ohio both our repug Gov and both repug senators came out against the ban. Also interesting was the rationale: the it would hurt an already horrible state economy by driving out businesses and talented individuals to more accomodating states...even they weren't able to say that 'moral values' trumps crass bidness concerns.

That there are bigots among our democratic brothers and sisters is not surprising, even among the minorites. People's attitudes take a long time to change, and some individuals never change. This issue has only been in the public eye for the last year or two. Takes time...

Posted by: jdw | 11/07/2004 at 11:46 AM

Just doing the math....in Ohio, where gay marriage is being blamed for Kerry’s loss, it’s interesting to note that there were 207,100 more votes cast in the presidential race than on the marriage amendment, perhaps indicating that the presidential race, not same sex marriage, was the draw to the polls. We’ll see when more research is done.

Paul Freedman on slate.com recently wrote:

"The morality theory rests on three claims. The first is that gay-marriage bans led to higher turnout, chiefly among Christian conservatives. The second is that Bush performed especially well where gay marriage was on the ballot. The third is that in general, moral issues decided the election.

The evidence that having a gay-marriage ban on the ballot increased voter turnout is spotty. Marriage-ban states did see higher turnout than states without such measures. They also saw higher increases in turnout compared with four years ago. But these differences are relatively small. Based on preliminary turnout estimates, 59.5 percent of the eligible voting population turned out in marriage-ban states, whereas 59.1 percent turned out elsewhere. This is a microscopic gap when compared to other factors. For example, turnout in battleground states was more than 7.5 points higher than it was in less-competitive states, and it increased much more over 2000 as well."

Posted by: Kristina Wilfore | 11/08/2004 at 02:19 PM

Alan

I think gay marriage advocates ARE pushing a state-by-state strategy, although they're necessarily playing defense at the Federal level.

The most likely outcome is that a FMA will be proposed again, fail again, and the issue will fade in the face of whatever bigger crises await us. Meanwhile, over time, real married gay couples -- married in Massachusetts or in Canada -- will become more common. Certain blue states will follow MA's lead, and -- here's the shocker: All hell will not break loose.

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