I’ve written before about evidence that the Republican Party is now the party benefiting from relatively high voter turnout in the Trump era. a new one New York Times/Siena’s research provides further confirmation:
As noted in my earlier post, the standard explanation for this shift is that the Trump-era GOP is strongest among lesser-educated voters, and they—in turn—are less likely to turn out. Huge “diploma gap”.
The New York Times analysis added that voters with high turnout tend to be more supportive of abortion rights and more concerned about maintaining democracy. These are relatively strong issues for Biden. By contrast, low-frequency voters are more focused on short-term economic trends. This year, short-term economic issues are helping Trump, in part because of widespread voter ignorance about the true state of the economy and the causes of inflation (such ignorance tends to be more common among less-educated and less-engaged voters).
Democrats and progressives have traditionally been sympathetic to policies aimed at boosting voter turnout, while conservative Republicans have been highly skeptical. Advocates of the most extreme such policy—mandatory voting—have also mostly been on the left…..
Both sides cited high-minded, nonpartisan positions in this debate…. But cynics have long wondered whether the real motivation is partisan gain: Perhaps liberal Democrats support efforts to increase turnout because it will help them win, while conservative Republicans oppose them for the same reason .
For those interested, I have long been opposed to compulsory voting and am skeptical of the purported virtues of high turnout. I held that view back when increasing turnout was expected to benefit Democrats, and still hold it today, when high turnout seems to advantage the GOP. I summarized the reasons in my previous article:
no Even in high-stakes elections, there is a responsibility to vote. I have argued that relatively ignorant citizens can generally do worse than voting by abstaining, although I am also skeptical of the argument that government should try to weed out ignorant voters, mostly because I doubt it can be trusted. Do it in a fair way)…
It isn’t just that a more ignorant electorate is likely to make worse choices among the options before them. It is that those options are likely to be worse to begin with. Learned parties choose lower quality candidates and policies. I describe the logic behind this more fully in my book Democracy and political ignorance.
The Trump-era trend of Republicans benefiting from higher turnout may prove to be an anomaly. But if this continues and solidifies, I wonder if the parties will gradually reverse their stance on turnout. If that happens, it wouldn’t be the first time that partisan superiority trumps consistent adherence to principle.
