Save America Act Would Backfire on the GOP

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.  Trump keeps pushing the myth of widespread fraud in US elections. He is demanding that the Senate pass the Save America Act. It would backfire on the GOP.

 Amy B Wang, Scott Clement and Lydia Sidhom at WP:

Everyone would need to present a photo ID to cast a ballot. But the bill would have the greatest impact on the registration process. While the bill does not explicitly require everyone to reregister to vote, a significant number of currently registered voters could be asked to provide documentation to remain on the rolls. Others may have to reregister because of a move or a name change. And this registration would need to take place in person.

An analysis by The Washington Post found that a greater number of Republican-held congressional districts have at least 5 percent of residents who would need to reregister to vote because they are considered “inactive voters.” That means they failed to verify their address with election officials, haven’t voted in two or more consecutive federal elections, or have no valid or current address on file. In about 54 percent of Republican-held congressional districts, at least 5 percent of residents would have to reregister to vote, more than the 36 percent of Democratic-held congressional districts in which at least 5 percent of residents would need to reregister.

About 21 million U.S. citizens of voting age (9 percent) do not have or lack easy access to documents proving their citizenship, according to a 2023 survey conducted by the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, VoteRiders and the Brennan Center for Justice.

About 2.6 million Americans of voting age (1 percent) do not have any government-issued photo ID, while 34.5 million (15 percent) do not have a driver’s license or official state ID card that has their current name and address, according to the survey. Under the Save America Act, student IDs and other state licenses or ID cards would not be accepted.

As many as 69 million married women in the United States do not have a birth certificate that matches their legal name, according to the Center for American Progress, and they could face additional hurdles if they need to register to vote.

Much of the real-world impact would ultimately depend on how states implement the verification requirements — whether they already collect proof of citizenship from voters, for example.

Wren Orey and William T. Adler at the Bipartisan Policy Center:

Research from Pew Research Center finds that Republican women are about half as likely as Democratic women to keep their last name after marriage (10% versus 20%), suggesting that Republican voters may be somewhat more likely to have to complete additional steps 4 linking their birth certificate to their current voter record.

In short, birth certificates are a less reliable form of documentary proof than passports. Because Republicans are more likely to rely on them than Democrats, they may ultimately be more disadvantaged by documentary proof requirements.

Democrats do better among voters with more years of education.  And they find that this variable correlates with passport possession:

• No HS 16%
• HS 30%
• 2-yr 41%
• Some college 37%
• 4-yr 61%
• Postgrad 72%

Marc Novicoff  at The Atlantic:

One recent YouGov poll showed that 64 percent of Harris voters reported having a valid passport compared with 55 percent of Trump voters. According to an analysis by the voting-rights nonprofit Secure Democracy USA, the 13 states in which people are least likely to have a passport voted for Trump in 2024. Passports are especially rare in rural counties, where Republicans run up the score, Daniel Griffith, the author of the report, told me.

 

The Taylor Swift Effect

Our most recent book is Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Less than 48 hours after Biden's withdrawal, Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee.  And in just a few weeks, the race has changed. 

 Maggie Astor at NYT:

Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday and her call for her fans to vote drove hundreds of thousands of people to voter registration resources.

Her post on Instagram included a link to Vote.gov, a website run by two federal agencies, the General Services Administration and the Election Assistance Commission. About 406,000 people clicked on the link in the 24 hours after Ms. Swift posted it, according to a spokeswoman for the G.S.A.

That link accounted for more than half of the roughly 727,000 visitors Vote.gov received from Tuesday to Wednesday. The remainder was likely driven by the debate itself. Last week, from Sept. 3-9, the site received an average of about 30,000 visitors per day, according to the agency.

Vote.gov serves as a clearinghouse that directs prospective voters to their state’s registration website. Since people cannot register to vote directly on the site, it is not possible to determine how many of the people who clicked the link also registered.

GOP's 2022 Turnout Edge

Our more recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses voter demographics .

 Hannah Hartig and colleagues at Pew:

A new Pew Research Center analysis of verified voters and nonvoters in 2022, 2020, 2018 and 2016 finds that partisan differences in turnout – rather than vote switching between parties – account for most of the Republican gains in voting for the House last year.

Overall, 68% of those who voted in the 2020 presidential election turned out to vote in the 2022 midterms. Former President Donald Trump’s voters turned out at a higher rate in 2022 (71%) than did President Joe Biden’s voters (67%).

... 

 Other key findings:

• Voters under 30 continued to strongly support the Democratic Party, voting 68% to 31% for Democratic candidates. But this margin was somewhat narrower than in 2018. Republicans benefitted more from significant drop off in voter turnout among younger age groups between 2018 and 2022, since young voters tend to support Democrats. Voters under 30 accounted for 10% of the electorate in 2022 – similar to their share of all voters in 2018 (11%), but down from 2020 (14%).
• Ideological polarization by party was nearly complete in 2022: Only 1% of self-described conservative Republicans voted for Democratic House candidates and less than 1% of liberal Democrats voted Republican.
• Voting in person on Election Day increased sharply in 2022 compared with 2020. More voters reported casting ballots in person on Election Day in both parties, but the share remained much higher among Republican voters (51%) than among Democratic voters (34%).
• White voters without college degrees made up a majority (54%) of Republican voters in 2022, compared with 27% of Democratic voters. Yet these voters made up a somewhat greater share of GOP voters in 2020 (58%) and 2018 (57%).
• Voters ages 50 and older were a larger share of the total in 2022 (64%) than in any of the past three elections. 70% of Republican voters were 50 or older, as were 57% of Democratic voters.
• Hispanic voters continued to support Democrats, but by a much smaller margin than in 2018: Hispanic voters favored Democratic candidates by a 21-point margin in 2022, compared with a 47-point margin in 2018. This change was driven by asymmetric changes in voter turnout among Hispanic adults, rather than changing preferences among individual Hispanic voters.
• Black voters continued to support Democrats by overwhelming margins: 93% voted for Democrats in the midterms while 5% supported Republicans. This is similar to levels of support in 2020, 2018 and 2016. Black voters made up 9% of the electorate in both 2022 and 2018 and 11% of the electorate in 2020.
• The Republican advantage among White evangelical Protestants was somewhat larger in 2022 than in the past three elections. 86% supported Republican candidates in 2022 and only 12% voted Democratic.

Turmout 2022

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. 

William H. Frey at Brookings:

What these analyses [of the 2022 midterm] did not provide, however, was a detailed examination of turnout rates—the percent of eligible voters who voted—associated with these groups. But now, new Census Bureau data from the Current Population Survey’s Voting and Registration supplement provides this information for the 2022 election, and can be analyzed along with a similar data product from earlier elections.[1]

Perhaps the most notable finding with respect to voter turnout is that 2022 turnout rates were nearly as high as the record-setting 2018 midterm turnout rates. Yet unlike the previous midterm elections, the groups with the highest Democratic voting margins—in particular, young people, Black Americans, women, and white female college graduates—did not show greater turnout increases than other groups, and often displayed lower turnout rates than in the 2018 midterms. These groups displayed higher turnout rates than in the low-turnout 2014 midterms, but either did not match or did not improve on their 2018 turnout levels. And only a minority of states registered turnout increases between 2018 and 2022, while an even smaller number showed increases among young and nonwhite voters.

Liberal Dark Money and Election Funding

Our recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses campaign finance.

The iron law of emulation is at work. Conservative groups have made extensive use of dark money.  lLiberal groups copied their example, and conservatives are copying them back.

Steve Miller at RealClearInvestigations:

Democrats and their progressive allies are vastly expanding their unprecedented efforts, begun in 2020, to use private money to influence and run public elections.

Supported by groups with more than $1 billion at their disposal, according to public records, these partisan groups are working with state and local boards to influence functions that have long been the domain of government or political parties.

Registering and turning out voters - once handled primarily by political parties – and design of election office websites and mail-in ballots are being handed over to those same nonprofits, which are staffed by progressive activists that include former Democratic Party advocates, organized labor adherents and community organizers.

Republicans have opposed such efforts, passing legislation in 24 states since 2020 curbing the private financing of elections. But the GOP does not have a comparable, boots-on-the-ground effort to influence election boards and workers, and the private-funding bans haven’t proved absolute in some states.

...

 Many of the progressive groups seeking to influence elections are connected to Arabella Advisors, a Washington-based, for-profit consulting company founded and led by Eric Kessler, a White House appointee during the Clinton administration.

Arabella’s projects, which include the New Venture Fund, the Hopewell Fund, the Sixteen Thirty Fund and Secure Democracy USA, had combined revenues of $1.3 billion between 2020 and 2021, tax filings show. Nonprofits supported by Arabella in 2020 gave out $529 million to “defend democracy.”

That coincided with the rise of private-public election partnerships as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated an estimated $350 million to the progressive Center for Tech and Civil Life (CTCL) to support local efforts in the pandemic-challenged 2020 election.

Turnout 2022

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. 

Drew DeSilver at Pew:

After soaring in 2018 compared with the previous midterm, voter turnout in the 2022 midterm elections for the U.S. House of Representatives fell back to, if not Earth, then at least the lower atmosphere.

Nationwide, nearly 107.7 million valid votes were cast in the 2022 House elections, representing about 45.1% of the estimated voting-eligible population, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of official returns from all 50 states. That was down from 48.1% turnout in 2018 – when midterm voting reached levels not seen in more than a century – but still higher than the 34.4% turnout rate for House elections in the 2014 midterms.

...

In 2022, 35 House seats, or 8% of the total, were noncompetitive or, at best, lightly competitive between parties, meaning that only one major party was represented on the ballot. (Republicans won 23 of those seats and Democrats won 12.) In 16 of these districts only one candidate was listed on the ballot, with opposition – if any – limited to write-in candidates. In 13 additional districts, a single major-party candidate faced only minor-party or independent opposition. And in six California districts, the November election was between two Democrats, due to that state’s “top two” primary system.

Republicans Say -- Out Loud -- That High Turnout Would Hurt Them

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well under way.  Coronavirus has prompted some states to expand voting by mail.

Interview: Donald Trump Calls In to Fox and Friends for an Interview - March 30, 2020

Well, not expand. It's just the common facts. I mean, they have a majority in the House, and therefore you need their vote, and they want to get certain things. I will tell you this. If you look at before and after, the things they had in there were crazy. They had things -- levels of voting that if you ever agreed to it you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again.

 Mark Niesse and Greg Bluestein at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

All 6.9 million active voters in Georgia are being mailed absentee ballot request forms this week by the secretary of state’s office. Voters who return the absentee ballot request forms will be able to participate in the primary without having to come into contact with other people on election day or during early voting.

“This will be extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives in Georgia,” [state House Speaker David] Ralston, a Republican from Blue Ridge, said during an interview with FetchYourNews, a North Georgia news site. “Every registered voter is going to get one of these. … This will certainly drive up turnout.”

Ralston later claimed that he was talking about fraud.  He did not explain why he thought fraud would hurt Republicans and not Democrats.   Actually, vote fraud is extremely rare, and the most prominent recent example involved GOP perpetrators.

Persuasion and Turnout

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well under way.

Ruy Teixeira at WP:

[In 2018] the overwhelming majority of the Democrats’ improved performance came not from fresh turnout of left-of-center voters, who typically skip midterms, but rather from people who cast votes in both elections — yet switched from Republican in 2016 to Democratic in 2018. The data firm Catalist, whose numbers on 2018 are the best available, estimates that 89 percent of the Democrats’ improved performance came from persuasion — from vote-switchers — not turnout. In its analysis, Catalist notes, “If turnout was the only factor, then Democrats would not have seen nearly the gains that they ended up seeing … a big piece of Democratic victory was due to 2016 Trump voters turning around and voting for Democrats in 2018.”

Crucially, Democrats in 2018, especially the successful ones, did not run on particularly radical programs but rather on opposition to Trump himself, and to unpopular GOP actions on economic policy and health care (tax cuts for the rich and efforts to repeal Obamacare’s protections, for example). In the end, the 2018 results do not support Sanders’s theories — not the central importance of high turnout, nor the supposed non-importance of changing mainstream voters’ minds, nor the most effective issues to run on.

What about the magic of higher turnout?

As Nate Cohn of the New York Times has noted after scrutinizing the data, it’s a mistake to assume that Democrats would benefit disproportionately from high turnout. Trump is particularly strong among white noncollege voters, who dominate the pool of nonvoters in many areas of the country, including in key Rust Belt states. If the 2020 election indeed has historically high turnout, as many analysts expect, that spike could include many of these white noncollege voters in addition to Democratic-leaning constituencies such as nonwhites and young voters. The result could be an increase in Democrats’ popular-vote total — and another loss in the electoral college.

And most voters say that they would not vote for a socialist. 

Student Turnout

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race. The update -- recently published -- looks at political and demographic trends through the 2018 midterm.

A release from  from the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education (IDHE) at Tufts University’s Tisch College of Civic Life.

College-student voting rates in the 2018 midterm elections doubled compared to the 2014 midterms, marking a watershed election year for student voter turnout, according to a report today from the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education (IDHE) at Tufts University’s Tisch College of Civic Life. The report, Democracy Counts 2018, is based on an analysis of the voting patterns of more than 10 million college students on more than 1,000 campuses participating in the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE).

In 2018, the Average Institutional Voting Rate (AIVR) among campuses in the study was 39.1 percent, nearly 20 percentage points higher than 2014’s average turnout rate of 19.7 percent. Turnout increases were widespread, with virtually all campuses seeing an increase over 2014.

Major research findings include:​​

• In the 2018 midterm elections, college students turned out to vote at double the rate of the last midterm. Across all students in the study, the National Student Voting Rate (NSVR) in 2018 was 40.3 percent. Remarkably, this 2018 student turnout was closer to the NSLVE-estimated voting rate for the 2016 presidential election–51.3 percent–than to the previous midterm in 2014–19.3 percent;

• According to the U.S. Elections Project, the voting rate among all Americans increased 13 percentage points in 2018 as compared to the prior midterm. By comparison, the college and university National Student Voting Rate (NSVR) rose 21 percentage points;

• In 2018, the voting rates of 99 percent of campuses in the study increased from the 2014 midterms, and nearly half of all institutions saw their rate increase between 15-24 percentage points;

• Women in college continued to vote at higher rates than men in 2018, with black women maintaining their position as the most active voters on campus, and Hispanic women making the largest gains;

• The largest voting rate increase across racial/ethnic groups was among Hispanic students, up 22.5 percentage points and more than doubling–from 14 percent in 2014 to 36.5 percent in 2018;

• While older Americans historically vote at higher rates than their younger counterparts, 2018 data showed a trend toward age parity. The turnout gap between students over 30 and those under 22 narrowed from 22.3 percentage points to 16.9 points;

• There was relative consistency in voting rates between students attending two-year, four-year, public or private institutions. Women’s colleges continued to vote at the highest rates among institutional types, but two-year, four-year, public, and private institutions showed consistent upward movement between 2014 and 2018; and,

• Voting gaps between disciplines persisted in 2018. Turnout among students in STEM fields, as well as those majoring in business, lag behind students studying the humanities, social sciences, and education.

Turnout in 2018

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race.   The update  -- just published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

Jordan Misra at the Census Bureau:

The November 2018 election is widely recognized for its high voter turnout. Census Bureau data released today show who is behind the historic 11 percentage point increase from the last midterm election in 2014.

Voter turnout went up among all voting age and major racial and ethnic groups. Fifty-three percent of the citizen voting-age population voted in 2018, the highest midterm turnout in four decades, while the 2014 election had the lowest.

Among 18- to 29-year-olds, voter turnout went from 20 percent in 2014 to 36 percent in 2018, the largest percentage point increase for any age group — a 79 percent jump.

Data from the Current Population Survey’s Voting and Registration Supplement out today provide insight into the characteristics of those that cast their ballots in this record-breaking midterm election

Who is Behind the Historic Increase?

Voter turnout went up more in some groups than others from 2014 to 2018:

• Among 18- to 29-year-olds, voter turnout went from 20 percent in 2014 to 36 percent in 2018, the largest percentage point increase for any age group — a 79 percent jump.
• Among men and women, voter turnout increased by 11 and 12 percentage points respectively.
• Voter turnout increased among non-Hispanic Asians by 13 percentage points, a 49 percent increase.
• Among Hispanics, voter turnout increased by 13 percentage points, a 50 percent increase in Hispanic voter turnout.
• Non-Hispanic black voter turnout increased by 11 percentage points.
• Those with higher levels of education had higher levels of voter turnout in 2018.  Those with less than a high school education had the smallest increase in voter turnout (5 percentage points). Those with a high school diploma or equivalent had the second-lowest increase (8 percentage points).
• Voting by native-born and naturalized citizens both increased by 12 percentage points. This increase is not significantly different between native-born and naturalized citizens.
• Unlike the 2014 midterm election, voter turnout among those living in nonmetropolitan areas (up 8 points) was lower than for those living in metropolitan areas (up 12 points).

CA 2018

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race. The forthcoming update will include a chapter on the 2018 midterms.  California is an important part of the story.

Paul Mitchell at Capitol Weekly:

—Turnout was high, but not presidential level high. At 65%, the electorate was about 10 points higher than we have seen in recent similar gubernatorial elections, but still about 12 points lower than what we expect to see in 2020.

—The partisanship of the electorate was a key factor in the outcomes. It will surprise many that despite higher raw Democratic votes, the Democratic share of the votes cast was the same as it has been in similar elections going back to 2002. What changed significantly was a spike in non-partisan voting to a record high, and a drop in the Republican share of the votes cast to a record low.

–The electorate was significantly more Latino than we have seen in similar elections. In raw numbers, Latinos exceeded many expectations. Over 2.6 million Latinos voted, more than double the 1.1 million that voted in 2014, and among Latinos aged 18-34, there was a 400% increase, from 214,000 in 2014 to 838,000 in 2018. All that said, Latinos were still under-performing relative to their rate of registration. Statewide, 21% of votes cast came from Latinos, compared to the 26% share of the voter file that was Latino.

–-Age was a significant factor. Turnout by voters aged 18-24 grew 30 points, from 16% in 2014 to 46% in 2018. Among those 25-34, it grew by 33-points, from 17% to 50%. The raw numbers are staggering: In 2014, only 282,000 voters aged 18-24 voted, while in 2018 it was 948,000 – more than tripling the total votes by this traditionally low-turnout population.

John Wildermuth at SF Chronicle:

The blue wave that drowned California Republicans in the November election had a distinctly greenish tinge.

Six of the seven Democrats who flipped GOP-held House seats out-raised their Republican opponents, some by an order of 3 to 1, newly released federal campaign finance reports show. Long-entrenched Republican incumbents and first-time office-seekers alike were confronted by Democratic challengers with unusually large cash advantages, fueled by a party base eager to knock President Trump’s allies out of Congress.

And that doesn’t even count the tens of millions of dollars independent expenditure groups pumped into those Democratic races. According to figures assembled by Open Secrets, a nonpartisan campaign finance website, outside groups spent more than $41 million on Democratic campaigns for those seven seats — about $3 million more than comparable groups raised for Republicans.

Trump Has Employed Undocumented Workers

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's character and record of dishonesty.

In 2017, Charles V. Bagli reported at NYT:

In 1980, under pressure to begin construction on what would become his signature project, Donald J. Trump employed a crew of 200 undocumented Polish workers who worked in 12-hour shifts, without gloves, hard hats or masks, to demolish the Bonwit Teller building on Fifth Avenue, where the 58-story, golden-hued Trump Tower now stands.

(The concrete came from the Mafia.)

Joshua Partlow and David A. Fahrenthold at WP:

They had spent years on the staff of Donald Trump’s golf club, winning employee-of-the-month awards and receiving glowing letters of recommendation.

Some were trusted enough to hold the keys to Eric Trump’s weekend home. They were experienced enough to know that, when Donald Trump ordered chicken wings, they were to serve him two orders on one plate.

But on Jan. 18, about a dozen employees at Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, N.Y., were summoned, one by one, to talk with a human resources executive from Trump headquarters.

During the meetings, they were fired because they are undocumented immigrants, according to interviews with the workers and their attorney. The fired workers are from Latin America.

The sudden firings — which were previously unreported — follow last year’s revelations of undocumented labor at a Trump club in New Jersey, where employees were subsequently dismissed. The firings show Trump’s business was relying on undocumented workers even as the president demanded a border wall to keep out such immigrants.

By the way, what was the "cost" of the illegal immigrants employed at your properties, who, I assume, worked hard, obeyed the law, and paid taxes?
Answer: zero. I'll even wager their contribution to our country was greater than that of many of the privileged guests they served. https://t.co/QYJiXwUN3h

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) January 27, 2019

It Could Have Been Worse for the House GOP

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race. 

David Wasserman at the Cook Political Report:

Democrats won over 53 percent of all votes cast for House compared to 45 percent for Republicans. To put this wave in perspective, Republicans' margin over Democrats was seven percent in both 1994 and 2010, and Democrats won the national House vote by eight points in 2006. Right now, Democrats lead the House vote by 8.4 percent and make up 62 of the 93 members of the freshman class.

As bad as this outcome was for Republicans, it could've been worse: there's strong evidence November's universally high, historic midterm turnout actually aided Republicans more than Democrats. For example, on November 6, GOP Rep. Troy Balderson (OH-12) received about 68,000 more votes than he did in the August 7 special election, while Democrat Danny O'Connor received just 56,000 more.

Nationwide, there were 23 Republicans who won their House races by less than five points. Had the Trump base not woken up after the Kavanaugh fight, Democrats could have easily gained 50 seats.

What's even scarier for CA Republicans than being reduced to just 7/53 House seats in January? Four of the remaining seven Rs survived by single digits.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 29, 2018

Materials on the 2018 Midterms

In Defying the Odds, we discuss congressional elections as well as the presidential race. 

Slides from John Sides

Op-Ed by Stanley Greenberg

Mark Muro and Jacob Whiton at Brookings:

Looking at congressional districts, the analysis shows that the governing majority of 228 congressional districts (as of this post’s publish date) won by the Democrats last week encompasses fully 60.9 percent of the nation’s economic activity as measured by total economic output in 2016. Democratic districts are more productive, with a strong orientation to the advanced industries that inordinately determine prosperity. Notably, voters in these districts possess bachelor’s degrees at relatively high levels and work disproportionately in digital industries like software publishing and computer systems design.

By contrast, the 200 seats (as of this post’s publish date) captured by Republicans represent a much different swath of the economy. While almost as numerous as Democratic holdings, these seats represent just 37.6 percent of the nation’s output, reflecting a productivity level of just $106,832 per worker, and appear much more oriented to lower-output industries as well as non-advanced manufacturing (e.g., apparel, food, paper). Relatively fewer adults in these districts possess a bachelor’s degrees and fewer work in digital services.

 Niall McCarthy at Statista:

After a steady volume of early votes, predictions of a high turnout at the midterms have turned out to be accurate. Last week, the U.S. Elections Project published preliminary numbers and 49.2 percent of voters cast their ballots - that's nearly 116 million people. That marks the highest midterm turnout since 1914 when it hit 50.4 percent and women still didn't have the right to vote.

25 states had a turnout or 50 percent or higher with six exceeding 60 percent: Colorado (62.2 percent), Minnesota (64.3 percent), Montana (62.1 percent), Oregon (61.3 percent) and Wisconsin (61.2 percent). Down through the years, the midterms have always had a weaker turnout than the presidential election and that trend remains unchanged this year (more or less). The presidential elections usually see a turnout of about 60 percent and this year's midterms came closest to matching Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign when turnout was 51.7 percent.

Low-Hanging Fruit for Democratic: Latino Turnout

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the demographics of the 2016 election

Antonio Flores and Mark Hugo Lopez at Pew:

More than 29 million Latinos are eligible to vote nationwide in 2018, making up 12.8% of all eligible voters – both new highs, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data.

The pool of eligible Hispanic voters has steadily grown in recent years. Between 2014 and 2018, an additional 4 million Hispanics became eligible voters (U.S. citizens ages 18 and older). Much of this growth has been driven by young U.S.-born Hispanics coming of age. Since 2014, around 3 millionhave turned 18. Other sources of growth include Hispanic immigrant naturalizations – among Mexicans alone, 423,000 became U.S. citizens from 2014 to 2017 – as well as residents of Puerto Rico moving to one of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, especially Florida.

...
In 2014, the turnout rate among Latino eligible voters dropped to a record low of 27.0%. (White and Asian eligible voters also had record-low turnout rates.) Despite this, a record 6.8 million Latinos voted.

 

Labor Day Post: Union Density, Right to Work, and Elections

In Defying the Odds, we suggest an under-examined reason why Democrats were unexpectedly weak in key industrial states;  union membership was way down.

At the high point of their influence many years ago, they [labor unions] supplied the people who worked the phones, stuffed the envelopes and walked the precincts on behalf of the Democrats.  In some states, they still were a significant force, but overall, they were on the wane. Between 1983 and 2015, union membership as a share of employed workers plunged by almost half, from 20.1 percent to 11.1 percent.   Not coincidentally, the drop-off was steepest in five industrial states that voted Republican in the 2016 presidential race 

 Percentage Change in Union Density, Selected States, 1983-2015

                                    1983                2015                Change

Wisconsin                    24.2                 08.4                -15.8

Michigan                     30.8                 15.3                 -15.5

Indiana                        25.2                 10.1                 -15.1

Pennsylvania               27.7                 13.4                 -14.3

Ohio                             25.3                 12.4                 -12.9

Source: Barry T. Hirsch and David A. Macpherson, “State Union Membership Density 1964-2015,” http://unionstats.gsu.edu/State_Union_Membership_Density_1964-2015.xlsx; Barry T. Hirsch, David A. Macpherson, and Wayne G. Vroman, “Estimates of Union Density by State,” Monthly Labor Review 124, No. 7, July 2001, http://unionstats.gsu.edu/MLR_7-01_StateUnionDensity.pdf

A 2018 APSA paper looks at a related topic and its findings seem consistent with our observation. See "Demobilizing Democrats and Labor Unions: Political Effects of Right to Work Laws," by James Feigenbaum, Alexander Warren Hertel-Fernandez, and Vanessa Williamson.  The abstract:

Labor unions play a central role in the Democratic party coalition, providing candidates with voters, volunteers, and contributions and lobbying government. Has the recent decline of organized labor hurt Democrats? We use the enactment of right-to-work laws—which weaken unions by removing agency shop protections—to estimate the effect of unions on politics from 1980 to 2016. Comparing counties on either side of a state and right-to-work border to causally identify the effects of the state laws, we find right-to-work laws reduce Democratic presidential vote shares by 4 to 6 percentage points. We find similar effects in US Senate, US House, and gubernatorial races, as well as state legislative control. Turnout is also 2 to 3 percentage points lower in right-to-work counties after those laws pass. We next explore mechanisms behind these effects, finding that right-to-work laws dampen organized labor campaign contributions to Democrats and that likely Democratic voters are less likely to be contacted to vote in right-to-work states. The weakening of unions also has large downstream effects both on who runs for office and state legislative policy. Fewer working class candidates serve in state legislatures and Congress and state policy moves in a more conservative direction following the passage of right-to-work laws.

They identify a key mechanism by which such laws affect turnout.

We find that RTW laws are associated with a reduction in the probability that non-professional workers—but not professional workers—report get-out-the-vote contact during the campaign. Table 4 presents the results of this analysis, with a binary indicator for GOTV contact during the last campaign as the outcome. In the model with individual controls, we find that RTW laws reduce the probability that a non-professional worker reported GOTV contact by 11 percentage points but had no discernible effect on professional and managerial workers

They mention something that we discuss in the book, namely that deliberate political strategy is at work.

Aside from the theoretical contributions of the paper, our results also have bearing on current debates in U.S. politics. The anti-tax political activist Grover Norquist recently declared that while President Donald J. Trump may be historically unpopular, the GOP could still “win big” in 2020.41 The secret to the Republican party’s long-term success, Norquist argued, involved state level initiatives to weaken the power of labor unions. As Norquist explained it, if union reforms cutting the power of labor unions to recruit and retain members—like RTW laws—“are enacted in a dozen more states, the modern Democratic Party will cease to be a competitive power in American politics.” A weaker labor movement, Norquist reasoned, would not just have economic consequences. It would also have significant political repercussions, meaning that Democrats would
have substantially less of a grassroots presence on the ground during elections and less money to invest in politics

Turnout in the California Primary was Good

 In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional politics as well as the presidential race.
 
News reports right after the 2018 California primary suggested that turnout was low.  But these reports were inaccurate, since there were there millions of unprocessed ballots and the deadline for accepting mail ballots would not come until Friday of that week.  Now that we have nearly-final results, it is clear that turnout was actually quite strong, at least by midterm standards. The CA Secretary of State reports on turnout as a share of registered voters.

36.4%
as of June 23, 2018, 5:04 p.m.

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Historical Data

Primary	Date	Voter Turnout
Presidential	June 7, 2016	47.72%
Gubernatorial	June 3, 2014	25.17%
Presidential	June 5, 2012	31.06%
Gubernatorial	June 8, 2010	33.31%
Direct	June 3, 2008	28.22%
Presidential	February 5, 2008	57.71%
Gubernatorial	June 6, 2006	33.63%

The UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative reports on Los Angeles County:

 In 66.5 percent of the Latino precincts, there was an estimated 50 percent increase in the number of ballots cast, compared to a 20.8 percent in the non- Latino precincts. This analysis suggests two things: 1) overall increase in voter turnout across Los Angeles County from ’14 to ‘18, regardless of race/ethnicity; and 2) turnout for Latino voters was higher than the countywide average, especially in dense Latino precincts.

Epic Takedown of Vote-Fraud Conspriracy Theory

In Defying the Odds, we discuss congressional elections as well as the presidential race.   In Alabama, accused child molester Roy Moore ran for the Senate with the support of sexual harasser Donald Trump.

I am hearing rumors that black voters from MS were encouraged to cross over into AL and vote. Anyone else hearing this? Anything to it? That might explain the 30% turnout higher than population percentage. Just reporting the rumor.

— Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii) December 13, 2017

In a Twitter thread, TV and film writer John Rogers executes an epic takedown.

If Soros were going to fix the election, he would have to know in advance how many fake votes he'd need. Jones won by 20k. So if he were really behind by 20k, that means Soros shipped in at least 40,000 votes. It would take at least 800 buses to bring that many people into the state, which would involve dozens of bus companies. Then he would have had to distribute the 40k fake voters to precincts all over the state, and provide them with convincing identification to meet the state's strict requirements -- and do the whole thing without a single person noticing or leaking.