Allow me to assist Shreveport Times assistant editor Martha Fitzgerald and Secretary of State Al Ater, whose musings about increasing voter participation in elections Fitzgerald herself mused about.
One solution would be for them to show up in my American Government class around the middle of November when we’ll spend a good part of one class period discussing voter turnout in America and why it’s relatively so low (as well as determining whether it’s even a problem, but for the moment we’ll accept Ater’s position that it is). But likely their schedules may not mesh with this opportunity, so I’ll give them a rundown of it now.
First, we must understand both the general factors which determine political participation, and then the ones specific to voting. The first set essentially are demographic in nature, they being that the older and better-educated a person, the more likely he is to participate in politics.
On that score, Louisiana seems to have a mixed message. The state’s average population relatively is younger than the country’s as a whole and following a trend where a demographic bulge of a disproportionately younger population is on the way in America, but educational attainment was on the rise and the gap closing slightly with the rest of America. All in all, this probably means voting participation factors here are moving a bit against any increases in turnout in Louisiana.
The specific factors basically are attitudinal, and include attitudes about the importance of elections, the competitiveness of elections, strength of identification with candidates, and strength of identification with parties. The last is easy to answer – with the nonpartisan blanket primary, Louisiana has the weakest political parties in the country, so such attachments by the citizenry also will be weak.
Recent data also addresses tangentially the idea of competitiveness. The Center for Voting and Democracy rated the state low on “democracy” in Congressional elections partially because of the low degree of competitiveness of these elections. That’s not uncommon in the state, particularly with judicial elections. Again, this would argue for lower turnout.
It’s hard to say about the other two factors without hard data, but my guess is there’s more upside to these. With a political culture more infused with politics than in most states, that ought to make people feel elections are important (but, then again, given the pervasive attitude that the state has too much political corruption that could work the opposite way here). And, Louisianans often place a great deal of stock in candidates, even (perhaps especially) the rapscallions.
All in all, Ater has a tough task. Not only must he fight demographic trends, but the necessary attitudinal changes may be even more difficult to overcome. Focus groups and surveys are fine, but the things that really count us political scientists have known for a long time and he needs not get bogged down in reinventing the wheel. The causes are well-known; it’s the solutions that will require creativity, if they even are possible.
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