Turnout Archives - National Vote at Home Institute

State-by-State Youth Voter Turnout Data and the Impact of Election Laws in 2022

(CIRCLE) — New estimates of youth voter turnout in the 2022 midterm elections highlight major variations and inequities in young people’s electoral participation across the country. Youth turnout ranged from as high as 37% in some states to as low as 13% in others.

These new estimates are out today from the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University’s Tisch College of Civic Life, the preeminent national research center on youth voting. They are based on voter file data from 39 states for which age-specific voter file data has been aggregated by Catalist. We define turnout as the percentage of all voting-eligible youth (as opposed to just registered youth), ages 18-29, who cast a ballot in 2022.

According to this new data, Michigan (37%), Maine, Minnesota, Oregon (all 36%), Colorado (33%), and Pennsylvania (32%) had the highest youth turnout rates in the country. Louisiana (16%), Oklahoma, Indiana, Alabama (all 15%), West Virginia (14%), and Tennessee (13%) had the lowest youth turnout rates. CIRCLE’s analyses suggest that, along with issues and electoral competitiveness, election laws may be playing a central role in shaping whether youth cast a ballot in national elections.

Vote-By-Mail: Modeling Voter Participation in the 2018 Midterm Election

In this research, we examine the difference between five vote-by-mail policies in place in the 2018 midterm elections. We use statistical modeling to understand the effects of different vote-by-mail policies nationwide and estimate what might have changed in 2018 based on different voting systems. In general, we find that turnout increases as states move along the vote-by-mail policy continuum, removing administrative obstacles for voters in the process. Additionally, turnout gains are largest when counties progress several steps from more restrictive policies to less restrictive policies, and the Vote at Home policy has the most potential to impact young voters.

Mail-ballot voters turnout at higher rates than polling place voters

Since 2020, mail-ballot use has been on the rise across the U.S., resulting in more voters having access to the ballot box. The 2022 primary elections were no exception.

The Effect of Mailed Ballots and Mailed Absentee Ballot Applications in the 2020 General Election in Nebraska

In this research prepared for the National Vote at Home Coalition, researchers find that full vote-at-home precincts in Nebraska experienced as much as 4.6 percentage points of greater turnout than polling-place precincts. In addition, automatically mailing absentee ballot applications to all voters helped increase turnout across the state.

Vote by Mail in 2020 and Our Collective Opportunity in 2022

“The 2020 elections presented unique challenges and opportunities that fueled a meteoric rise in the use of vote-by-mail (VBM). Since the 1800s, absentee ballots by mail have been part of our democracy. For most of that history, voters were typically required to provide an excuse for casting an absentee ballot. But in the 1980s, California introduced an expansive policy that opened VBM to all voters. By 2016, 27 states adopted a similar voting policy. By 2020, hastened by the COVID-19 pandemic, 34 states allowed voters to request mail ballots without providing an excuse. Deliver My Vote Education Fund (DMVEF) examined VBM trends in five key states (Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Wisconsin) from 2016 to 2020 to understand this massive shift in VBM use. Voters of all backgrounds embraced VBM as a safe way to vote during the pandemic, while also realizing the remarkable convenience.”

Vote-by-Mail Policy and the 2020 Presidential Election

A recent study of mail-ballot use and voter participation found that turnout increased an average of 5.6% during the 2020 presidential election in states that mailed a ballot to every registered voter. The effects of mail-ballot delivery were even greater in jurisdictions with historically low mail-ballot usage, boosting turnout by as much as 8%.

Prepaid postage using pre-stamped envelopes to affect turnout costs

Research on the effects of prepaid postage on voter participation in Switzerland found a modest increase in turnout between 1.1 and 1.3 percentage points.

Fact sheet: Disability and Voting Access Policies in 2020

Many states made policy changes to make it easier to vote in 2020 due to the pandemic, while some states had already provided increased voting access after the 2016 elections. This fact sheet outlines those changes.

The downstream consequences of long waits: How lines at the precinct depress future turnout

Researchers have increasingly paid attention to the impact that the administrative component of elections has on voter behavior. Existing research has focused almost exclusively on the effect that legal changes–such as voter identification laws–have on turnout. This paper extends our understanding of the electoral process by exploring how one aspect of the precinct experience–standing in line to vote–can shape the turnout behavior of voters in subsequent elections. I demonstrate that for every additional hour a voter waits in line to vote, their probability of voting in the subsequent election drops by 1 percentage point. To arrive at these estimates, I analyze vote history files using a combination of exact matching and placebo tests to test the identification assumptions. I then leverage an unusual institutional arrangement in the City of Boston and longitudinal data from Florida to show that the result also holds at the precinct level. The findings in this paper have important policy implications for administrative changes that may impact line length, such as voter identification requirements and precinct consolidation. They also suggest that racial asymmetries in precinct wait times contribute to the gap in turnout rates between white and non-white voters.

State-by-State 2020 Youth Voter Turnout: The Northeast

From the Center for Information and Research On Civic Learning and Engagement:

Our final analysis of statewide youth voter turnout by region examines the electoral participation in young people in nine Eastern and Northeastern states. Key takeaways from this group of states include:

New Jersey had the highest youth voter turnout in the nation: 67%.
Despite being the only major swing state in the region, Pennsylvania had a similar youth voter turnout rate (54%) to other states in the East and Northeast. Perhaps relatedly, it’s the only state in the region (for which we have turnout data) without either pre-registration or automatic voter registration.
Vermont and New Jersey which implemented full vote by mail programs in which they automatically sent ballots to every voter, saw the biggest increases in youth voter turnout compared to 2016: rising by 12 and 22 percentage points, respectively.