As the first Presidential election without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act approaches, boosting voter registration and turnout is the best cure for what ails American democracy.
My recent report, Why Voting Matters, shows how voter turnout can dramatically affect policy. Right now, politicians are vying for an electorate that is older, whiter and richer than the general public. They are therefore more likely to ignore the preferences of low-income and non-white people.
To illustrate this, I examined Census data from the 2014 election and examined how higher turnout among people of color and low-income people would have changed the composition of the electorate in 2014.
First I looked at what would happen if low-income people voted at the same rate as the wealthy. In 2014, 28% of voters earned more than $100,000, if low-income people voted at the same rate as the wealthy, only 23% of the electorate would have made more than $100,000. While this seems small, 5% of the electorate is massive—the difference between the non-Hispanic white share of the electorate in 2000 and 2012 was 7 points. People in families earning less than $50,000 made up 38% of the electorate in 2014—in an equal turnout scenario, they would have made up 46% of the electorate. Non-Hispanic whites made up 76.3% of the electorate in 2014, with equal turnout they would have made up 69.9% of voters.
When examining even a smaller elite, the gaps are larger. Take non-Hispanic whites in families with an income greater than $75,000. While this group makes up a bit more than a quarter of people in the United States (27%), they make up more than a third of voters (35%). And while non-white individuals in families earning less than $50,000 make up 16% of individuals in America, they are only 11% of voters.
This can have a dramatic impact on policy. Take an issue that’s heating up as the 2016 election comes up: debt-free college. YouGov recently performed a survey of American attitudes on the subject. Their assistant editor Peter Moore was kind enough to make their data on opinions broken down by registration status available to me.
Non-registered Americans were more likely to say they were “not sure” on the five questions I examined (7% average across the questions for registered, compared with 25% for non-registered), the non-registered Americans who expressed a preference were far more likely to offer the progressive option.* I also compared registered and non-registered to the preferences of high-income families (those with a family income of $80,000, in this poll). As the chart shows, these wealthy individuals were the least likely to support the progressive option.
It’s also hard to deny that these are issues that non-registered individuals don’t care about. Indeed, on all three questions, non-registered Americans were more likely to agree “strongly” with the progressive option, and far less likely to disagree “strongly.” YouGov also asked about whether the state and federal governments spent enough on college. As Demos has extensively documented, the rising cost of college can be directly attributed to the “Great Cost Shift” from state governments paying for college to students.
