Changes in American Voter Turnout, 1964-1976

Abstract

The ongoing decline in voter participation has disturbed many observers of American politics. Journalists and other commentators are fond of employing the national level of turnout as a kind of barometer of the health of the political system. At the very least, this measure serves to gauge the proportion of the population to which elected officials are accountable at the polls. Yet the size of the electoral universe has less impact on the policy process than does the identity of those who compose it. In the current debate over the causes and consequences of nonvoting, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the shifting demography of voter participation. To appreciate fully how the increase in nonvoting potentially affects the allocation of power in the United States, it is necessary to disaggregate the national trend into its component parts. In its broad contours, the scope of the phenomenon is clear enough. The proportion of the voting-age population casting ballots in presidential elections has fallen from a postwar peak of 62.8 percent in 1960 to a trough of approximately 53.9 percent in 1980, the lowest level since 1948. In a number of respects, the decline appears baffling. It has long been known that the affluent are the most likely to vote. During the last quarter-century, educational attainment and living standards have risen dramatically for the population as a whole, while great strides have been made toward reducing the size of the impoverished underclass. Moreover, many of the legal barriers that long impeded registration and voting, particularly in the South, have recently been swept away. One would therefore expect the contemporary period to have been marked by increasing voter participation. Indeed, the increase in educational levels, independent of other fac-