Democrats appear to now have an advantage among educated and highly engaged voters since Trump shifted the Republican part coalition. I would not be surprised if voter restrictions ease in red states over the next couple decades now that the demographics have shifted and lower turnout does not seem to benefit Republicans. We might even see this trend reverse entirely if democrats realize higher income, higher education, and higher engagement voters disproportionately vote for them and are less affected by voter restrictions than the poor/low engagement demographic.
When voting is made more accessible, people vote. And when your home state is competitive, people will go through greater effort to vote. The states with the highest COVI and lowest voter turnout are all red states with the exception of a few battleground state and New Mexico. The causality probably runs in both directions here – liberal states are generally more supportive of universal voting access, and when more people vote they tend to vote for Democrats.
New Mexico and Hawaii are also interesting outliers. They have among the highest share of Native American inhabitants and lowest share of blue state voter turnout. At least for NM, this is likely to change. They recently passed the NM Voting Rights Act, which has a big emphasis on increasing voter access in Indian communities. [https://www.aclu.org/news/voting-rights/new-mexico-voting-rights-act](https://www.aclu.org/news/voting-rights/new-mexico-voting-rights-act)
I’m honestly surprised competitiveness doesn’t factor into turnout more. I suppose there’s enough down ballot races on any given ballot that you always have some close race to turn out for, but I would have thought battleground states would be much higher than firm red or firm blue states. Seems the most noticeable trend is really red states vs blue states.
I wanted to come in and make a weather excuse for both of the Dakotas, but Minnesota popped in an shut that shit right the fuck down.
I think more likely is that red states tend to be more rural, and the further you have to go to a polling site. This making it more inconvenient and leading to less turnout
![[OC] Voter turnout is higher in competitive battleground states... and lower in red states that restrict voting access.](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/hehc1az0kuid1-1882x1024.png)
5 comments
Democrats appear to now have an advantage among educated and highly engaged voters since Trump shifted the Republican part coalition. I would not be surprised if voter restrictions ease in red states over the next couple decades now that the demographics have shifted and lower turnout does not seem to benefit Republicans. We might even see this trend reverse entirely if democrats realize higher income, higher education, and higher engagement voters disproportionately vote for them and are less affected by voter restrictions than the poor/low engagement demographic.
Made in Tableau.
Sources: [https://election.lab.ufl.edu/dataset/1980-2022-general-election-turnout-rates/](https://election.lab.ufl.edu/dataset/1980-2022-general-election-turnout-rates/) for turnout rates and [https://costofvotingindex.com/data](https://costofvotingindex.com/data) for COVI, a metric of coting accessibility/difficulty, with battleground states identified using [https://www.fec.gov/documents/4228/federalelections2020.xlsx](https://www.fec.gov/documents/4228/federalelections2020.xlsx)
When voting is made more accessible, people vote. And when your home state is competitive, people will go through greater effort to vote. The states with the highest COVI and lowest voter turnout are all red states with the exception of a few battleground state and New Mexico. The causality probably runs in both directions here – liberal states are generally more supportive of universal voting access, and when more people vote they tend to vote for Democrats.
New Mexico and Hawaii are also interesting outliers. They have among the highest share of Native American inhabitants and lowest share of blue state voter turnout. At least for NM, this is likely to change. They recently passed the NM Voting Rights Act, which has a big emphasis on increasing voter access in Indian communities. [https://www.aclu.org/news/voting-rights/new-mexico-voting-rights-act](https://www.aclu.org/news/voting-rights/new-mexico-voting-rights-act)
I’m honestly surprised competitiveness doesn’t factor into turnout more. I suppose there’s enough down ballot races on any given ballot that you always have some close race to turn out for, but I would have thought battleground states would be much higher than firm red or firm blue states. Seems the most noticeable trend is really red states vs blue states.
I wanted to come in and make a weather excuse for both of the Dakotas, but Minnesota popped in an shut that shit right the fuck down.
I think more likely is that red states tend to be more rural, and the further you have to go to a polling site. This making it more inconvenient and leading to less turnout