☆ Labor’s low-turnout excuse for losing is bogus, experts say

The recriminations have already begun in the Labor/Left media and advocate community. So who’s to blame for their disappointing showing in the mayoral and District 7 race? It’s not the candidates, their campaigns, or their policies, of course. It’s—take a deep breath—People Who Didn’t Vote. The Opp Now team unpacks the false nature of the low-turnout myth. An Opp Now exclusive.

Local Labor media is trotting out a shopworn fantasy to explain away their losses in the key SJ 2022 elections. The claim that low turnout in East San Jose cost them the elections is false on a number of fronts, and also unfairly attempts to otherize and mischaracterize people who—for completely legitimate reasons—may choose to abstain from voting.

Here are the real facts and expert opinions from around the web about the phenomenon of low voter turnout.

• Low voter turnout doesn’t favor conservative candidates.

A longstanding trope of liberal media suggests, inaccurately, that low turnout elections like San Jose 2022 favor more conservative candidates as communities such as East San Jose didn’t vote as much as other districts.*  In reality, data doesn’t support the claim; it’s localized, short-term factors that swing elections.  As political science experts Daron Shaw and John Petrocik put it in National Affairs: “Both Republicans and Democrats are convinced — and have been for some time — that higher turnout will help Democrats and hurt Republicans. The conviction is widely shared, but inaccurate. Put simply, there is no evidence that turnout is correlated with partisan vote choice.

 “High turnout can help Republicans as often as it helps Democrats, while Democrats are often elected when turnout is lower than the norm for a given time or place.

“The central finding in our research is what political scientists have long known yet often overlook: Turnout rates do not predict election results. Instead, results reflect the electorate's underlying partisanship, as well as the short-term forces (STFs, hereafter) of the moment. STFs include factors like the condition of the economy, the "performance" of the government, the occasional misfeasance or malfeasance of officeholders, negative or positive international events, and so forth. They reinforce or erode voters' otherwise powerful inclination to support the candidates of the party with which they identify.”

Read more here.

* Ironically, Labor’s mudslinging and race-baiting may be the cause of the low voter turnout.

Even if you believe that low voter turnout is the cause of Labor’s disappointment, you have to ask: Well, why was turnout so low? The book Going Negative by Shanto Iyengar and Stephen Ansolabehere was a groundbreaking study that presented evidence which “suggested that rather than encouraging voters to pay more attention to campaigns, negative political advertisements diminish voter turnout by reducing voters’ faith in the electoral process and their sense of efficacy.”

Read more here.

Indeed, Labor’s over-the-top race-baiting, position-mangling, and candidate-smearing, which blanketed East San Jose and other areas for the past months, might be the culprit for the low turnout progressives are so concerned about. As theconversation.com notes, “The dislike of both candidates is quite possibly the product of negative campaigning. It promotes negative attitudes toward the opposing candidate. If you already dislike one party’s candidate, negative ads encourage an equally negative feeling toward the other party’s candidate. This suggests that negative campaign advertising carries out a strategy to depress overall voter turnout by making voters dislike both candidates.”

* Abstaining from voting can a completely legitimate, authentic, and rational act.

Labor media likes to characterize not voting in the San Jose 2022 election as the result of people being too busy, uncaring, or the result of shady systemic forces. Truth is, many very thoughtful and politically engaged people choose not to vote for ethical and fair-minded reasons. Michael K. MacKenzie University of Pittsburgh Alfred Moore University of York explore the motives for voter abstention and note that “non participation is part of the repertoire of good democratic practice.” It can be a statement of protest, like a strike or a work slowdown, against a system people see as corrupt or unjust. In this sense, not voting can be seen as a form of political action—not inaction. It can be a statement of alienation, rather than a statement of non-involvement. It can also be a statement of independence from social coercion to engage in what many people view as a Hobson’s Choice.

Read more here.

* Some people think that the differences between the candidates are mostly irrelevant when it comes to policy direction.

There’s a school of thought, at least in American politics, which suggests that the differences between the two parties are often minuscule on major policy differences, and that elections are just swapping out players who will end up pursuing virtually the same agenda. Just look at the number of unanimous votes in the San Jose City Council. As critic Andrew Potter puts it: “Voting serves many purposes, and I actually think its least important role is in choosing policy. Far more important is the Schumpeterian function — voting is a way of cycling elites through government. That in itself does not require higher voter turnout, except that the cycling of elite requires the consent of the governed.”

Read more here.

If you subscribe to this theory, then sitting out an election doesn’t matter so much, as the main purpose—swapping leaders—will occur with our without your participation.

* It’s important to remember, also, the demographic analysis of voting patterns only encompasses *people who vote*—not those who don’t. So to say that Eastside residents are more likely to vote progressive is actually an overbroad statement: Eastside residents *who vote* may trend progressive, but we have no voting data on the preference of those who don’t vote, so we can’t say what their preference would be.

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