Turnout Below 40% Expected Across Nation

After all the polls, the commercials, the fund-raisers, flip-flops and cheap shots, the election is finally in the hands of the voters.

But which voters will decide it?

Experts are again predicting that less than 40% of the 186.4 million eligible Americans will make their way to the ballot box today, continuing a virtually uninterrupted 25-year slide in turnout. But that pattern could vary dramatically from state to state and between demographic groups--with decisive partisan implications in some races.

For Republican strategists in particular, turnout is a pressing concern: Polls have shown the GOP’s standing eroding dangerously over the last month among senior citizens, who vote more heavily in midterm elections than younger voters.

“Most of the (downward) shifts you’re seeing in President Bush’s approval rating and in the GOP standing in generic questions of who you would vote for in Congress are happening among older voters,” one Republican pollster said. “It’s got to be a concern to the Republican Party when you don’t have the compensating turnout among younger voters.”

Young voters have been a vital component of the GOP coalition for the last decade. But they are much more interested in flashy presidential contests than off-year congressional elections.

In the 1986 midterm election, voters 18 to 24 years old came out at only half the rate they did in the 1988 presidential election. Put another way: In 1988, senior citizens were twice as likely to vote as young people; in the off-year of 1986 they were three times as likely. No other group falls off as dramatically in participation from presidential elections to midterm elections as young people.

Some Republican strategists worry that disenchantment over President Bush’s reversal of his no-new-taxes pledge may further discourage young people--and other GOP partisans--from turning out today.

At the same time, analysts say, senior citizens have been angered by the inclusion of Medicare cuts in the final budget package passed last month. In one recent Republican poll, over 80% of voters 65 and older said they considered the country to be on the wrong track.

Also, Democratic appeals to economic fairness appear to be attracting older voters back into the fold. “The people in that age group are the last of the Truman- and Roosevelt-era Democrats,” said the Republican pollster, “and, when you talk about Republicans and economic fairness, it strikes residual chords that just aren’t there with the under-35 group.”

Shifting preferences among senior citizens could be an important factor in several races.

In Texas, Democratic tracking polls have shown the party’s gubernatorial nominee Ann Richards strengthening her position among seniors (as well as women).

But, in Minnesota, Republican Sen. Rudy Boschwitz rushed out several hundred thousand pieces of mail to senior citizens and accused his Democratic opponent, Paul Wellstone, of advocating Medicare cuts. The barrage occurred after polls showed “slippage” by Boschwitz among older voters, one Republican source said. Although Democrats remain optimistic, Boschwitz has solidified his position with seniors and reopened a 9-point lead in public polls.

Overall turnout is of less interest to the parties than to political scientists. But observers and practitioners alike are expecting a sparse showing today. Anything else would be a shock: Turnout in midterm elections sank below 40% in 1974 and has not resurfaced since. By contrast, off-year elections invariably drew more than 43% of eligible voters from 1948 through 1970.

Despite the strong anti-Washington mood visible in the electorate, few analysts are expecting Americans to break that historical pattern today in a fervor to clean house.

“My guess is that turnout . . . will not be very much different than the 36.4% of eligible voters that turned out in 1986, which was the lowest since 1942,” said Curtis B. Gans, director of the Washington-based Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.

Registration figures undergird that prediction. In 22 of 29 states surveyed last week by People for the American Way, a liberal Washington group, a smaller percentage of eligible voters was registered than in 1986. Several states--including Oregon, Washington, Pennsylvania, and Maryland--suffered steep declines; California, Florida, Ohio and Illinois fell off more modestly. The combined totals show a slight national decline from 1986.

“This year, like 1988, there were no significant voter registration efforts around the country,” said Sanford Horwitt, director of the Citizen Participation Projection at People for the American Way.

But Gans and other experts caution that turnout may rise in some states with closely fought races.

Registration is up in North Carolina--where Republican Sen. Jesse Helms faces Democrat Harvey Gantt, who is attempting to become the first black senator from the South since Reconstruction--and the polls are expected to be crowded today.

Registration is also up in Texas, the site of a compellingly lurid gubernatorial struggle between Richards and Republican Clayton W. Williams Jr. In Massachusetts, observers are expecting large numbers of voters to register their verdict on polarizing Democratic gubernatorial nominee John R. Silber in his campaign against Republican William F. Weld.