Will Low Turnout Favor ‘No’?

The discomfiting haze of voter apathy is steadily descending upon next month’s California elections. A recent Field poll suggests a mere 44% of California citizens of voting age will cast ballots, which would be the third-lowest turnout in the last 50 years. Some analysts believe even these numbers are optimistic. The reasons aren’t difficult to fathom. The gubernatorial contest is a matchup between two white-male suits who spend most of their time with trivialities. There’s no hot-button ballot initiative to excite people. There is the depressing stain of national scandal that, while currently favoring Republicans, could siphon away frustrated voters on both sides.

The effect of a low turnout on partisan contests has been the subject of much speculation. But in this state, men and women running for office are not the only people keeping tabs on turnout projections. A separate army of consultants, contributors and volunteers are gauging the effect that low turnout would have on their “candidates”: the initiatives.

Does a low turnout favor certain types of initiatives? Are voters in low-turnout elections more inclined to vote “yes” or “no”? What do these tendencies portend for next month’s battles over electricity, tobacco taxes and Indian gaming?

To begin, it’s important to identify the characteristics of the various electorates. Lower-turnout elections tend to be more heavily weighted with older, whiter and more conservative voters. The Field survey, for instance, projects that the percentage of GOP voters will exceed by 3% the percentage of Californians who registered Republican. Low-turnout contests also tend to have a larger concentration of “high propensity” voters, those who cast their ballots year in and year out, in primaries as well as general elections.

The generic conservatism of low-turnout elections can often swing the results in candidate elections. But the electorate’s overall ideological cast doesn’t necessarily translate to votes taken on ballot initiatives. In primary elections, where turnout runs between 10% and 15% below that of November elections, “conservative” measures fared only slightly better than “liberal” ones between 1976 and 1990. The conservatives won 60% of their propositions, liberals won half theirs. Since 1976, liberal initiatives have done slightly better in lower-turnout primaries than they have in the general-election contests, a blow to backers who often target November in hopes of finding a more accommodating (i.e., liberal) electorate. Similarly, conservative measures have done not that much better in lower-turnout primaries than they have in general elections, even though their sponsors will sometimes target primaries in hopes of finding a higher concentration of conservatives.

If the electorate’s ideological cast is not a reliable predictor of an initiative’s success, does a low turnout matter in these contests? You bet your union dues it does. Just ask Pete Wilson. This year, Wilson put his political weight behind Proposition 226, an initiative that would have restricted the ability of labor unions to divert members’ dues to political activities. The plan seemed ingenious: Put 226 up in June, when there are more conservatives voting and, once it passes, overwhelm the underfunded Democrats in the November campaign. Everything worked right for a while. The measure had strong early support in the polls, and the election itself wound up with the lowest turnout of eligible voters in decades. But when the votes were counted, the grand design was a colossal dud.

Much of the credit for the defeat of the proposition went to the unprecedented organizational efforts undertaken by unions and their members. But it was the low turnout that made those union votes count as much as they did. A Los Angeles Times exit poll after the June primary showed nonunion voters favoring the measure. In a higher-turnout general election, there would have been more such voters to counterbalance the heavy turnout of union members. But in a primary, there just weren’t enough nonunion voters to make up the difference.

Bottom line: Low turnout favors those who can mobilize large numbers of occasional voters around a single issue. The smaller the universe, the larger the impact.

The relative success of liberal initiatives between 1976 and 1990 also suggests another, even more intriguing trend as it pertains to voter turnout and initiatives. Jim Schultz, author of a 1996 how-to guide called “The Initiative Cookbook,” suggests that the electorate in low-turnout contests may actually be more inclined to look beyond the TV-commercial blitz that invariably accompanies high-profile initiative campaigns.

“You have a less confused electorate,” says Schultz. “They’re not as subject to TV and are more inclined to be the ones sitting around the kitchen table going over the ballot pamphlet.”

This line of reasoning not only helps explain why primary voters tend to be more discriminating toward initiatives, but also why some of the more emotionally charged initiatives do well in larger-turnout elections. The granddaddy of all emotional initiatives, Proposition 13, passed in a primary whose turnout was only 2% lower than that in the following November election. As recently as November 1996, Californians not only voted to ban all affirmative-action programs (Proposition 209), they also legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes (Proposition 215). The success of both measures on the same ballot points to an electorate deciding more on instinct and emotion than on weighty pro-and-con arguments.

The overall failure rate of initiatives in general elections also affirms another timeworn truism about initiative campaigns: The more voters go with their guts, the more they vote “no.” Most of the spectacular initiative failures, liberal and conservative, are the result of their backers overreaching or loading down their ideas with enough gunk to make the “buyer beware.”

So what does all this portend for November’s initiatives? Even if the Field poll’s turnout projection is accurate, the electorate will still have a higher concentration of less-frequent voters than any primary since 1978. It still will be a general-election group, with its accompanying emotional flightiness. It still figures to be a group that, all other things being equal, will probably lean more to the “no” side on anything that’s too complex or seems to have a hidden agenda.

Such an environment could create problems for Proposition 9, the initiative that modifies the state’s 1996 electricity-deregulation law. The proposition’s underfunded backers must not only explain their proposal, they also must explain the law they’re trying to change. The well-heeled opposition, bankrolled largely by utility companies, need only hammer away at the cost issue in its TV commercials.

On the other hand, a more emotional electorate could be good news for Proposition 5, which extends Indian gaming rights. From the pro-5 group’s name--Californians for Indian Self-Reliance--to its relentless and effective advertising blitz, the initiative’s supporters have hit the emotional buttons of both liberals and conservatives. Their pitch has been so effective that opponents have duplicated the concept in their own advertising.

What about the “Clinton factor?” If the pundits are right, and the low turnout is heavily stocked with hard-core, Clinton-hating Republicans, that could hit especially hard at Proposition 10, the initiative boosting the cigarette tax. That’s because more hard-core conservatives mean more antitaxers. But the proposition has its own emotional pitch to throw, aiming at California’s widespread, and seemingly bipartisan, aversion to tobacco.

Overall, however, the apathy haze likely won’t discriminate that much between liberal and conservative. It will just hang there, leaving voter and advocate alike to forge ahead, all the while praying for a political Santa Ana.*