Do Voters Pay Less Attention to Local Issues When Local Elections are on the Same Day as Federal Contests?

Opponents of on-cycle elections worry that moving local elections to the same days as federal elections will reduce the amount of attention that local contests receive.The fear is that local contests will be overwhelmed by presidential and Congressional contests that are higher profile and that get enormous media attention. The end result may be a local electorate that is less knowledgeable about the candidates and issues that drive local politics.

 

There is, however, no evidence showing that holding consolidated elections reduces the amount of attention paid to local issues and local elections.  Indeed, this is one area where further research is needed.  The limited work that has been done suggests, however, that voters are as knowledgeable or more knowledgeable about local affairs after the switch to on-cycle elections.  An early study of suburban voters by Oliver and Ha (2007) suggested that on-cycle voters may be less informed than off-cycle voters about some aspects of municipal affairs.   But the differences the study found did not appear to be statistically significant and would almost certainly disappear if basic controls were added to the analysis.  More systematic analysis, using several waves of national survey data, has subsequently found that that on-cycle voters are as informed on educational policy issues as off-cycle ones (Hartney n.d.).  Perhaps the most compelling research on the topic suggests that voter knowledge about local politics actually increases when local elections are consolidated with federal contests.  An in-depth study of school district elections and academic achievement in California by Payson (2017) found that election results were more closely tied to school district performance when elections were held on-cycle.  In low-turnout off-cycle elections, there was no connection between district test scores and support for the incumbent.  But in higher turnout on-cycle elections, incumbents were rewarded or punished based on whether student test scores went up or down during the tenures – a clear sign that voters knew what was happening in local schools in on-cycle elections. 

 

While more work in this area would certainly help, there are strong reasons to believe that we will ultimately conclude that on-cycle elections do significantly increase knowledge.  The fact that on-cycle elections dramatically increase voter turnout and the fact that on-cycle elections bring in a larger, more varied electorate suggest that knowledge will only grow when local elections are consolidated with federal contests. When twice as many voters are involved and a broader range of local residents are choosing candidates, overall knowledge is likely to increase rather than decrease.  All of this suggests that election timing might actually facilitate local government accountability by bringing in more and more varied voters.