Do Election Dates Change Who Votes?

Turnout in local electoral contests is not only low, it is also generally very skewed (Einstein et al 2024, Kogan et al 2021, Jurjevich 2016, Hajnal 2010).  Voters in local elections – especially low turnout local contests – look very different from the underlying city population.  They are more likely to be white, wealthy, and well-educated than their non-voting counterparts (Einstein et al 2024, Hajnal et al 2022, Hajnal 2010). 

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Can a shift to on-cycle elections address these disparities and lead to a more representative electorate? The clear answer is yes.  Research shows that shifting to on-cycle elections greatly reduces the underrepresentation of the working class, younger Americans, and racial and ethnic minorities in the local electorate (Einstein et al 2024, Hajnal et al 2022, Kogan et al 2018). Each of these studies finds that the biggest effects are by age. Moving to November even year contests brought in more younger voters and radically altered the age distribution of the vote.  In California where the study was undertaken, the share of all local voters who are over age 55 plummeted after the state mandated consolidated local elections. Roughly half of all local voters were over age 55 before the shift.  After the shift, their share of the vote share fell to 28 percent (Hajnal et al 2022). Another study of school districts elections found a similar pattern – with huge changes in the age distribution of the vote in cities that moved to on-cycle elections.

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All three studies also found that voters in on-cycle elections are significantly more representative of the voting age population in terms of race and class.  Voters in off-cycle elections were whiter than the population as a whole, but the overrepresentation of White Americans declined substantially when elections moved on-cycle.  In California, the White share of the vote in city elections declined by roughly ten percentage points (Hajnal et al 2022).  In other states, in school board contests, the share of voters who were White declined by 6 percentage points (Kogan et al 2018). The big winners in on-cycle elections were Latino and Asian Americans, whose vote share grew markedly in both studies.

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Class effects were smaller but still significant.  In the analysis of both city contests and school district elections, moving to on-cycle elections increased the share of working class voters and made the electorate more representative of the class makeup of cities and school districts (Hajnal et al 2022, Kogan et al 2018).

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More recent analysis by Warshaw and de Benedictis-Kessner (2024) has confirmed all of these patterns. In a separate study Meredith (2009) also demonstrates that voters in on-cycle elections are more representative of the population as a whole. Another study by Berry and Gerson (2010) as well as one work by Anzia (2014) also suggest – although do not directly demonstrate - that participation in on-cycle elections is more representative of the public than participation in off-cycle elections. Shifting election dates not only changes how many Americans vote, it also alters the makeup of the voting population.