Does Moving to On-Cycle Dates Change Who Wins?

By shifting to on-cycle elections, cities, counties, and school districts can increase the number of voters who turn out.  In so doing, research shows that they can also make the electorate more representative of the underlying population.  But can any of this alter who wins?

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The logic on this point is reasonably clear. More votes from groups who don’t normally participate should lead to more influence for those groups.  The result, at least theoretically, is that a more diverse electorate should lead to a more diverse set of candidates and potentially more diverse winners. 

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Research on this question is still relatively limited.  But we do have rigorous studies of race, representation, and election timing.  That research demonstrates that by bringing in more voters of color, the move to consolidated elections greatly increases the number of candidates of color and their chances of victory (Hajnal, Kogan, and Markarian 2024).  In California, after cities were forced to change to even year elections, Latino representation rose steeply.  Indeed, even year elections appeared to eliminate all Latino underrepresentation on city councils in the cities that shifted (Hajnal, Kogan, and Markarian 2024). 

 

Earlier studies also showed that cities with higher turnout tended to elect more racial and ethnic minorities to office (Hajnal and Trounstine 2005, Hajnal 2010). Analysis of major American cities suggested that higher turnout altered the winner in 15 to 30 percent of the contests. Latino voters were the group most likely to experience representational gains from higher turnout.  That study found that, low turnout accounts for about a third of the underrepresentation of Asian Americans on city councils and about a quarter of the underrepresentation of Latinos on city councils (Hajnal 2010).

 

Studies on gender are less clear.  Anzia and Bernhard (2021) find that the move to on-cycle elections can either aid or hinder female candidates – depending on the contest. In city council contests and school board races the odds of women winning office increases when those elections are held on-cycle.  But for mayoral elections, on-cycle elections appear to decrease the odds of a women winning the mayoralty. We unfortunately know much less about the effect of election timing on the class makeup of candidates and elected officials. Finally, some analysis suggests that higher turnout elections lead to more competitive elections and more frequent turnover in office (Trounstine 2008).