Center for the Study of the American Electorate: Early Primaries Have Low Turnout; Nominating System is Working

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About Curtis Gans

Curtis Gans is a recognized expert on voting behavior in the United States. His reports and studies have been a staple of election year news coverage in all mediums. His book, Voter Turnout 1788-2009, published in September 2010 by CQ Press is now and will be the seminal reference book for scholars, students and historians on issues relating to political participation.

Gans is presently President and executive director of the independent non-profit Center for the Study of the American Electorate. Prior to this and for the five prior years, Gans was Research Scholar in Residence at American University and director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, an outgrowth of the private, non-partisan, non-profit Committee for the Study of the American Electorate which he founded in 1976 to look into why an ever-smaller percentage of American citizens have been eschewing the ballot box in every election in most elections. Gans’ six biennial studies on voter registration and voting are cited by every major news outlet in America. He has appeared on a variety of talk shows including Today, Good Morning America, the CBS Morning News, the nightly news programs of all the major networks, PBS’ Newshour, All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Fox News and CNN, among others. He has testified before Congress and state legislative committees on numerous occasions on a variety of political issues. He had a large role in the passage of the National Voter Registration Act (the so-called motor voter law). His writings have appeared in many publications including: The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Republic, The Washington Monthly and Outlook in the Washington Post; the op-ed pages of many major newspapers including The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times and the Sunday book review sections of the New York Times and Washington Post.

Prior to 1976, Gans had a career that straddled active politics and journalism. He was probably best known for helping to create the movement that ousted President Lyndon Johnson from office and being staff director of the 1968 presidential campaign of Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy. He was a member of the Democratic National Policy Council and its foreign policy sub-committee. He was a consultant for the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars and the National Committee for an Effective Congress. He was also a newsman for United Press International and the Miami News and for a period of three years after 1976, self-syndicated a column of political analysis that appeared in several major paper.

A 1959 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with an A.B. degree in English, Gans is also an honorably discharged former member of the United States Marine Corps Reserve.

Gans is an avid baseball fan and has been noted for planning his vacation and business travels to be where the St. Louis Cardinals are playing.

Election Studies

Every biennium, the Committee produced from five to six reports on registration and turnout. Those reports included, in Presidential years:

a preliminary report on Presidential primary turnout;
a final report on primary turnout coupled with a preliminary report on non-Presidential primary turnout (for U.S. Senate and state governor);
a final report on non-Presidential primaries;
a preliminary report on registration;
an immediate post-election report on Presidential general election turnout, including turnout for governor, U.S. Senate and statewide aggregate vote for Congress (plus, on occasion, selected ballot propositions) base don unofficial returns;
and a final report with final official figures on turnout and registration.

In mid-term elections, a similar pattern of these reports was repeated without the reports on Presidential primaries. Each report was accompanied by summary charts, graphs and a panoply of statistical tables on each aspect of the report. Each report was accompanied by commentary and analysis and some final reports looked at certain questions of interest relating to citizen participation. Because of the size of the tables at the end of each of these reports, only two sets of tables will be presented here: the tables from final reports of the elections of 2004 and 2002, which serve as an historical record for Presidential and mid-term elections stretching back to 1960. (The Center is in the midst of creating a database that will provide similar data back to 1860.) What is included is the cover report and analysis in each report, plus the notes and summary charts which are appended to each report.

It should be noted that until 2002, the Committee used as a denominator the Census Bureau's estimates of voting age population (18 years of age or over prior to 1972 and 21 years and over prior to that). But those figures included non-citizens who could not vote; convicted felons, many of whom could not vote; and people deemed incompetent in mental institutions who could not vote; and did not include American citizens living in other countries who could vote; the people included in studies of the undercount who were citizens and of age who could vote and potential voters who became citizens through naturalization during the election year who also could vote. The only person, during these years, who used a better denominator, one that excluded non-citizens was Dr. Walter Dean Burnham. The Committee and Center, for reasons outline in the notes in the 2004 preliminary and general election reports is using Burnham's figures and methodology for primaries—citizen age-eligible population which is based on a Census to Census (or April to April) interpolation of eligible voters, excluding non-citizens; and a new set of denominators using the same methodology but from November to November to analyze general election turnout.

It should be noted that in 2002, the Committee did not produce a final report so the appropriate statistical charts are appended to the Committee's preliminary report.

For 30 years, prior to coming to American University and leaving it to create the independent Center for the Study of the American Electorate, the institution was also an inindependent non-profit called the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. During that 30-year period, the Committee produced several reports, statistical summaries and analysis on voter registration and turnout in primary and general elections for every election for which there was an available denominator of eligible voters. In addition, the Committee produced discrete studies on issues surrounding voter participation, commissioned studies and surveys, testified before Congress, published articles and convened meetings. What follows below is much of the work of the Committee divided by category beginning with the election reports which have given the previous Committee and present Center credibility.

Center for the Study of the American Electorate

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Friday, March 9, 2012

Early Primaries Have Low Turnout; Nominating System is Working

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