The Long-Term Non-Decline of Voter Turnout

The rate of voter turnout is widely regarded as an important indicator of the health of representative democracy.  As a result, voter turnout ranks among the most frequently referenced topics in political science and economics.  Much of this literature offers lamentations over the downward trend in voter turnout observed between 1960 and 1996.  We demonstrate, however, that turnout during this period was not unusually low compared to turnout rates since 1900.  In fact, our time series model of voting in presidential elections indicates that turnout since 1900 is a remarkably stable function of the closeness of the election contest and a few other variables.  This result contradicts the widespread notion of eroding voter participation.