Sensitivity of Voter Turnouts in Presidential Elections – A Retrospective Analysis

Abstract

Voter turnout is a major swaying factor in presidential elections. One of the main missions of presidential campaigns is to rile up their political base and independents to come to the voting booths and vote for them. An important comparison is the 2016 and 2020 elections. In the 2016 election, the democrats (Clinton) won the popular vote but the republicans (Trump) managed to win more key states and won the Electoral College, and the presidency. However, in 2020, the democrats energized were smarter about campaigning and put lots of effort in increasing voter turnout in key swing states. In fact, the republicans voter turnout in 2020 increased by 17.84% in relation to 2016, but democrats increased their voter turnout by 23.43%, which allowed the democrats to win the presidency. This indicates understanding sensitivity of voter turnouts and how it affects the Electoral College is an integral part to predicting which candidate will win the presidential election. There are many minor and major factors that can significantly alter voter turnout for both parties. The objective of this research project is to understand what affects voter turnout and by how much it affects the outcome in key battleground states. Towards this, I have analyzed the 2016 election in R to understand which states had the closest elections. My analysis of percentage difference between the 2 parties’ votes at national scale shows the strategies by both parties at the county level. The republicans campaigned for the more rural areas and won many more counties than the democrats in key battleground states. On the contrary, the democrats campaigned primarily in urban and populous areas, thereby winning the popular vote but not the Electoral College. Another big factor behind the republicans’ win was that the republicans won most of the battleground states (Michigan, Florida, and North Carolina) by a close margin. All of these states had the closest margins in 2016 with Michigan being the closest state that year. Out of the top 10 closest state electoral colleges the republicans won 6 of them (102 electoral colleges) and the democrats only won 4 of them (23 electoral colleges). This analysis shows how important it is to focus campaigning in key counties relevant to their base and also sway independents towards their candidates. I intend on continuing this analysis of voter sensitivity by going through all of the elections in the 2000s. I plan to develop an analysis interface which can take user inputs to analyze the past elections. These user inputs can be a list of past close state Electoral College outcomes or it can be a change in voter turnout indicated by percentage increase/decrease towards a party in key battleground states. I also intend to analyze correlation patterns between voter turnouts and key socio-economic indicators (e.g., employment, economy and crisis). This way we can analyze the change of the close battleground states and use recent events to determine what is having the biggest impact on voter sensitivity. (Mentor: Dr. Brian Reich, Dept. of Statistics)