Emerging research from Zoltan Hajnal finds that more moderate voters show up to the polls when local elections are held at the same time as national and state contests
In an age of heated rhetoric, increased political violence and avid partisanship, any pleas for “turning down the temperature” of political discourse have come to feel like exercises in wishful thinking. But emerging research from a professor at UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) suggests that a simple, practical change to when people vote can help bring politics back toward the center.
Zoltan Hajnal, a professor of political science at GPS, has dedicated his academic career to studying power imbalances and inequities, as well as the ways to remedy them. In one thread of his research, he has examined the effects of moving local elections to line up with statewide and national contests, which typically have a substantially higher turnout.
[Read Hajnal’s op-ed in The New York Times on local election turnout]
In some of his most recent work, he looked into whether changing when elections were held had an effect on political polarization. (The research has been provisionally accepted by a journal but is not yet published.)
“Previous research has shown a lot of benefits to consolidating elections,” he said. For instance, matching up local elections with state or national elections means fewer overall Election Days — which translates to lower costs for municipalitie, as there are fewer ballots to print and workers to pay.
But, Hajnal said, earlier work on the topic hadn’t looked at the ideological makeup of the voting population, or who ended up getting elected.
More Moderate Voters — And Candidates
But how do you measure something as abstract as polarization? To find out, Hajnal and his colleagues looked at election results in places that had changed their local voting schedules and compared them with places that had not, controlling for other variables.
It turned out that Hajnal only had to look in UC San Diego’s backyard for such an ideal scenario.
California’s Voter Participation Rights Act, ratified in 2015, mandated that most cities hold local elections on the same date as statewide or national elections; cities across the state began implementing this new election timing in waves between 2016 and 2020.
As a result of this, Hajnal and his fellow researchers found it an ideal scenario to investigate how consolidated election results compared with elections in which local and statewide or national elections were held in separate years.
“Does shifting dates change the makeup of the voting population in local elections? Does it make it so that more moderate voters, more independent voters, are involved? The clear answer is: yes.”
“We wanted to know, does shifting dates change the makeup of the voting population in local elections? Does it make it so that more moderate voters, more independent voters, are involved?” Hajnal said. “The clear answer is: yes.”
Looking at the results of elections before and after the switch, the team found that off-cycle elections were more likely to attract more partisan and polarized voters. By contrast, more moderate voters participated in local elections when they occurred at the same time as state elections. These voters were also more likely to vote for more moderate candidates.
As for the candidates: Local politicians who previously took more hard-line stances seemed to soften their partisanship in order to attract these moderate local voters.
Reducing the Burden on Voters
In many cases, especially among lower income voters, it may be difficult to find the time and resources needed to make it to the polls, to say nothing of researching candidates and issues.
“The time and energy costs are not massive, but they are enough to deter a segment of Americans from participating,” Hajnal said.
When local, state and federal elections are grouped together, people find it easier to get the voting over all at once — and it seems to have a moderating effect on politics.
When local, state and federal elections are grouped together, however, people find it easier to get it over all at once — and it seems to have a moderating effect on politics.
In addition to allowing for greater nuance in political ideology, this finding builds on Hajnal’s belief that voting should be easier for citizens to increase democratic participation.
“By consolidating elections, it brings in a lot more younger voters, more people of color, more working class Americans — all of whom are currently underrepresented in the voting population,” he said. “If we want a fair and equitable democracy, and if we want power and resources to be distributed fairly and equally, then we want as many different voices involved in the process as possible.”
