Rational Abstention in Virginia

In this Washington Post article, the author claimed that the election this November would result in a particularly low voter turnout in Virginia. He had several reasons for this prediction. First: “quirks of the state’s calendar…produces a ballot every four years featuring no federal or statewide races to drive turnout”. Second, most of the state is not looking at a competitive election. Also, redistricting in much of Virginia may lead to some confusion of where to vote, which he said could possibly lower turnout. The last similar election similar resulted in only 30% of Virginia voters turning out as opposed to the 75% of registered voters who turned out in 2008. The author claimed that voters should care about this election because “control of the state senate hangs in the balance, and with it the possibility that Republicans could soon control all the levers of power in Richmond”, but he also recognized that voters wouldn’t vote.

Essentially the author tapped in to Johnson’s theory of rational abstention. For several reasons, voters in Virginia decided rationally not to vote. Even though control of the state senate was determined by this election, voters did not find this to be enough of a reason to incur the costs of voting. In class we discussed having to take work off, waiting in line, and confusion in the registering process as reasons not to vote. This author names another; confusion in where to vote, due to the redistricting.

The author claims that independent voters will be the ones to stay home. This could be due to the voters feeling either indifferent to the candidates, or alienated by the candidates. Either the difference in utility the voter would derive from the Republican vs. the Democrat is outweighed by the cost of voting, or both candidates are so far from the voter’s ideology that they would not gain enough utility from either candidate being elected to incur the costs of voting. Finally the voters may have decided, as Johnson would suggest, that their vote does not make enough of a difference in the overall results of the election, to be worth the costs of voting (rational abstention). The author mentions this when he notes that most of the election in Virginia will not even be contested. The fluctuation in voter turnout depending on which offices are being contested is however, not necessarily supportive of Johnson’s thesis. After all, one vote out of all Virginia voters has a higher probability of making a difference, than one vote out of every voter in the US, for a presidential candidate. Yet it is the elections to determine the president that draw the largest percentage of voters. That being said, voters are much less likely to be indifferent to who holds the office of the presidency.