Government and Politics
The purpose of this report is to identify one election in which voter participation was a low turnout. Voter indicator is stated as a crucial indicator that reflects the voter participation in selecting governance of their country. In respect to this, voter turnout data of US country will be collected and analyzed by the researcher in-depth in order to develop the knowledge and understanding related to decrease in turnout rate (Lopez, 2018). This report will highlight on the collecting the data which can be used as an evidence for the discussion the decline in voter turnout rate. This report will also focus on analyzing the collected data for attaining a relevant research outcome. Overall, this report will also provide some recommendations which will help the US country to improve or increase the voter turnout rate successfully.
For this research study, secondary data collection is used by the researcher for identifying the relevant data from the existing past data sources. The use of secondary data for this research is quite effective as this will help in understanding the reason behind that voter turnout participation from a respective group (Best and Krueger, 2012). In secondary data, data will be collected from different sources, such as online economy data, magazines, newspaper, books and much more. In simple terms, data collected from secondary sources always found to be relevant and helpful for the future research and also help the researcher in developing understanding towards the research topic.
The voter turnout data is collected for the year 2010 in which US midterm election faced the problem of less voter participation in the election mainly two different casts i.e., Asian and Hispanic. While collecting the data, it is identified that in 2010, there were around 2.9 million white voters, 1.1 million black voters, around 1million Latino voters and 200000 more Asian voters in comparison to the year 2006. In addition to this, collected data also included voter turnout rates which are calculated or measured at the time of midterm elections. In context to this, the participation rates of white voters are highly greater than the other casts voter groups but at the same time, it is also found that there is a decline in the voter participation level in white caste too in contrast to other casts group where participation level in each group raised. Lopez et al. (2012) also added his point of view that global voter turnover has increased from last many decades i.e., in the 1990s, 70% voter didn’t participate in contrast to the year 2011-15, where voter turnout was declined by 66% because voter showed their interest to vote for establishing an effective.
But at the same time, Fisher (2012) also demonstrated that as an economy is developing rapidly and innovatively, the young voters are more aware and developed the interest to vote for the society welfare as well as for their benefits too. While collecting the data, it is also observed that young age group people i.e., 18 to 29 are more motivated to vote but in US election of 2010, it is identified that black cast youth participation in the voting was high as compared to others. In context to this, 27.5% black cast voters, 24.9% white cast voters, 17.7% Asian voters and 17.6% Hispanic young voters. This stated data collected clearly demonstrates that youth people are somewhere reason behind the low turnout voting rates as in 2010 youth are less interested or agreed for new governance body in the US Country.
On the other hand, Roy et al. (2015) also explained that there are many factors that are affecting the voter turnout rate to some extent such as socio-economic factor, institutional factor, and political factor and so on. These factors affected a voter’s decision to cast a vote of his or her on the Election Day and these factors are found to be different in every country.
The collected data is analyzed in-depth for developing a better understanding and identifying the reason of decrease in voter turnout rat in 2010 during midterm US elections.
(Source: Lopez, 2011)
From the above figure data, it can be stated that growth in diversity among the nation at the time of the midterm election clearly reflects that population growth and increase in voters participation level among the minority groups i.e., Hispanic and Asian (Fiske and Hancock, 2016). In comparison to this, the above data also reflected that white voter’s participation level got decreased to some extent which somewhere resulted into the decrease in the voter turnout rates in the year 2010.
(Source: Lopez, 2011)
From the above graph, it is identified that in an early election cycle, the Asian and Hispanic community are shown their least interest in the voting. Due to that, it is recorded that Hispanic and Asian did not vote. According to a survey, there are various reasons occur for not perform the voting. The common reason given was that Asian people tend too busy in conflicting the work and school schedule and because of this, they failed to go to the voting panel. The second most common reason that occurs from the survey was that people are less interested and felt that if he/she didn’t vote then it make no differences. On the basis of this survey, it is cleared that people are still not aware of the significances of voting rights that’s why such problems occur in every voting time.
From the survey, it is also found that around 37.4% of Asian people give the reason for conflicting work or school schedule. On the other hand, Hispanic clearly shows no interest in the voting rights and this is the cause of non-appearances of both the communities at the time of voting (Lopez et al., 2012). Therefore, it needs to make people aware about their rights so that they make a proper decision and take interest in the voting rights.
In this, some recommendations are provided to increase voter participation in low-turnout communities There are differences in voter turnout in America as Hispanic and Asians do not vote as much as others. Low levels of voting matter due to possible unexpected changes in election results. The changes in voting levels may cause affect the election outcomes. To encourage voting amongst groups where low-turnout occurred, phone bank calls using the languages of targeted citizens may be effective to successfully mobilize the low-turnout communities (Drometer and Méango, 2017). Through this, general messages can be communicated to people how to go about voting. Apart from this, door-to-door personal contacts and calls from phone banks and postcards can be significant to encourage them to vote with a variety of appeals. Apart from this, technology may play an important role in increasing female and youth participation in voting. For instance, text messages and emails from trusted sources can be effective to mobilize the voters. It is because such communication tools are useful to convey the voting appeals and encourage these voters for voting. In addition, social media is majorly used by the youth generation as it can be a better communication tool to convey appeals to these voters.
From the above-discussed study, it can be concluded easily that in year 2010, US country faced low turnout rate in voter participation in two different regional casts i.e., Hispanic and Asian. In this study, different data is collected from different secondary data sources which helped in generating a relevant outcome. In addition, this study also helped in determining the relevancy of collected data or evidence by analyzing the data so that reason behind the voter turnout can be identified easily. Moreover, US election committee is also provided with recommendations to adopt the new technology and door-to-door contact with Asian and Hispanic people in order to increase the voter’s participation at the time of an election.
Best, S.J. and Krueger, B.S., 2012. Exit polls: Surveying the American electorate, 1972-2010. USA: CQ Press.
Drometer, M. and Méango, R., 2017. Electoral cycles, partisan effects and US naturalization policies (No. 239). Ifo Working Paper.
Fisher, D.R., 2012. Youth political participation: Bridging activism and electoral politics. Annual Review of Sociology, 38, pp.119-137.
Fiske, J. and Hancock, B.H., 2016. Media matters: Race & gender in US politics. UK: Routledge.
Lopez, M.H., 2018. The Latino electorate in 2010: More voters, more non-voters. Religion, 3, p.06.
Lopez, M.H., Motel, S. and Patten, E., 2012. A Record 24 Million Latinos Are Eligible to Vote, But Turnout Rate Has Lagged That of Whites, Blacks. Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center. [Online] Available at: http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/10/01/a-record-24-million-latinos-are-eligible-to-vote/ (Accessed: 23rd March, 2018).
Lopez. H. M., 2011. Dissecting the 2010 Electorate. Pew Research Online. [Online] Available at: http://www.pewhispanic.org/2011/04/26/ii-dissecting-the-2010-electorate/ (Accessed: 23rd March, 2018).
Roy, J., Perrella, A.M. and Borden, J., 2015. Rural, Suburban and Urban Voters: Dissecting Residence Based Voter Cleavages in Provincial Elections. Canadian Political Science Review, 9(1), pp.112-127.
