Democratic norms and voting

Summary: Increasing the perception of how typical or common it is to vote in local elections may encourage more people to vote.

The number of early votes cast in the 2022 midterm elections has surpassed the number cast in the 2018 midterms, putting the 2022 election on track to be an “exceptionally high turnout election.” Indeed, voter turnout in federal elections has been on the rise: according to Pew Research, 62.8% of voting age people voted in the 2020 U.S. general election, and 47.5% voted in the 2018 midterm elections. However, these rates contrast sharply with the U.S. voter turnout rate for local elections (15-27%), which often occur in odd-numbered, off-cycle years, and don’t include candidates for federal office on the ballot.

While participating in all elections is essential for democracy, research suggests that voting in local elections is also key to helping Americans restore trust in both governing institutions and each other. So, this spring, More in Common conducted a study to try to understand Americans’ beliefs about the importance of voting in local elections. Here is what we found.

Increasing the perception that voting in local elections is a common or “normative” behavior may make more Americans think it is a worthwhile activity. 

In our survey, 86% of respondents supported voting in local elections, but only 28% said it was important. This lack of importance may be one reason why voter turnout for local elections is so low.

“I think it’s more about national elections. More voters are voting in them, and the local stuff just comes along for the ride…”

💬 Roland, Age 55-64, White male, Politically Disengaged, California

We also found that the more common, or “normative,” people thought voting in local elections was, the more important they thought it was. This pattern held across the political spectrum.

One way to increase civil participation for low prevalence behaviors like voting in local elections is through “dynamic norm messaging.”

In May, we conducted a follow-up study with the same group of Americans to test how to best communicate norms about local voting. Specifically, we compared a “dynamic framing” (framing that focuses on how the behavior has been increasing over time) to a “static framing” (a factual percentage of current behavior).

1️⃣ Static Framing:

“Some Americans consider local voting extremely important. Specifically, national polls show that 27% of eligible voters consistently vote in local elections.”

2️⃣ Dynamic Framing:

“The number of Americans who consider local voting extremely important is increasing. National polls show this is because some Americans, who did not consider local elections important before, have changed. Now, over 27% of eligible voters vote in local elections.”

We found that the dynamic norm framing significantly increased how often people thought others made an effort to vote in local elections relative to the static norm framing: People who read the dynamic framing statement thought that 44% of people make an effort to vote in local elections, compared to only 36% who read the static framing statement.¹

Further, the dynamic norm framing was effective at changing perceptions of importance: 85% of people who read the dynamic framing statement believed voting in local elections was important, compared to 75% who read the static framing statement. 

When we asked about how important people thought other people thought voting in local elections was, the dynamic norm framing succeeded again: 67% of people who read the dynamic framing statement thought that other people thought voting in local elections is important, compared to only 41% who read the static framing statement.

Discussion 

Social norms, defined by psychologists as the informal standards that describe typical or desirable behavior, have a powerful influence over how people behave in a society. As such, social norms related to democracy, such as voting in both local and federal elections, are particularly critical to a well-functioning democratic society.

However, communicating about norms that are already low in prevalence, like voting in local elections, can be tricky. Dynamic framing may be one easy solution, as evidenced by the research above, as well as by other work on norms of low-prevalence behaviors. In addition, research has also found that dynamic framing of norms likely is most effective in contexts where people feel connected to others, making it a particularly fruitful avenue for increasing civil participation at the local level.

So, for those that may be on the fence about voting in the midterm elections: did you know that voter turnout in recent elections is increasing? Happy voting and see you at the polls!

Find information about how to vote in the 2022 midterm elections here.

📊 Read more about dynamic norm messaging here and here.

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The statistics in this newsletter are from our online research community of 290 representative Americans (data collected between April and May 2022). Responses to open-ended questions were reviewed for representative quotes that illustrate key sentiments. Names have been changed to protect privacy.

Importantly, while these results are suggestive of a benefit of dynamic messaging, the sample sizes here are only suggestive. Thus, future work should investigate the extent to which this framing strategy is useful in a larger population and test whether it increases actual voting behavior.

¹There was also a slight increase in the estimated static norm relative to the norm presented (27%), which may be a by-product of referring to the effort to vote locally, rather than the actual number who do.