From Main Street to Pennsylvania Avenue: The Kevs to Voter Turnout

The most influential elections are arguably those at the local level. Local elections allow for a more representative government as smaller groups are better heard in local elections. However, most voter turnout occurs during general election years when the president is elected, and local as well as congressional elections see consistently lower voter turnout. With our research, we are aiming to understand the reasoning behind the disparity between local election turnout versus general election turnout. Specifically, we want to understand what factors have not been implemented or utilized which can help increase voter turnout at the local level. Our findings are based off of data collected from a survey in which we asked respondents about the effectiveness of different canvassing efforts on getting them to vote, as well as questions which help us profile what type of voter they are. Our findings indicate that "Get Out the Vote" methods do tend to increase voting more on the national level, but have little effect on the local level. Additionally, we found that the perceptions of local elections are generally more thought about in terms of civic duty rather than the belief of influencing the outcome. From these findings, we can learn that people tend to favor national elections and tend to view them as the elections which will play a larger role in influencing their day-to-day life, which is likely the reason they are more inclined to turnout for national elections as opposed to local elections.