Republican leaders need to stop relying entirely on Election Day turnout.
Republican leaders need to adjust to reality and signal that it’s wise to vote early.
D emocrats play to win by taking full advantage of early voting. Republicans should do the same.
A huge factor in the GOP’s recent electoral underperformance was conservatives’ refusal to vote early at the same rate as liberals. There are at least three major reasons why changing this could boost Republicans’ electoral chances and prevent the Democrats’ next “perfect storm.”
Risk Avoidance
Since Republicans are more dependent on Election Day turnout from their voters than the Democrats are, they are more vulnerable to disruptive meteorological events.
Nevada Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto received a narrow victory with roughly 6,000 more votes than Republican nominee Adam Laxalt, according to the official tally as of the time of this writing. On Election Day, much of Nevada experienced a serious rain- and snowstorm. Laxalt even tweeted a “weather alert,” urging his backers to cast their ballots despite the harsh weather conditions. Evidence suggests that inclement weather on Election Day decreases turnout by potentially more than a full percentage point. To put that in perspective, Cortez Masto’s 6,000-vote lead is just 0.7 percent.
One study found that for every inch of rainfall, turnout decreases by nearly 1 percent, and for every inch of snowfall it decreases by half a percent. If that’s accurate, then one would expect the parts of Nevada that were expected to get eight to 16 inches of snow (which voted for Laxalt disproportionately) to see 4 to 8 percent lower Election Day turnout. Other research suggests that even absent rain or snow, cold weather alone depresses voter turnout.
Masto must have been delighted to see the forecast. She simply needed a lower percentage of the Election Day vote than Laxalt did owing to her party’s embrace of early voting. Given how Republicans currently win a much larger percentage of the Election Day vote, it isn’t an exaggeration to say that the storm probably cost Republicans the seat, and with it any chance at control of the U.S. Senate. As long as Republicans rely heavily on Election Day turnout, their electoral fate is at the mercy of the weather.
Economies of Scale
Perhaps the first rule of voter mobilization is to make it as easy as possible for your people to vote while spending as little as possible. Democrats play to win in this regard while Republicans aren’t even really on the field. And the rule is all the more important given that Democrats are massively outspending Republicans as of late.
Early voting has serious economy-of-scale advantages in addition to being less vulnerable to random disruptions, allowing a political party’s turnout operations to get more “bang for their buck.” Political parties frequently mobilize voters by offering to drive them to and from the polls. It is simply more expensive, per person, to hire ten vans for a single day to each make ten trips to move 100 people to the polls compared with hiring just one van for the entire early-voting period and using it 100 times over the course of that much greater length of time.
Additionally, if a party “banks” votes early, as the Democrats currently do, activists’ and operatives’ focus on Election Day can shift to bringing out the marginal and disinterested voters instead of trying to frantically organize the base at the last minute.
Early voting allows campaigns and parties to more leisurely target folks who previously voted in that party’s primaries. After all, if a voter participated in the previous four Democratic presidential primaries — a matter of public record — but hasn’t yet voted, he is much more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate this time around if he’s repeatedly reminded of the election. Campaigns also often use zip codes and demographic information to make educated guesses about whom a voter is likely to support.
The advent of “social pressure” campaigns — mailers aimed at shaming a voter into heading to the polls by comparing his electoral “attendance” directly to his neighbors’ — is a much more cost-effective way of boosting voter turnout (especially when paired with scanning voting records) than conventional advertising. On Election Day, campaigners can make a last-minute push, with contact methods such as text messages and even in-person visits, zeroing in on less interested voters who are still statistically likely to support the campaign’s candidate.
Convenience Boosts Turnout
Republicans are more likely than Democrats to have a life: They’re more likely to be employed, be active in a religious community, be married, and have children. Liberals are more likely to be unemployed, single, childless, and living in their parents’ basements posting on social media — perhaps as a kind of substitute for religion, meaningful relationships, or work. Living a busy, productive life is, of course, a good thing (and is likely related to conservatives’ being happier, more satisfied, and having better mental health than liberals). But it also means that conservatives have less time to engage in political activism or obsess over politics, and, by extension, less time to vote.
In other words, conservatives usually have competing priorities, whereas liberals might have much less going on outside of politics. The flexibility of early voting makes casting a ballot a little easier for people living full lives with hectic and constantly changing schedules — the kind of people who might vote Republican.
The elderly, a demographic that leans heavily Republican, sometimes have health or mobility issues that can make getting to a voting location challenging. Casting a mail-in ballot, on the other hand, can be accomplished comfortably without ever leaving one’s home. (Even the dead sometimes vote this way, although it tends to be for Democrats, and is illegal.)
Speaking of suspicious tactics, the remarkable success rate Democrats have in what New York Times analysts call “the post-election vote” is the source of much of the GOP base’s skepticism of late-breaking elections — a skepticism that former president Trump is foolishly feeding, to the Republican Party’s long-term detriment. When people don’t think their votes are likely to have an impact, they’re less likely to vote. When their candidates lose, they might disregard the immense logistical difficulties that would plague any attempt to rig a national election and think that fraud caused the defeat. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy of learned helplessness that further discourages voting.
What about ending early voting and returning to the way elections used to work? Well, if Republicans want to change that, they first need to win elections, and trying to do so today without early voting is like bringing a knife to a gunfight. Republican leaders need to adjust to that reality and signal that it’s wise for Republican voters to vote early.
For many voters, especially GOP regulars, elections aren’t choices between two candidates. They’re choices between their favored candidates and sitting out the election. Republicans need to make voting easier for the party faithful. They can start by embracing early voting.