Where Have All the Voters Gone?

As the confusion over the ballots in Florida in 2000 demonstrated, American elections are complex and anything but user-friendly. This phenomenon is by no means new, but with the weakening of political parties in recent decades and the rise of candidate-centered politics, the high level of complexity has become ever more difficult for many citizens to navigate. Thus the combination of complex elections and the steady decline of the party system has led to a decline in voter turnout. In this timely book, Martin Wattenberg confronts the question of what low participation rates mean for democracy. At the individual level, turnout decline has been highest among the types of people who most need to have electoral decisions simplified for them through a strong party system--those with the least education, political knowledge, and life experience. As Wattenberg shows, rather than lamenting how many Americans fail to exercise their democratic rights, we should be impressed with how many arrive at the polls in spite of a political system that asks more of a typical person than is reasonable. Meanwhile, we must find ways to make the American electoral process more user-friendly.

This is a very well written and well argued analysis of the problem of low and declining voter turnout in the United States...Wattenberg knows the American and comparative literatures very well, and he summarizes and integrates them expertly. In addition, he adds new and important evidence., This is a well-organized and well-written book on an important topic. It offers a critical review of what political scientists think they know about determinants of voting turnout and some original research. A big plus is that it puts the fall in US turnout into a broader international perspective., The number of Americans who bother to vote has declined for decades, to the point that the United States has the lowest turnout rate in the industrialized world, save only Switzerland. Why this is so is a question that Wattenberg studies from every available angle...Wattenberg's book is a lucid presentation of new and prior research on an important problem., Even as registering to vote has been made easier, Martin P. Wattenberg explains, the decline has continued. Where Have All the Voters Gone? is a thorough review of the recent academic studies of the question...Wattenberg assesses the studies and adds a few conclusions on how to get more voters to the polls.

Martin P. Wattenberg is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine.