Sacramento's Record 2020 Voter Turnout Likely Not Sign Of A Trend, Political Analyst Says

Sacramento County set a turnout record in last month's general election. About 83% of registered voters cast a ballot. Could this be the beginning of a trend towards more active participation in elections? 

CapRadio spoke with Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc., who says several factors drove this year's turnout. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview Highlights

On the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on voter turnout

I think that there was likely some impact of the fact that more people are at home. Everybody's life has kind of been reduced down to some similar lowest common denominators of making sure the kid is on the Zoom call, cooking dinner at home, binge-watching whatever is still available to binge watch. Getting a ballot in the mail is probably maybe 10 or 15% more recognizable as an event in somebody's day than it would have been pre-COVID. A lot of that daily stress in lives pre-COVID made getting a ballot in the mail a little bit less of an event. 

On whether people have learned what’s at stake in each election and will carry that lesson forward

I don't think historically we've seen that lesson bear out. In fact, we've seen kind of the inverse. I think the last election where a lot of people really felt — whether you're on the right or on the left — the last election where it seems like a lot of Californians really felt that this was maybe the most important election of our lifetime was 2008. And 2008, with that presidential election, which was historic, was followed by one of the lowest turnout elections in California history in 2010. 

And while some people might put on the optimistic hat and say, well, we had this high turnout and everybody really is excited about voting, and so this is going to transfer to the next election, in 2022 you're going to have more people understanding the impact of their vote. The reality is that often what we see is in the next election, people are like, I already did that big voting thing. I did that two years ago. You know, I checked that box. You know, that was fun. I did it. And now I don't really feel what's important about the 2022 election for my local member of Congress or for a governor reelection. I think the experience has been that after we have these big blowout elections, that it's a lack of enthusiasm in the subsequent gubernatorial election cycle. 

On the impact of younger generations on turnout

The fastest growing segment of the voter file is that Millennial or Generation Y population. Then there's also some members of Generation Z who are coming in already to the voter file. Generation Y and Generation Z voters, those voters who are roughly under 35 or so, they are the largest segment of the voter file. They're a plurality of the state's registered voters. The challenge is that in most elections — and we won't really know about the 2020 general for a little while — but in most elections, they are the largest group of registrants, but Baby Boomers end up being the largest group of actual voters who participate.