*** UPDATE 1 *** I agree that the New York Times made an error here. From a commenter…

I am thinking these numbers are not correct. There were 7,505,002 registered voters in the primary according to the IL Board of Elections. There were probably a few more in the general but not too many. Quickly just grabbing the Treasurer race numbers there were 3,486,159 votes so far. That’s 45.45% . So unless there was a big difference in registered voters from the primary(I doubt it) their numbers appear wrong.

And…

It actually goes up to 47.57% using the governor race results of 3,570,488 votes so far. That would get us top ten. But if Illinois numbers are wrong so could the other states.

Yep.

*** UPDATE 2 *** Ah, OK. From another commenter…

The NYT is reporting percentage of eligible adults, not registered voters. So the turnout is both 47.57% (of registered voters) and 39% (of eligible adults).

[ *** End Of Updates *** ]

* Man, turnout just sucked here. I mean, we were above the national average, but still…

If that’s accurate, it’s horrible for Illinois. 2010 turnout was 51 percent. 2006 was the worst turnout year since I don’t know when, but it was still 49 percent.

Also, why does Wisconsin get such a much higher turnout than Illinois?

* Here are the below average states…

So, we have one of the highest turnout states directly to our north, and the worst turnout state directly to our east.

* Nationally, 2014 was the worst American turnout year since 1942, when millions were overseas fighting wars…

* Congressional numbers…

And there you have it.

* Moving right along…

* Explanation…

This evidence suggests that polling bias has been largely unpredictable from election to election. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, the polling was biased against Democrats in 1998, 2006 and 2012. However, just as certainly, it was biased against Republicans in 1994, 2002 and now 2014. It can be dangerous to apply the “lessons” from one election cycle to the next one.

Turnout was a big reason for polling failure this year. The models were just wrong and you can only poll people who answer their phones.

       

38 Comments - VanillaMan - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 3:04 pm: We need to do what Maine did this year - Playboy Centerfold election judges were very popular. - kj - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 3:04 pm: To be fair to Indiana, absolutely nothing was on this year. Statewide executives are done on presidential years, no senate election. Every CD was going to be a blowout, it might as well have been a municipal election. With Wisconsin, people have some feelings about Scott Walker, good and bad. - Nearly Normal - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 3:06 pm: McLean County turnout was 48.82% in spite of predictions there would be a 50+ turnout. My precinct was 52.1%. - VanillaMan - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 3:08 pm: Also, why does Wisconsin get such a much higher turnout than Illinois? On the ballot this year was a controversial governor running for reelection, and a ballot proposal of the state paying for every Wisconsin home to have a kitchen tap for Leinenkugels. - Nearly Normal - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 3:11 pm: Voter turnout in Bloomington was 48.23%. They have their own election commission. - Formerly Known As... - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 3:20 pm: 39.5%. Even with special same-day registration and voter-friendly rules, the ballot initiatives, and overall spending passing $100Million. You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot force it to drink. - OurMagician - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 3:21 pm: Between mail in voting, early voting, same day registration, there really isn’t a reason people can’t vote, they’re feeling depressed or their vote doesn’t matter. The negative ad heaped on top of negative ad doesn’t inspire people to vote, it wants the process over. Yes, the negative ads work, to a point, but it does make the electorate at large fed up with the whole process. The time has come to make the House a 4 year term to try and slow a little of the constant campaigning. It won’t be 9 months before the cycle will starts up again. - Rayne of Terror - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 3:24 pm: Voter suppression in Indiana is what happened. What I understand from my folks is that Indiana abolished precinct voting locations this election and consolidated election locations. In Terre Haute, the line to vote at Baesler’s grocery store was multiple hours long and snaked through every aisle. A high school classmate posted pictures of her kids sitting on kitty little buckets while they waited. My mom can’t stand in line that long and so she left without voting. My dad drove to four voting locations before finding a decently short line. - Been There - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 3:27 pm: I am thinking these numbers are not correct. There were 7,505,002 registered voters in the primary according to the IL Board of Elections. There were probably a few more in the general but not too many. Quickly just grabbing the Treasurer race numbers there were 3,486,159 votes so far. That’s 45.45% . So unless there was a big difference in registered voters from the primary(I doubt it) their numbers appear wrong. - Been There - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 3:31 pm: It actually goes up to 47.57% using the governor race results of 3,570,488 votes so far. That would get us top ten. But if Illinois numbers are wrong so could the other states. - A guy... - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 3:32 pm: It’s those maps man. All over the place. With fewer competitive races in the vast majority of places, it becomes a selective process. If you had Dold/Schneider in every Congressional District, you’d be leaning on 60%. We don’t. We won’t. Second factor is that the strategy now calls for running up unfavorables on your opponents. It might work in a lot of cases, but it always, always, always suppresses turnout. - PoolGuy - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 3:33 pm: agree with Been There: Kennedy’s Gov race totals are 3.57 million votes at the moment. so with 7.5 million IL registered voters, seems more like 47.6% turnout. not great, but not in the 30s either. - PoolGuy - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 3:34 pm: oops sorry Rich was typing when you updated. - A guy... - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 3:34 pm: Been There….I’m glad you Done That. - The Captain - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 3:37 pm: It will be interesting to see it more closely once the final and certified numbers are in and we can say for sure but based on the unofficial numbers in the Governor’s race it looks like the fall off in turnout is pretty evenly distributed around the state. So far there’s about 3.57 million votes in the Governor’s race, let’s say that goes up to 3.6 million once the final counts are certified, that would be about 130K votes less than the 2010 Governor’s race. However when you look at the vote share by region it almost exactly matches the 2010 Gov’s race. Here: 2014 - 2010 - Region 18.09% - 18.50% - Chicago (only) 19.04% - 19.02% - Cook Suburbs (only) 37.13% - 37.51% - Cook County (combined) 24.81% - 24.30% - Collar couties 38.06% - 38.19% - downstate So Chicago is down a little, mostly to the benefit of the collars. But we also know there are still a lot of uncounted votes in that area so perhaps that changes once the final numbers come in. But for the most part it tracks pretty close with the historical regional vote shares. Now here’s something else that’s interesting. You’re currently seeing 3.57 million total votes in the Governor’s race and only 3.49 million total votes in the Treasurer’s race, there was a significant undervote. If you look at the vote share in the Treasurer’s race you’ll see that a disproportionate share of the undervote came in Cook County, especially Chicago. The vote share by region in the Treasurer’s race is much more titled in favor of a greater share of the vote coming from downstate and the collars at the expense of Cook and especially Chicago. Maybe these unofficial totals just have some math errors or maybe things will change when the final counts are certified, interesting nonetheless. - Formerpol - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 3:38 pm: Low voter turnout never bothers me. Only informed people who care should vote. People uninvolved should not just cast an ignorant vote. If there was 100% turnout, the result would not be any better. - The Colossus of Roads - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 3:40 pm: Many of the states that beat us have a higher percentage of population with a Bachelor’s degree, higher household income and higher average IQ, such as Minn, NH,Vermont,Conn,Col, Maryland and Mass. - walker - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 3:40 pm: Been there: many thanks - VM - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 3:45 pm: Sorry if I am double posting, first post seems to be gone. The NYT is reporting percentage of eligible adults, not registered voters. So the turnout is both 47.57% (of registered voters) and 39% (of eligible adults). - Skeptic - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 3:52 pm: VM: Centerfold judges? What, I’m not pretty enough? - hisgirlfriday - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 3:59 pm: Saw a tweet today that the spacecraft on the comet project cost half as much as was spent on the 2014 midterms. That’s a lot of negative ads to make everyone hate politics and government. - Upon Further Review - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 4:01 pm: I have often wondered if it is that the length of the election cycle in Illinois (from petition circulating to primary to general election) is TOO LONG. I am not that familiar with Wisconsin’s election laws, but I seem to recall that in nonpresidential years that the primary could be in September and the general in November. All the months of campaigning can take a toll on people. - Been There - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 4:07 pm: ===The NYT is reporting percentage of eligible adults, not registered voters. ==== I didn’t notice that footnote. And the source web site is actually pretty interesting and has a lot of info. http://www.electproject.org/ - anon - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 4:08 pm: Negative campaigning is proven to depress turnout by feeding cynicism and turning off people. This campaign was rife with negativism from both sides. - Put the Fun in unfunded - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 4:11 pm: Agree with formerpol. Who was it who said democracy is the concept of the collective wisdom of many uninformed people? (I know the term “low ____ voter” has been banned) - RNUG - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 4:23 pm: “… you can only poll people who answer their phones.” Yep. Must have had a hundred political calls on the landline the last month and didn’t answer a single one. Checked the numbers and quite a few were from polling organizations. Did get a couple of polling calls on my cell phone and just hung up on them. - PrairieFire - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 4:29 pm: The recall effort in Wisconsin was acrimonious and divisive. Every Wisconsinite has an opinion about Gov. Walker. So much money has been spent there in the last four years on political ads, I would be more surprised if Wisconsin didn’t have a high turnout. - too obvious - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 4:34 pm: The whole objective of negative ads is to suppress the vote for the other side and both sides were doing it in a huge way this year. Duh. - kimaye - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 4:45 pm: make voting compulsory. but instead of throwing people in jail for not doing it, give them a small tax discount for doing so. - steve schnorf - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 4:46 pm: We’ve seen a consistent message for years that a very significant portion of the (potential) electorate has no interest in voting. The goo-goos just can’t stand that reality and have been determined to fix it. Registering at drivers licensee stations, early voting, provisional ballots, letting voters under 18 register, on and on, trying to social engineer a human problem. And the net result; a very substantial portion of the (potential) electorate has no interest in voting. - muon - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 4:55 pm: BeenThere - Dr. Michael McDonald has been posting data on the turnout for the eligible voting population for years going back to when he was at the University of Illinois, Springfield. He does have a lot of interesting data on his web site. Besides election turnout, he has been involved in developing redistricting software for public use. - The Captain - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 4:56 pm: “The whole objective of negative ads is to suppress the vote for the other side and both sides were doing it in a huge way this year. Duh.” Anger and fear are good motivators. This is why the endless fundraising appeals in your email inbox often appeal to your anger, fear or both. The intention isn’t to suppress your vote (or donation) it’s to encourage it. I’m not saying that negative ads don’t have the side effect of having some voters drop out of the universe but that’s not their primary intention. - vinron - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 5:00 pm: City of Peoria voter turn out was 44.10%. Peoria County turn out 50.35%. - ZC - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 5:06 pm: Wisconsin has been a high-turnout state for a long time, predating the Walker Wars. It’s hard in that case not I think to ascribe some of it to “political culture” as unsatisfying as that may be. They’re just kind of more good-government, “let’s all do our civic duty” up there. Same as for Minnesota. Again, unsatisfying I know, but remember what passes sometimes (at least historically) for a political corruption scandal in Wisconsin would barely bat an eyelash here. More substantively, Wisconsin has had same-day election registration for a long time, and I suspect they’re much better at it now, and that pays some dividends. Lastly Wisconsin has been genuinely contested for a while at the presidential election level, while Illinois has kind of been a snoozer there since 1988. All that effort and mobilization and bringing in new voters persists. One of the most interesting results was Maine was so high up there. Governor LePage clearly provoked strong reactions, pro and con. Also there seems to have been a ballot referendum on (get this) bear trapping, that really did mobilize a lot of Mainiacs to come out and vote pro or con. Forget the minimum wage; we need to find the equivalent of a “bear trapping vote” in Illinois, clearly. - AC - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 5:10 pm: If all the voters unhappy with their choices showed up and undervoted, it would send a much louder message than staying home. - Wordslinger - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 6:50 pm: Don’t care. If you’re too lazy to vote, I’m glad that you don’t. But I’m guessing you’re the loudest drunk at the end of the bar. - Harry - Thursday, Nov 13, 14 @ 10:43 pm: Well, OF COURSE IL had a low turnout. The US Senate was never a competitive race, and both gubernatorial candidates went negative from before the primaries, which is DESIGNED to suppress the other guy’s vote. There was no race at the top of teh ticket to bring people out. In Wisconsin there actually was a Governor’s race to care about. Anyway, I don’t get the obsession with turnout. If people don’t care, they don’t care. And if after spending hundreds of millions of dollars, they still don’t care, oh, well. - l� - Friday, Nov 14, 14 @ 7:56 am: magnificent submit, very informative. I’m wondering why the other experts of this sector do not realize this. You should continue your writing. I am sure, you have a huge readers’ base already! Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.