The terrorist attacks of last September produced a patriotic outpouring the likes of which the United States had not seen in decades. Eighty percent of Americans displayed the flag on their homes, vehicles, or lapels. Trust in government rose sharply, reaching levels not seen since the early 1960s.
The upsurge in civic attitudes brought hope that Americans would return to the polling booths. The past four decades mark the longest sustained downturn in voter turnout in the nation's history. Turnout was nearly 65 percent in 1960 but fell in each of the five succeeding presidential elections. It rose by one percentage point in 1984, but then fell by three points in 1988. Analysts viewed that drop with alarm, but the warning bells really sounded in 1996 when more Americans stayed home than went to the polls on Election Day.
Fewer voters are not the only sign of the public's waning interest in political campaigns. In 1960, 60 percent of the nation's television households had their sets on and tuned to the October presidential debates. In 2000, less than 30 percent tuned in.
There is a puzzling aspect to the decline. The percentage of college graduates in the population has tripled since 1960. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and lengthy residency requirements have been abolished. Registration has been simplified. Yet, turnout has fallen.
Turnout might rise in this fall's midterm elections as a result of the events of Sept. 11, but any increase is likely to be a small one. Many of this year's primary elections had record low turnout rates. Participation in last fall's elections, held less than two months after the terrorist attacks, was also disappointingly low. In the two highest-profile statewide races - those for governor in New Jersey and Virginia - turnout fell from its level of four years earlier. It dropped by five points in Virginia and by 10 points in New Jersey.
What's going on here? Why has the bottom dropped out on electoral participation?
Generational replacement is part of the answer. The civic-minded generation that was molded by the Depression and the Second World War has been gradually replaced by the more private-minded X and Y generations that lived through childhood and adolescence without experiencing a grave crisis that called them to action. Today's young adults are less politically interested and informed than any cohort of young people on record. The voting rate of adults under age 30 was 50 percent in 1972. It barely exceeded 30 percent in 2000.
The decline is also attributable to political change, as we discovered from our recently concluded Vanishing Voter Study. (Information on the study can be found at www.vanishingvoter.org.) On the basis of our nearly 100,000 voter interviews during the 2000 campaign and evidence from earlier elections, we found, for example:
The weakening of the political parties as objects of thought and loyalty has reduced the incentive to participate, particularly among lower-income Americans.
Modern campaign techniques are a turnoff for some citizens who are otherwise interested in public affairs.
Attack journalism has eroded trust and interest in partisan politics, particularly among young adults.
Interest is also dampened by the length of the modern campaign. It might be thought that a long campaign at least has the virtue of creating a more informed electorate, but even that is not true. As a campaign grinds along month after month, people forget much of what they learned at earlier points. The college-educated public of today is no better informed about election issues, and by some indicators is less informed, than was the high-school-educated electorate of the 1950s.
This upcoming midterm election illustrates yet another disincentive to participation: weak competition. There are fewer than two dozen truly competitive House races this fall. Incumbents have figured out how to use their staffs, their leverage with PACs, and their other advantages to drain the competition out of House races. Two-thirds of House elections are now decided by margins of 60 percent or more. There are, in fact, three times as many districts this fall in which a candidate is running unopposed as there are districts where both candidates have a reasonable chance of winning. Citizens cannot be expected to get excited about rubber-stamp elections. Congress has fewer turnovers than virtually any legislature in the world.
Many citizens are also effectively disenfranchised by the way in which presidential primaries are structured. Front loading of the primary schedule has led presidential hopefuls to raise and spend tens of millions on the first few contests in an effort to secure nomination with a decisive victory on Super Tuesday. The thousands of Florida voters disenfranchised on Election Day 2000 were for a time the most talked-about citizens in America. Almost no one commented, however, on the millions of voters in the roughly 30 states, who, six months earlier, lost their chance to make a difference when Bush and Gore's Super Tuesday victories completely devalued the yet-to-be-held presidential primaries and caucuses. Turnout in these states was far below the level of the early-contest states. Our interviews during the 2000 campaign showed that residents of the late-scheduled states were also much less likely to engage in conversations about the campaign and to follow news about it.
In the presidential general election, Americans' opportunity to be part of the action is determined by the Electoral College. Although this feature of our constitutional system has always skewed the process, the fact that today's campaigns are based on money rather than volunteers has exaggerated the effect. Money can be targeted and withheld at will. During the 2000 general election campaign, there were no ad buys and no candidate visits in Kansas, a lopsidedly Republican state. In neighboring Missouri, which was a battleground state, there were millions spent on ad buys and 18 visits by the candidates. ''The process effectively takes half the country and says, `You're just spectators,''' notes Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communication.
Although the overall turnout rate in 2000 was marginally higher than in 1996, turnout actually fell in nine states, all of which were safely in the Gore or Bush column. Residents of these and the other noncompetitive states also talked less about the campaign and paid less attention to election news than did the residents of battleground states.
US elections increasingly have been run by, and in the interests of, a professional class of politicians, which has narrowed the opportunities available to citizens. In this respect, the modern campaign resembles the war on terrorism. The patriotic outpouring that followed the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, unlike the outpouring that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor a half century earlier, had few outlets. The war on terrorism would be fought by the military, health care, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals. Even the appeal to sacrifice was missing. Ordinary Americans were urged to keep spending, lest their economy sink.
To be sure, ordinary Americans share some of the blame for their lapse in voting. It's always easier to leave the work of democracy to others. But most of the fault lies elsewhere, and citizens cannot be expected to rededicate themselves merely because they are told they should vote. The gap between the politician and the citizen - despite the intimacy of television and the immediacy of polling - has arguably never been greater. The insular professionalism that marks other areas of American life has captured our politics, which is one area of modern life that would actually work better if a spirit of amateurism prevailed.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.