Needless to say, the 2016 general election was a doozy. The presidential race alone divided friends, sparked outrage, and elicited a ceaseless stream of social media rants. Voter registration numbers spiked, and political experts were poised to see a robust turnout at the polls on Election Day.
But that didn’t exactly happen.
Where Santa Barbara County saw a 9 percent increase in voter registration from 2012, the turnout of eligible voters inched up by only 3 percent. The Secretary of State is reporting just fewer than 184,000 ballots cast in Santa Barbara County this year, including the 38,710 ballots that were unprocessed as of Nov. 11. Those numbers show that 63 percent of eligible voters came out to cast their ballots, where about 60 percent turned out in the 2012 general election.
When the Sun spoke with Cal Poly Political Science Associate Professor Michael Latner in August, he predicted a surge in voter turnout with a “higher level of roll-off than typical” for races and initiatives lower down on the ballot. Instead, Santa Barbara County’s turnout remained more or less stagnant.
On a national level, however, turnout pretty much plummeted. CNN reported that only 55 percent of eligible U.S. voters showed up (as of Nov. 12). This marks the lowest national turnout for a presidential election since 1996, when only 53 percent of eligible voters cast ballots.
Jessica Scarffe, associate political science professor at Allan Hancock College, told the Sun in a previous interview that results for relatively low-turnout elections—such as those in non-presidential cycles—tend to lean right.
“When voter turnout is low, that tends to advantage conservative causes in the Republican party,” Scarffe said. “And when voter turnout is higher and you’re getting the people out to vote who aren’t as frequent of voters, that tends to benefit liberal causes and the Democratic Party.”
That tendency, combined with a low turnout on the national level, may have contributed to this year’s surprising winner in the presidential race, since President-elect Donald Trump was underestimated by most polls.
The Secretary of State’s Office will finalize California election results on Dec. 16, once all ballots have been processed.
This article appears in Nov 17-24, 2016.