Where Have All the Voters Gone?

by Martin P. Wattenberg

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.

224 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2002

About the author

A political scientist at the University of California, Irvine. He is an expert on American elections and party politics and is co-author of a popular undergraduate college text on American government, Government in America: People, Policy, and Politics, published by Pearson Longman. He is also the author of Where Have All the Voters Gone: The Decline of American Political Parties, Is Voting For Young People? and The Rise of Candidate-Centered Politics.

Reviews

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess I skimmed this book more than actually read it. It was an interesting text, but it could have been written better. There was a lot of research that went into this book, and some interesting ideas about what types of people are more likely to vote, and why the voter turn out keeps changing.