People often say that Donald Trump won the US election because the turnout was low, and that the Tories' victory in June will depend on a potentially low turnout.
However, is it actually true that a high turnout always helps the liberal candidate?
asked May 25, 2017 at 18:07
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2Please limit this question to a jurisdiction.– user9790May 25, 2017 at 18:19
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5This question deserves more research. I just discovered that Democrats prefer to keep downballot issues to off-years, which is another form of voter suppression, as voters clearly prefer to vote on all issues at once during "election" years, which sort of contradicts the notion that higher turnout benefits liberals. fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-democrats-suppress-the-vote– J DoeMay 25, 2017 at 18:35
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1Also, the edited title is a much different question than what the questioner asked. The standard is absurdly lower. Anyone can find evidence for every which way and that would be good enough to answer the edited question, but that wasn't the original question. The original question had a much higher standard, "Has it been proven to help liberals?"– J DoeMay 25, 2017 at 18:38
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5This is a more complicated question than it seems on the surface. There is a core of people that will vote no matter what, but for others getting to the polls (transportation, work schedule, etc) can be more difficult. Those that are poor, minority, elderly, college-aged, fall disproportionately into this category, and those groups vote disproportionately democratic. So some kinds of efforts to widen voter participation (early voting, voting by mail) will help these groups more than "core voters", so Republicans generally oppose these efforts. But its more than just a raw "turnout" number.– BradCMay 25, 2017 at 19:12
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2For US, the fact that youth is more liberal and also has the lowest turnover might be part of the explanation.– AlexeiOct 9, 2018 at 4:26
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