Lions, Tigers, & Turnout, Oh My!

The Cycle- On Substack · May 27, 2021 · 39m

When UC-San Diego political science Associate Professor Seth Hill and his co-authors dropped their latest article in the journal Science Advances, the title immediately caught my eye.

That title was “Not by turnout alone: Measuring the sources of electoral change, 2012 to 2016.” Now, having spent the better part of 2 years arguing with people about the role of turnout on electoral outcomes, my immediate thought was, “why are they burying the lead here?”

That’s because from my perspective, the novel finding is turnout does, in fact impact election outcomes. That a small portion of…