Voter Turnout & Ballot Measure Success in California

Many campaign professionals in California rely on the assumption that liberal ballot measures enjoy a higher likelihood of success in high turnout elections, and that conservative ballot measures enjoy a higher likelihood of success in low turnout elections. Significant sums of campaign money and manpower are often allocated on the basis of this assumption. However, academic research has largely, if not wholly, ignored the relationship between voter turnout levels and ideological ballot measure outcomes. In the first ever statistical analysis of the effects of voter turnout on ballot measure outcomes in California, it is shown that low voter turnout tends to help conservative measures while high voter turnout does not tend to improve the chances for success of liberal measures.