Maryland Will Be the 3rd Best-Represented State on Election Day
With certain demographics like young people, minorities and people with low income having low voter turnout historically, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released a report examining the States With the Best & Worst Representation on Election Day, to identify which states’ voting populations most closely resemble their actual electorates.
WalletHub compared the distribution of the 50 states’ voters to the distribution of their electorates by key demographic characteristics, including age, race and gender. We also analyzed how voters nationally reflect the U.S. electorate using those factors plus employment status, family income, educational attainment and marital status.
Voters’ Representation of Maryland’s Electorate:
- Overall Representation: 93.78%
- Racial Representation: 89.19%
- Age Representation: 97.23%
- Gender Representation: 94.92%
For the full report, please visit:
https://wallethub.com/edu/
“There are plenty of reasons people don’t vote, from not having time to feeling like it won’t count for anything. Unfortunately, when large segments of the population don’t vote, this can skew future economic and social policies to favor those who did vote, to the detriment of those who didn’t. States where the voting population most closely matches the electorate are more likely to elect representatives and institute policies that help all demographics.”
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“New Jersey is the state where voters most closely resemble the actual electorate, earning 96.6 points out of a possible 100 in WalletHub’s study. When it comes to race specifically, New Jersey is the state that has the closest match, scoring 94.8 out of 100 points for similarity. For example, New Jersey has the second-lowest discrepancy between the share of Asian residents who were eligible to vote in 2020 and those who actually voted, and the seventh-lowest difference for Hispanic residents.
The Garden State also has the second lowest discrepancy between the ages of the electorate and the ages of people who voted in the 2020 election, scoring 95.3 out of 100 for similarity. Finally, New Jersey has the fourth-lowest difference in the gender of voters who could vote and who actually voted. It scores 99.5 points out of 100 for similarity.”
– Chip Lupo, WalletHub Analyst
Expert Commentary
Why are minority voters less likely to show up at the polls?
“In many instances, minority voters fit into the classical explanations for people who do and do not vote – income, age, and education. In many cases, minority voters in certain areas have lower incomes and levels of education and, therefore, are less likely to vote. Also, there are cases where minority voters do not feel trust or even may feel distrust toward local, state, and national governments and make a choice not to vote because of this. There is also a perception that elected officials do not discuss issues important to minority voters which also does not encourage minority voters to vote. Finally, there is evidence that competitive races increase turnout. Many minorities do not live in areas with competitive elections at any level of government.”
Chad Kinsella – Associate Professor, Ball State University
“As a rule of thumb, minority voters are less likely to show up at the polls due to a combination of socioeconomic and cultural factors… First, a good deal of political science research has shown that states with Strict voter ID laws disproportionately suppress voting among minority groups, as they are less likely to possess the necessary forms of identification. There are many reasons for this, but generally speaking citizens who are poorer, younger, or who live in urban areas, where public transportation exists, are less likely to have documents like driver’s licenses. Second, as a demographic group, White voters tend to be older, wealthier, and better educated than some minority groups, and Whites have historically had higher levels of trust in government. Each of these factors correlates with higher turnout rates. We may hope that as other groups acquire these characteristics over time, their voting rates increase. Third, as we saw during the COVID pandemic, minority workers are somewhat more likely to have service sector jobs with less flexibility, which… may make it harder to get to the polls on election day. These intertwined issues create an environment where minority voter turnout typically lags behind turnout rates for the wider electorate.”
Christopher M England, Ph.D. – Assistant Professor, College of Western Idaho
Are there any measures that authorities can take to encourage more people – especially from underrepresented communities – to vote?
“Officials should make a concerted effort to register minority voters and engage them in the political process. There is also a need to explain why they should vote and that their voice is important. Party recruitment of minority candidates for offices up and down the ticket helps make minorities feel adequately represented in government. Candidates who make outreach efforts to minority voters and talk about issues that are important to those voters have been able to increase engagement in politics.”
Chad Kinsella – Associate Professor, Ball State University
“Authorities can implement several measures to encourage voting among underrepresented communities. Initiatives aimed at increasing access to relevant documents and forms of identification, expanding early voting and mail-in voting options, and making Election Day a federal holiday could help alleviate barriers to participation across the electorate. Some democratic nations like Australia make voting mandatory, with the penalty for non-voting being a modest fine. However, mandatory voting is not realistic in the United States given our individualistic political culture and partisan polarization (in addition, there are examples of highly flawed democracies with similar mandatory voting requirements, so it is no panacea). Therefore, starting with the more modest reforms mentioned above is advisable if we hope to boost turnout.”
Christopher M England, Ph.D. – Assistant Professor, College of Western Idaho
How can the government reform redistricting in a way that ensures fair representation for the electorate?
“Redistricting is a very political process that state and local legislative bodies are tasked with after each decennial census. The final product of those efforts has and will always be debated, and ‘fairness’ is a case of beauty being in the eyes of the beholder. The Supreme Court has a host of rulings to ensure a basic level of ‘fairness’ in redistricting. In many ways, voters have self-segregated by partisanship through macro and micro political sorting, leading to geographic polarization.”
Chad Kinsella – Associate Professor, Ball State University
“The United States is distinct in the democratic world in that we have a process called gerrymandering, named after founding Massachusetts politician Elbridge Gerry, by which the party that controls a given state legislature gets to draw the district lines for elections to the House of Representatives. This often results in highly partisan district maps that decrease [the] number of seats available to the opposition party (although racial gerrymandering is illegal). This practice is commonly thought to increase polarization, but it may also decrease trust in government among informed voters, who often view it as a partisan manipulation of the vote. Establishing independent, non-partisan redistricting commissions can help eliminate partisan bias in drawing district boundaries. In addition, some states like Michigan have recently experimented with using algorithms to draw more neutral district lines.”
Christopher M England, Ph.D. – Assistant Professor, College of Western Idaho