Low voter turnout in elections

Question

Before the election mania is over let us do some analysis of the trends in elections so far. The relevant data is presented in the following table

\begin{array}{|r|r|r|r|r|} \hline\\ \text{Year} & \text{Voted} & \text{Visited Election} & \text{Visited Site} & \text{Eligible} \\ \hline 2010 & 174 & & & 394\\ 2011 & 225 & 378 & 615 & 1050\\ 2012 & 394 & 677 & 1299 & 2559\\ 2013 & 437 & 1575 & 2137 & 5313\\ 2014 & 1425 & 3731 & 3951 & 11408\\ 2017 & 2161 & 4655 & 9261 & 22919\\ 2018 & 2106 & 4559 & 9069 & 25960\\ 2020 & 2368 & 6152 & 11568 & 46680\\ \hline\end{array}

Here are my observations:

• Roughly one third to one half of the people who visited the election page also voted. The year 2013 is rather an exception when this ratio is around $1/4$.
• All the numbers show an almost increasing trend which indicates that more and more people are taking part in this process.

However my main concern here is the low voter turnout. Looking at the number of people who visited election page, the ratio of people who actually voted barely reaches 50 percent. This indicates that people are interested to look at the candidates but a significant number does not vote. My guess is that they don't find any of the candidates suitable from their perspective.

What could be other possible reasons? How can we try to improve the situation? We need to hear out those who did not vote (but did visit election page). Perhaps we can start a meta thread during nomination phase which allows people to raise concerns which have not been addressed by existing candidates (this should not however lead to an extra questionnaire thread).

I would like to hear opinions about this. If there are any more disturbing observations from the table given above please discuss them so that we can look for more areas in need of improvement.

Answer 1

I think the main reason for the perhaps low-seeming voter count is that most users are not very interested in meta matters like elections. I thought so back in 2017 and I still agree with what I wrote then.

If you want more useful statistics, I don't think the number of eligible users is a very descriptive number. As the site grows, especially newer users will see it less as a community they have a role in and perhaps more as a playground for learning and teaching math (and getting some internet points). What I would like to see is data for the number of "engaged and eligible users", which could include additional qualifications like "has voted to close or reopen ten times" or "has accessed three review queues" or "has given over three votes on meta" (maybe within the last 12 months). I suspect that the number of these users has not grown as fast as the number of eligible users. More nuanced data is needed to estimate the size of the "effective electorate", the set of users who can vote and care about it.

I cannot remember the details, but I assume the election is run and advertised a little differently. As the execution evolves, so does voter interest. I don't know how big an effect this has, but I'll share a personal view: The election questionnaire is too long, and I think a minority of those who voted cared to take a look at it. I am interested in the health and future of this site, but I could not bring myself to read the whole thing; I picked one or two key points and quickly extracted the relevant bit of the candidates' views on those and entirely skipped the rest. Perhaps people feel that a voting decision is behind too many walls of text?

Some might also be upset about last year's storm regarding moderators on the network — and this storm hasn't quite settled fully yet — and might refrain from participation in choosing moderators over lost trust. Most users will probably not know or care about the events, but I expect that people that care most about that are strongly correlated with the people who would typically vote. I don't think this is a major factor here, but it's hard to be sure.

Not all users will care about how the site is run and I wouldn't strive for it. I think it's perfectly fine to have an active core group, and I see nothing to worry about when that group can be measured in thousands and is on a slowly increasing trend. I think the meta participation on this site is sufficient for drawing meaningful conclusions about the opinion of the community.

Also, a lot of users are inactive. If someone became eligible in 2016 but stopped using the site in 2017, they should be excluded from your data. With the current data I see no reason for worry, but I would like to see what the trends are with more refined numbers. If, say, 40 thousand out of those 47 thousand users are here (if they are here at all) for math only, so be it. They might be disinterested in making the rules, but that is no issue as long as they are interested in following them — making the rules is a meta matter, following them is a main matter.

Answer 2

As regards the turn-out to me the situation looks relatively stable. As detailed in other contributions already I think we can basically forget about the "eligible" number. Manifestly many accounts turn inactive and get abandoned entirely.

Speaking from my experience on some other SE sites, I am also not that interested in elections there, say, on Academia or Chess. In the end usually I tend to vote, but it really can go either way. I don't think that's a problem. Some sites one is actually involved others one uses more casually.

You say:

My guess is that they don't find any of the candidates suitable from their perspective.

I really don't think that this is the main reason. Especially in this election there was a quite diverse field. What may be an issue is name recognition; several of the candidates while highly qualified as candidates arguably were not among the most visible users.

That said, it does come up at times that there should be an option to actively not vote, and cast something like a blank ballot, which would allow to quantify that phenomenon a bit more.

Answer 3

Speaking as someone who occasionally visits stackoverflow sites, and has looked at the election pages, I decide I have no idea what makes a good person to vote for. I don't know anything about these people beyond their own statements, and my experience of other elections is personal statements are not that useful.

Therefore I choose not to vote, rather than introduce random noise.

Answer 4

I have this in a comment, but I think it partially explains what happened and deserves the visibility of a solution.

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On November 13, 2019 there was a change which converted upvote bonuses for a user's question from +5 to +10. I have been told that the only thing required for election voting eligibility is 150 reputation.

Considering how low the 150 threshold is, it seems likely that a good number of users were drawn into the pool of eligible voters by this change, inflating the number. (I'm not good enough with the SEDE queries to adapt this query to count exactly how many, but that is a good starting point. Any takers?)

Given this, the drop in the proportion of participants would be not as dramatic.