Shandrew ([info]shandrew) wrote,
@ 2008-11-05 21:47:00
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How Prop 8, the California bigotry amendment, passed
I see a lot of blame being thrown around for Prop 8's passage by friends and by the media. Minorities, old people, mormons, out-of-state interests, and more are groups that are listed. However, they were all known factors, and polls still showed that after all that "NO" had a slight lead. So how did bigotry win?

Turnout.

In the 2004 election, 360,000 San Francisco voters, around 75% of registered, voted.

2008 was predicted to have similar or higher turnout in SF. However, San Francisco ended up with only 50% turnout, 240,000 San Francisco voters! 1/3 less than in 2004.

In comparison, turnout was 64% for Santa Clara county, 55% in San Mateo county, 69% in Santa Cruz county, 63% in LA, 66% in San Diego. Nationally turnout was 64% and in California it was 60%, far below estimates of 70-80% that the Field Poll predicted.

What happened? I suspect that many Californians thought that the election (esp. Obama v McCain) was already won, and didn't bother to vote. This sort of mentality is more common the younger the voter, and the younger the voter, the more likely the were to vote No. The greatest amount of blame for Prop 8's passage should lie with the people who opposed Prop 8 but didn't bother to show up to the polls. I couldn't find a single story in the media or blogs mentioning how poor turnout in CA turned out to be.

Ironically, if Obama had run a closer race, I think Prop 8 would have been rejected.

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[info]ladycalliope
2008-11-06 01:42 pm UTC (link)
Yep. I was dismayed to see that fewer than 500k people from SF were even registered! That's not enough to have bridged the gap all by itself, but come on, there are probably far more eligible voters than that!

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[info]cousinitt
2008-11-07 06:48 pm UTC (link)
Not sure that's true. According to the US Census Bureau, there population of all of SF County was only 744,041 in 2006. 14.8% of them, or 110,118 people, were under 18. Of the remaining 633,923 people, I'm sure some are not eligible to vote for various reasons - foreigners like me, felons serving a prison term or on parole, those not deemed competent due to mental retardation, etc. The Census Bureau does not seem to give me numbers on this, but it's notable that 36.8% of SF County residents in 2000 were foreign born. I bet a decent percentage of those were not US citizens.

So SF County doesn't have that much more than 500k people eligible to vote. Seems like a hefty percentage of them did register. It's just that apparently only half of them got off their asses to actually go vote, which is sad.

Given that SF *is* so small, I'm not sure better turnout there alone would have turned this around, but better CA turnout overall, especially in the other Bay Area counties (which also broke down heavily against Prop 8 but also had pretty low turnout... for personal reasons, I'm especially bummed about Alameda - look, people, I came to your friggin' doors and personally handed you flyers listing your polling station, how hard could it be??!?) might have.

For reference, I got my numbers here: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06075.html

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[info]leback
2008-12-23 08:01 pm UTC (link)
Hrm. Shouldn't the "greatest amount of blame" lie with the people who supported Prop 8 and did go to the polls? One's own bigotry is still a bit more reprehensible, in my book, than one's apathy about other people's bigotry...

That said, I think "the California bigotry amendment" is an excellent name for Prop 8.

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[info]shandrew
2009-02-07 06:13 am UTC (link)
Hi Laura!

You are correct; i did not phrase that how i intended to. That was probably a bit trollish of me. The concept of "blame" is odd in the context of a simple majority vote. If there's a ballot measure decided by one vote, is everyone then to blame (credit?) for the outcome?

My real point was that it may have been a more efficient use of resources to encourage two anti-prop-8 people who failed to show up to vote to go vote than to try to convince one prop 8 supporter to vote no. Having 2004-level turnout in the non-rural counties of CA would likely have been enough to change the outcome.

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[info]leback
2009-02-07 09:22 am UTC (link)
That was probably a bit trollish of me.

What, you? Never! :-)

The remark reminded me a little of a past debate in which I think you were on the other side -- Gore voters in 2000 who decided Bush was Nader voters' fault. At the time, I didn't care for many Democrats' apparent sense of entitlement to the support of a particular segment of the population, and the same notion seemed relevant here.

The point you were aiming at is a really interesting one, though. I've heard a lot about get-out-the-vote strategies as increasingly important components of presidential campaigns, and that was certainly very much on both major parties' radar this last time around -- but if the Prop 8 campaign gave much thought to it, I never heard about it. I'm pretty sure this one will hit the ballot again sooner or later, so maybe there's a chance for a do-over there...

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