Voter turnout will be high in 2020. We don't really know what that means yet
It matters which groups are more likely to vote relative to 2016. Not all increases will be uniform
When you need crosstabs and a pollster won’t give them to you:
The Takeaway: Vote turnout in 2020 will hits levels not seen for decades. Many analysts assume this will help Democrats, but if you dig into the data, there are many scenarios in which the increased salience of the next election might actually help Republicans. The aggregate numbers obscure the real picture; it’s all about which groups are actually engaged.
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New data from Democracy Corps shows that Americans are about 24 points more enthusiastic about the upcoming election than they were at this point in the 2016 cycle—and even more engaged than they were in 2018. We’re due for the “storm of the century”, to borrow a phrase from University of Florida professor Michael McDonald.
This is good work, but I would like to see the crosstabs on this question, and here’s why: If aggregate enthusiasm is being driven predominately by white voters rather than minorities Trump could have an easier path to re-election that people would infer.
Yes, higher turnout indeed benefits Democrats, but calculations to this effect are usually made assuming that all voters increase their propensity to vote uniformly. But when higher turnout comes disproportionately from whites—especially the non-college educated—Republicans are the ones that make gains. That’s because there are a lot of voters who, if they voted, would vote Republican. Besides, the non-voting population is only modestly pro-Democratic (about 58-42 Clinton in 2016, by my estimates).
You can play with your assumptions about who is more likely to vote with an interactive I made for The Economist this summer:
So, in sum, not so fast with these turnout numbers. We need to look under the hood to really know what’s going on.