Runoffs Lead to Near-Universal Decline in Voter Turnout, Report Finds
November 14, 2022 – With Georgia’s U.S. Senate race between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker headed to a runoff, a new FairVote report shows the near-universal decline in voter turnout in runoff elections. The report follows recent Kennesaw State University research finding that Georgia’s 2020 U.S. Senate runoffs cost the state $75 million, not including the hundreds of millions spent on the runoff campaign.
While the report focuses on federal primary runoffs, it includes a section on runoffs in Georgia statewide general elections – turnout has declined from Election Day to the runoff in every single statewide Georgia runoff over the last 30 years, by a median of 44%. The 10% turnout decline in Georgia’s 2020 U.S. Senate runoffs actually represents a best-case scenario.
“With runoff elections, we pay more to get less – weeks more of toxic campaigning and fewer voters actually heard at the polls. Ranked choice voting is an obvious fix, and Georgia’s military and overseas voters are already using it. If Georgia used ranked choice voting, we’d already have a winner in the Warnock-Walker race,” said Deb Otis, FairVote Director of Research.
In the 276 federal primary runoffs from 1994 to 2022, turnout decreased from the primary to the runoff in 96% of contests – by a median of 40%. The report also finds that the longer the wait for the runoff, the higher the decrease in voter turnout. Further, it finds that come-from-behind wins are common – 32% of federal primary runoffs resulted in a winner who trailed in the first round.
Ranked choice voting (RCV) is a faster, cheaper, and better “instant runoff” that doesn’t require voters to return to the polls, candidates to campaign for another month, or taxpayers to pay for another election. In fact, military and overseas voters in Georgia have already used ranked choice voting in the Walker-Warnock contest – rather than vote a second time, these voters returned a ranked ballot; their vote will be counted for their highest-ranked candidate in the runoff.
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FairVote is a nonpartisan organization seeking better elections for all. We research and advance voting reforms that make democracy more functional and representative for every American.
