Voter Suppression

Voter Suppression doesn't seem to work. But that's just the data from 2020. Will it hold true as more draconian procedures go into effect for 2022 and beyond?

Voting procedures that have been falsely attacked by former President Trump and his political allies for contributing to voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election actually had little impact on voter turnout and no measurable impact on the margin in the presidential election at the state level. Voter turnout increased dramatically in 2020 for reasons that had very little to do with the voting procedures used by different states. Moreover, Joe Biden improved on Hillary Clinton’s performance in 2016 for reasons that had nothing to do with the voting procedures used by different states.

Both voter turnout and voting decisions in 2020 were driven by the strong preferences held by the large majority of voters between the major party candidates. That is very likely to be the case again in the 2022 midterm elections and especially in the 2024 presidential election. Thus, efforts by Republican-controlled state legislatures to suppress turnout by Democratic-leaning voter groups by imposing restrictions on absentee voting, early in-person voting, and use of drop boxes or by requiring that voters present photo identification in order to vote are unlikely to bear fruit. Such efforts could even backfire by angering voters who are the targets of these efforts and by causing left-leaning voting rights groups to increase their voter registration and GOTV efforts.