Election-Day Rain Affects Future Voter Turnout

Election-Day Rain Affects Future Voter Turnout

Rain on a presidential election day decreases voter turnout not only in the current election but also during future elections, suggesting that voting today is associated with voting in the future, according to a study by Thomas Fujiwara and Tom Vogl at Princeton and Kyle Meng at UC Santa Barbara. Matching daily weather data with county-level U.S. presidential election returns from 1952 to 2012, they found that election-day rainfall reduced voter turnout — their data suggests that one millimeter of rainfall decreases turnout 0.05–0.07 percentage points — and this effect persists in future elections. Their main estimates imply that a one-percentage-point decrease in past turnout lowers current turnout by 0.6–1.0 percentage points. The evidence suggests that habit formation may occur by reinforcing the value of voting, the researchers say.