The Iowa State Board of Canvassers certified the statewide results of this month’s general election today. From Secretary of State Michael Mauro’s press release:
In total, 1,133,434 Iowans voted in the 2010 General Election. This accounted for a turnout of 54-percent and was the highest number of total voters participating in a midterm election in state history.
The official canvass results, including the winner’s list, can be found by visiting www.IowaVotes.gov and clicking on the link under “Election Results” or by clicking on the direct link: www.sos.state.ia.us/elections/results/index.html#9
Statewide, 68,296 more voters cast ballots in this year’s general election than in 2006 (a 6.4 percent increase in the number of voters). The growth in participation varied widely by county. I spent some time today comparing the 2006 turnout report by county with the county numbers from this year (pdf files). Some numbers that caught my eye are after the jump.
First, I checked turnout numbers from Iowa’s ten largest counties in terms of population. All ten had more voters cast ballots in 2010 than four years ago, but look how the growth in participation differed:
Polk (Des Moines area) 9.9 percent more voters in 2010
Linn (Cedar Rapids area) 3.0 percent
Scott (Quad Cities) 0.9 percent
Johnson (Iowa City area/University of Iowa) 21.6 percent
Black Hawk (Waterloo/Cedar Falls) 2.2 percent
Dubuque 0.5 percent
Story (Ames/Iowa State University) 7.8 percent
Woodbury (Sioux City) 9.0 percent
Pottawattamie (Council Bluffs) 7.3 percent
Dallas (far western suburbs of Des Moines) 29.9 percent
Some of those disparities are easy to explain. Dallas is by far the fastest growing county in Iowa and has gained a lot of residents in the past four years. The 21-only bar ordinance in Iowa City boosted turnout in Johnson, especially on campus. All five Iowa House and Senate seats containing parts of Sioux City were open this year, so both major parties and many outside groups worked on GOTV in Woodbury.
But what happened in Scott County? The metro area is growing, and a couple of Iowa House districts were targeted by both parties, yet the number of votes cast went up by less than 1 percent.
Black Hawk County had three targeted Iowa House races and contains Waterloo, the home base for Representative Bruce Braley. Since Braley was fighting for his life in Iowa’s first Congressional district, I expected a bigger jump in turnout there.
GOTV in Dubuque should have been a priority for several Democratic campaigns, including Braley’s. The numbers released by the Secretary of State so far don’t show the partisan breakdown of votes cast by county; something like this document on the 2006 turnout should be posted later. Given that Governor Chet Culver barely carried Dubuque County, House Speaker Pat Murphy won House district 28 with less than 52 percent of the vote, and Democrat Tom Schueller lost House district 25 (containing southern areas of Dubuque County), I assume that the Democratic turnout was poor this year.
Fourteen of Iowa’s 99 counties had fewer voters cast ballots in November 2010 than in the previous midterm general election: Buchanan, Buena Vista, Butler, Chickasaw, Decatur, Delaware, Fayette, Floyd, Hamilton, Lee, Louisa, Poweshiek, Tama, and Webster. Many of those counties have lost population since 2006. Louisa, for example, suffered major flood damage in 2008.
Lee in the southeast corner has the highest unemployment rate in Iowa, and Hamilton County contains Webster City, where the major employer announced plans to shut down the Electrolux factory a year ago.
Share any thoughts about midterm election turnout in this thread.
Secretary of State Mauro concluded today’s press release as follows:
“On a personal note, the completion of this election is also bittersweet as it is the last statewide election that I will oversee as Secretary of State. Knowing our state is fortunate to have outstanding and dedicated election officials, I am confident Iowa’s election process will continue to be safe and secure and one in which Iowans can trust.”
Mauro did his job extremely well. He’ll be missed.
UPDATE: Todd Dorman observed,
Official results show that roughly 148,000 people who cast ballots in the election skipped the Supreme Court retention questions. That’s about 13 percent of the record 1,133,406 ballots cast.
The under-vote in Ternus’ race was 147,860. For Baker it was 148,622 and 149,115 for Streit.
That’s extremely high participation for retention elections. In a typical general election, about 40 percent of Iowans who cast ballots don’t bother to vote on retaining judges. This year only a third as many skipped that part of the ballot.