Who Wins: City Election Timing and Racial and Ethnic Minority Candidate Success

• In Event: Local Government Institutions and Political Representation

Abstract

By almost every conceivable measure, racial and ethnic minorities have less of a voice than others in American democracy. Nowhere is the problem worse than at the local level where exceptionally low and skewed turnout leads to a world in which Whites hold 90 percent of all elected positions. Fortunately, one simple reform—shifting the timing of local elections so they are held on the same day as national contests—has the potential to substantially increase minority candidate success and minority representation in local democracy. Because the move to on-cycle November elections generally doubles local voter turnout and leads to an active electorate that is much more representative of the racial and ethnic population of a city, there is reason to believe that the shift to on-cycle elections could alter the outcome of the vote, increase the success of racial and ethnic minority candidates, and ultimately improve minority representation in city government. Unfortunately, no study to date has examined the link between the date of an election and the fate of racial and ethnic minority candidates. In this study, we do just that by offering a research design that gets at the causal impact of election timing on minority candidate success. Specifically, we construct a panel of California city elections covering the years 2008 through 2016 to examine how the success of racial and ethnic minority candidates in a city change as the timing of elections in that city shifts. To assess minority candidate success, we downloaded the names of every candidate running for local office in California over this period. Using those names, we were able to estimate the race/ethnicity of all candidates for local office and can thus compare minority success rates in on- vs off-cycle contests. Critical to this analysis is the fact that cities in California regularly change their election timing – often for cost savings but also in response to a change in state law. Recognizing the potential endogeneity of timing, our main empirical strategy employs city fixed effects and thus leverages within-city variation in vote outcomes over time. For part of our analysis we are also able to exploit a quasi-experiment in California - a 2015 law passed by the California legislature that mandated on-cycle elections. Since all cities have not yet had to comply, we utilize a difference-in-difference design that compares cities that were forced to switch timing to others that have not switched. Our preliminary analysis indicates that on-cycle elections can reduce the under-representation of racial minorities in local office. Not only do racial and ethnic minority candidates win a substantially higher share of the vote in on-cycle elections, but their odds of victory also significantly increase when cities shift to on-cycle elections. In short, the analysis to date suggests that moving to on-cycle elections has the potential to substantially alter local democracy and make it much more representative.

Authors

• George Agustin Markarain, Loyola University Chicago

• Vladimir Kogan, Ohio State University