Voter turnout this year was the lowest for a general election in South Carolina in at least 40 years, with only 43.6 percent of registered voters making it out to the polls, according to the spokesman of the South Carolina State Election Commission (SEC), Chris Whitmire.
The previous record for lowest voter turnout was in 2006 with 45 percent of registered individuals voting, according to the SEC records.
“Turnout is driven by the candidates and issues that are on the ballot,” Whitmire said. “I think election officials recognize that we can only do so much to make voting easy and accessible, and at a certain point, with that I think you meet the law of diminishing returns.”
Whitmire also added that there's only so much the SEC can do to contribute to voter turnout.
“Generally people aren’t going to vote just because we make it as easy as possible,” he said. “There’s got to be that additional motivating factor.”
According to USC political science professor Robert Oldendick, the “lack of a hot race” contributed to the voter turnout. He said a competitive race may have attracted additional voters.
“[The races] were pretty much non-competitive and people, I think, based on polling information and media stories had some idea of how it was going to end,” Oldendick said.
He also said that feelings of “distrust in government” and the “lack of positive feeling of government” that the public has been exhibiting lately kept many away from the polls.
“[Distrust] is the general feeling, ratings of Congress are at their lowest," Oldendick said. "President Barack Obama’s ratings are also very low."
This was exacerbated by the ongoing impact of negative campaign ads, according to Oldendick.
“The reason the candidates do [negative ads] is because it has been shown that negative campaigns do work,” Oldendick said. “There’s carry over effect that if you see three months of ads that all the candidates are getting slammed with their negative characteristics by the time you get to election day people say, ‘Why should I vote for either of these people?’”
In addition to the lack of a competitive race, Oldendick was also unable to find an issue that made people excited to vote.
“There just really wasn’t an overriding or galvanizing issue in this campaign. The focus was on the economy or unemployment, but there really wasn’t a lot of distinction between the candidates or a hot debate on that issue,” Oldendick said. “[Gubernatorial candidate Vincent] Sheheen tried to make transparency or education an issue but, it really didn’t get any traction.”
USC political science professor Todd Shaw said it was “hard to say” exactly why this election had such low interest, but he did believe it had something to do with the way candidates were portrayed.
“Candidates weren’t properly presented, especially to younger kids,” he said.
Oldendick said that low-income and less educated voters specifically showed up in lower numbers than usual, to the benefit of the Republican party.
“The impact of the lower turnout was to the advantage of the Republican candidates,” Oldendick said. “The groups that tend to turn out less are those that tended to vote Democrat because they have less incentive ... to the extent that those groups were differentially affected.”
Shaw said that, because of these results, the public shouldn’t expect many changes.
“I feel like things are pretty much going to be the same,” Shaw said, “since the same party is in power.”