Weather or Not

The rain has stopped just in tiime for the opening of the polls, and that may be good news for candidates and their supporters hoping for a big turnout today.
Or is it?

One of the enduring myths of American democracy, not to mention journalism, is that weather affects turnout on Election Day.

We here at Weather or Not can find no evidence to support that hypothesis.

Consider the 2004 presidential election. Recall that it all came down to Ohio in a close race between President Bush and Democratic nominee John Kerry.

That Election Day was a nasty one all over the state. It rained almost everywhere. The result? The voter turnout in Ohio was believed to be highest in at least 40 years. Some folks were said to be waiting up to nine hours to vote.

We did our own analysis of 30 years of election returns and weather in Philadelphia found no evidence of a link between the two. It rained on half of the Election Days with the 10 highest turnouts, while seven of the 10 lowest-turnout days were rain-free.

Yet the myth survives, and it not a modern one.

The late weather historian David Ludlum noted that in the 19th century the afternoon newspapers in New York took great pains to detail weather conditions at polling places around the state.

Ludlum held that it was at least possible that weather was a factor in 1960. That election, between Democrat Sen. John Kennedy and Republican Vice President Richard Nixon, came down to Illinois.

A cold rain fell in Illinois, and Ludlum said it was possible that the conditions kept turnout down in rural areas, dominated by Republicans.By contrast, the rain was less of a factor on the well-paved streets of Chicago.

He may have been on to something. The Chicago-area votes put Kennedy over the top. But Terry Madonna, a political analyst at Franklin & Marshall College, believes that Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, a powerful Democrat, had a bigger impact than the fact that it was raining.

"It didn't matter,” said Madonna, “because Daley had those votes already counted."