Voters need to drop off their ballots by Election Day or make sure they’re postmarked by May 21. (Ron Cooper/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
Ballots went out to Oregon voters in mid-October, and since then they’ve been trickling daily into county elections offices.
As of Monday, 46.6% of the more than 3 million registered voters had turned in their ballots — much fewer at this point than in previous presidential elections, particularly 2020 — and with sharp differences statewide. Rural counties generally had higher turnout than urban areas, while a higher percentage of Republicans had turned in their ballots as of Monday compared to Democrats — 60.6% compared with 56.1%.
That prompted the conservative newsletter Oregon Catalyst last week to declare the turnout a “shocker” but election experts say many people are reacting too soon and making misinformed judgments.
“There’s a lot of hyperventilating about turnout right now,” said John Horvick, senior vice president of Portland-based DHM Research. “A lot of it is partisan cheerleading and some of it is just a misunderstanding of what’s going on.”
Horvick and other experts expect the turnout in this general election to compare with that of recent presidential elections, hitting about 80%. By party, he expects 90% of the more than 730,000 registered Republicans in Oregon to vote, along with 90% of the more than 1 million registered Democrats. He said turnout among the 1.1 million nonaffiliated voters in Oregon is likely to range from 65% to 70%.
“It’ll look pretty normal at the end of the day,” Horvick said.
Turnout in nonpresidential years tends to be lower than in presidential years. For example, 66.9% of registered voters cast ballots in 2022’s general election, compared with 78.5% in 2020 when then-Democratic Vice President Joe Biden faced the Republican then-President Donald Trump, or 80.3% in 2016, when Trump faced Democrat Hillary Clinton, a former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state.
People turn out to vote for big races, Horvick said, and picking a president is the biggest draw.
“If you look at turnout in any given election, what matters is that by far the dominant thing that affects turnout is the top of the ticket — it’s the presidential election,” Horvick said. “And even though it’s not going to be competitive in Oregon, and it hasn’t been that kind of a long time, people still want to participate in that election.”
Decades of Democratic wins
It’s been 40 years since Oregonians last supported a Republican for president — Ronald Reagan in 1984 — and analysts expect that decades-long trend to continue this year. Another race of interest, according to Paul Gronke, political science professor at Reed College in Portland, is the 5th Congressional District, which includes Linn County, most of Clackamas and Deschutes counties and parts of Multnomah and Marion counties. The tight race between Republican incumbent Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Democrat Janelle Bynum, a state representative, has attracted more than $35 million, with ads dominating the airwaves and flyers flooding mailboxes.
“I think it will drive turnout potentially on both sides because people are getting really hammered with mobilization efforts on that one with lots of national money flowing into it because that’s such a key race,” Gronke said.
The race could determine control of the U.S. House, along with another district: Oregon’s 6th Congressional District, which pits Republican businessman Mike Erickson against Democratic incumbent Andrea Salinas, who beat him in 2022 by 2.4 percentage points, or 7,210 votes.
Portland’s complicated ballot
This election also features a packed ballot in Portland, where voters are picking an entirely new form of city government using ranked choice voting. The ballots are long and complicated, with voters choosing 12 open City Council seats by ranking candidates from a field of several dozen.
Horvick said Multnomah County voters — with a 41.3% turnout rate as of Monday — might be hanging on to their ballots longer to sort it out.
“I don’t think people are not going to vote because the ballots in Portland are hard. I think some people may decide not to vote in the mayoral election or not to vote in the City Council elections. But I don’t think they’re not going to vote for president,” Horvick said.
The Clackamas County ballot isn’t especially complicated, but the slow turnout there has been caused by a machine. The ballot sorting machine has broken down several times, causing a backlog of tens of thousands of ballots by late last week. By Monday, the county had processed 43.6% of registered voters’ ballots.
County officials said Monday that elections staff had worked through the weekend the process the backlog. Clerk Catherine McMullen said the county is now processing ballots from Friday. She said the county should have about 150,000 ballots counted when it releases the first results after 8 p.m. on Tuesday. That’s just under 50% of the county’s more than 319,000 registered voters. McMullen does not expect any more delays, but if an issue emerges, a technician from the vendor, Runbeck, is on hand to make fixes.
She said the county should have all the ballots counted by next Friday, and she expects a high turnout of perhaps 85%.
Since ballots started rolling in, several rural counties have been jockeying for the highest turnout. On Monday, Wheeler County, with 64.9%, had the highest turnout. Grant was second with 64.6% and Wallowa was third at 60.2%.
Elsewhere, analysts said the free postage rule, which went into effect in 2020, might be encouraging more people to mail their ballots, which means they take longer to arrive at elections offices. Analysts don’t think any political rhetoric against the security of mail-in voting has had much effect on turnout nationwide.
In 2020, with the pandemic raging, many states turned to mail-in votes, but Oregon has voted entirely by mail since 2000.
Though data is not publicly available in Oregon, Washington state statistics show an increasing number of people mailing their ballots this year, Gronke said. Many people make their choices in the last week, he said, and if they’re mailing them, they’re likely to arrive after Tuesday.
Considering that, analysts are not worried about the slow turnout so far this year.
“The turnout looks exactly what it should be right now,” Horvick said.
A postal sorting issue in Coos County, meant nearly 1,000 of the county’s more than 49,000 voters didn’t get their ballots when they were sent. But Horvick said that doesn’t appear to have dented the turnout, which stood at 52.9% on Monday.
History of high turnout
Historically, Oregon has had among the highest turnout rates in the country. In 2022, 66.9% of voters returned their ballots, according to the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office. The U.S. Elections Project ranked Oregon No. 1 that year, followed by Maine and Minnesota. And in 2020, with a 78.5% turnout, Oregon came in third behind Colorado and Minnesota, which was No. 1.
Surveys show that the more education people have and the more money they make, the likelier they are to vote. Older people also have higher turnout rates.
In Oregon, mail-in ballots, free postage and the 8 p.m. ballot drop off deadline on Tuesday help turnout, analysts say. Gronke added that the state’s demographics are a factor in people voting. Oregon has a relatively high percentage of white residents and lacks large pockets of poverty that exist in some other states and can lead to voter disenfranchisement and low turnout, Gronke said.
“We have some diversity — it’s growing — but we’re not ethnically very diverse,” Gronke said. “And we have some areas of poverty, but we don’t have some of the levels of poverty that are evident in some other states where turnout is just 50 or 60%.”
In the past, about 75% of eligible Oregonians registered to vote. But in 2016, when the Motor Voter law went into effect, all eligible adults who had contact with the Oregon Driver and Motor Vehicles division were automatically registered. Nowadays, more than 90% of eligible Oregonians are registered.
But not all of those newly registered voters are interested in casting ballots, which has made the turnout rates dip a bit.
“We’re getting a lot more people ballots,” Horvick said. “Some of them vote but some of them don’t.”
Overall, more eligible voters are casting ballots, however. Horvick said the turnout rates indicate a healthy state of democracy in Oregon, though in surveys, residents indicate a growing disillusionment about government and elections.
In an unpublished October poll, DHM Research asked 500 adults about their confidence in various institutions like universities, hospitals, banks and the election system. Horvick said 58% said they were very or somewhat confident in the election system, below universities but above the Oregon Legislature.
But the poll showed a divide between those on the right and those on the left: About 85% of Democrats said they trusted the election system, compared to 45% of Republicans.
“That’s worrisome for me that there are such partisan differences,” Horvick said.