Abstract
Voter falloff, or the difference between turnout at the polls and how many people vote on a specific race or issue, is a major concern, but existing research has not considered constituency size as a determining factor for voter falloff. This thesis examines California elections for county supervisors and hypothesizes that greater constituency size leads to increased voter falloff.
All but three of California's 58 counties have five-member boards of supervisors elected at the district level. Races for county supervisors in California also coincide with presidential or gubernatorial races, allowing for a simple comparison of votes cast by district to yield a rate of voter falloff between these races and races for county supervisors. Using data f rom six general elections from 1996-2006, the rates of voter falloff within supervisorial districts were calculated. Using regression analysis to test the hypothesis that constituency size has a positive relationship with voter falloff, I estimated the effect of constituency size on voter falloff, controlling for other factors.
This study found that constituency size does have a significant positive association with . voter falloff. As constituency size increases in a district, so does the rate of voter falloff. This finding has important implications for the study of voter falloff and also for the adequacy of democratic representation that county boards of supervisors provide : Constituencies can grow too large to meet the goal of adequate representation in county government.