Riverside County Voter Registration/Turnout Econometric Analytics

This study was performed with regard to voter registration and voter turnout from the years 2001 to 2007 and analyzed the correlation there within. The data was provided by the Riverside County Registrar of Voters. The study was stimulated as a result of an interest in knowing the growth rate of registered voters with regard to voter turnout, and in essence the number of voters who were registered and did not vote, ultimately in order to compare these numbers with regard to Republican voters in the market.

To start off the study, I found that the average number of registered voters in Riverside County is increasing by 40,711 voters or 5.95% annually with an R2 = .7386, secondly I found that the average number of registered voters who didn’t vote in Riverside County was increasing on average by 61,611 voters or 16.02% annually. With regard to Republican voters, the average increase in republican voters over the specified period has been 24,799 voters or 7.75% annually with an R2 = .9930, in addition the average number of registered Republicans who didn’t vote in Riverside County increased on average 26,789 voters or 13.29% annually with an R2 = .6375. This data that was gathered had something relatively important to show.

The number of registered Republicans in Riverside County were growing at a faster rate on average than the general voter population, in fact it was growing 1.80% faster. In addition, we noted that the R2 was greater for Republican registration than voter registration overall, amazingly almost 99.3% of the data fit the Republican regression while only 73.86% for voters overall, signifying that Republican growth is much more consistent and less volatile. In addition, I found that registered Republicans were voting more than voters as a whole in Riverside County, however voter apathy was probably the cause of these excessive growth rates in these registered non-voting voters.

In order to further the study, I wanted to compare the growth rate of the Republicans to that of the Democrats in Riverside County. After gathering more information from the registrar, I had found that the average annual increase in Democratic voters over the specified period was 17,194 voters or 7.25% with R2 = .8371 and the average number of registered Democrats who didn’t vote increased 11,578 voters or 13.77% with R2 = .2232. This data essentially shows us that that the Democrats have a very small share of the voting block in Riverside County, and that their annual growth rate is slightly less than that of Republicans.

However, an interesting attribute was that the number of registered Democrats who didn’t vote had an R2 = .2232, which means that the data may be too inconsistent to accept the 13.77%, but moreover it showed that Democrats may not be going to the polls in some elections, and in others they show a strong showing, like in the 2004 election.

I had performed several analysis like these with several different types of betas to test which factors may be keeping the Democrats at home in some particular elections. I had ultimately found, that when a Republican incumbent president was running, voter turnout for registered Democrats in Riverside County was much higher. No doubt this was a very interesting regression model.

Casey Evans