Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
More votes are cast in the contests at the top of ballots than in the contests farther down the ballot, a phenomenon known variously as voter falloff, voter rolloff, down ballot abstention, and undoubtedly by other names.
Some academic research indicates one cause is choice fatigue, especially on very long ballots; voters grow weary of indicating choices and decide not to cast more votes. Another cause, I’m sure, is simply not being acquainted with down ballot candidates or issues and therefore abstaining on the principle of doing no harm.
I found myself wondering how much down ballot falloff there is in the old downtown Kalispell house district, numbered HD-8 from 2004 through 2012, and HD-7 for 2014–2022. Overall, as the table below displays, the falloff is sightly higher in Presidential years.
And, there is a startling anomaly: there was what might be called reverse falloff in 2010, when four more votes were cast in the legislative election than in the election for the U.S. House of Representatives. I suspect this was due to Obama voters, probably in the age 18–29 cohort, staying home.
I do not know whether HD-8’s falloff is typical. If you’d like to crunch the numbers, download the spreadsheet.