More than 1.7 million voters across South Carolina cast ballots in the 2022 general election held just a few weeks ago at the time of this episode posting. In Greenville County, almost 180,000 people turned out to vote. Here at simple civics, we celebrate every vote and every voter who exercises their privilege to choose our leaders and have a say in what happens. These folks chose our governor, our State Superintendent of Education, our senator, and so much more. The bad news is just 52% of people registered to vote in Greenville County came out to do so. Almost half of our voters didn’t take part in this decision-making process. Today, we’ll take a look at turnout in the 2022 election. Who voted, who stayed home, and how to change that number. If you have comments, pushback, or just questions, please email us at contact@simplecivicsgreenvillecounty.org. For now, I’ll take a look at the data with our producer Nathaniel DeSantis with the Greenville podcast company.
Election Stats: https://www.enr-scvotes.org/SC/115412/Web02-state.307150/#/?undefined
Produced by The Greenville Podcast Company. Simple Civics: Greenville County is a project of Greater Good Greenville.
Transcript
Nathaniel DeSantis
Hello, everyone. I’m Nathaniel, as Katie just said in that lovely intro, and today we’re talking about the recent midterm election. And let’s just start by diving right into it. Katie, was turnout Good. Was it bad? Are you happy? Are you slightly disappointed? What is that looking like?
Katy Smith
I would say the turnout was underwhelming. We focus so much on the election over the last several months of the podcast interviewing every candidate for Greenville County School Board races, all of the county council candidates in the primary and then contested elections, Greenville County probate judge, State Superintendent of Education, we really hope that we educated you all more as you went out and made your choice. We wish more people had joined those of you in voting and turning out for the election. Overall, our turnout was about 52% of registered voters. That was slightly higher than the state turnout, which was around 50% of registered voters. But it was lower than the last midterm election, which was 57%. 2014 was pretty poor. It was 44.2% and 2010 51.5%. So in the midterms, about half of folks tend to vote, you know, which is okay, but it would be great if we had everyone who was registered take part in making a choice. So underwhelming is how I would characterize our turnout.
Nathaniel DeSantis
And I’ll say to add on to that I’m surprised it’s this low because when I went to vote, it was like 3pm on Election Day, when you don’t think it’d be that busy. But there was a huge line. For the 52% that did show up to vote, was it pretty much straight along party lines? Was there any variation? Do we see people jumping across the political aisle saying, you know, I’ll vote Democrat for this Republican for that? How’s that look for Greenville County,
Katy Smith
You all who did vote know that you have the option to vote a straight party ticket. Meaning right when you come in to the voting booth, you can push a button that says I want to vote all democrat or republican, Green Party, whatever. 50% of those people who did vote chose to vote a straight party ticket. So that means the other half presumably bounced around on their ballot a little bit. That turnout in terms of party is not very remarkable compared to the rest of the state. There was a high of 67.8% in Orangeburg County, that chose straight party ticket down to about 38%, who voted straight party ticket in Fairfield County, we were the 10th lowest in the state in terms of voting along a straight party ticket. In Greenville County, we were mostly Republican among those who did vote straight party ticket. 68% of those who push that button voted Republican and 31% voted Democrat, with the balance going to those smaller parties.
Nathaniel DeSantis
Okay, and let’s talk a little bit about early voting. And first, could you explain any of the recent changes happening in early voting before we look at the statistics of early voting?
Katy Smith
Yeah, so those of you who voted during 2020 may recall that you had the opportunity to vote early because of COVID changes to spread folks out a little bit more. And lawmakers in South Carolina passed a law this year that expanded early voting throughout the state to two weeks before the election. I found that to be a great help, meaning I could go vote early. I knew that nothing would come up on November 8 that prevented me from voting I could get it done. So in Greenville County, we had seven places around the county where registered voters could go between October 24 and November 5 to cast their ballot. About 28% of ballots cast in Greenville County, which was about 50,000 people, were those that took advantage of that new opportunity. Some others voted absentee by mail, meaning they might have been in the military, away at college, on a job somewhere out of state. So overall, 69% of voters cast their ballots on election day. I feel like early voting is a great benefit to us. Like I said, just to make sure you can get it done, that nothing comes up, it’ll increase turnout, I think over the long haul.
Nathaniel DeSantis
Yeah, it would be one thing if Election Day was a national holiday, which you you think it would be but for those people who have worked and can’t make it, that’s great for them that they can do that. So I’m happy to see South Carolina doing that. But speaking of people not being able to make it and people being able to make it who actually voted and who didn’t.
Katy Smith
Right now, though, there’s going to be more data that comes out from the South County Election Commission in the coming months. But for now, the best look we have at this is at the precinct level, which as a reminder for everybody precincts are the smaller groups that are developed with about 2000 residents in them that break everyone down to more of a neighborhood level. And this is you know, you have a precinct and then you have a polling place within your precinct which might be a church or community center, or elementary school where you go and vote. So we can see how many registered voters there were by precinct and how many voters turned out to vote by precinct. All of that data is available at the South Carolina Election Commission, which has a great robust website to do some analysis. If you’re interested. We’ll put links on the episode page if you want to dig in more. The top 10 precincts that turned out were first of all in northern Greenville County, Northwest, North Central Greenville County, including Jones gap State Park area and the cliffs at glassy area. Parris mountain, the entire mountain, the top, the front, the east side of the mountain. Each of those precincts turned out really well. The Collins Creek area which is kind of near the Gower neighborhood off pleasantburg and Laurens road, the Augusta circle elementary area which is just off of Augusta Street. North Main, Devinder and the Pelham Falls area. These folks came out to vote. They all had turnout in the high to mid 60% level with ultimat forest if you live there, whoop whoop for you. 68% voter turnout up there. The low turnout precincts – these precincts had a turnout from a low of about 32% of people who had registered to vote coming out to vote, up to 38%. Almost all of these were off or near the White Horse Road area. This includes West Greenville, the Staunton Bridge Road area, that Gant area, welcome, which if you have never been through welcome you’ve been near it if you’ve gone to Easley and past concrete creations, that’s where that is. The mana view and Alexander Elementary School areas. It also includes the areas off Villa road between pleasantburg Drive and Haywood road where there’s a lot of apartments. And that whole area that’s near JL man High School and Christ Church Episcopal, which is kind of between Mauldin road and Laurens road, that’s like fair forest, wenwood Ridge Road, if you’re familiar with that area. Those precincts had very low turnout, compared to the county average and in those high turnout precincts.
Nathaniel DeSantis
And what do you think is the cause for that difference in turnout between the bottom 10 and the top 10?
Katy Smith
Yeah, I mean, the bottom 10 when you look at them and kind of overlay them with a census tracts of those areas, you can see that there’s a really high rate of renters in those areas. It could be houses that are rented, apartment units, trailers, renters are just known to turn out last for things like elections and the Census count. Part of it is because they might not be as connected for folks to reach out to them to plug them in. They are more transient. So they might not have changed their voter registration from the time before. But that that is one factor. I’m not saying this as a predictor. But you can see that those low turnout precincts have a lower household income than the county median. It’s pretty much by precinct, you can see that it’s just a lower turnout. And there are also more people of color in those census tracts that those precincts sit in. And there’s a lot of ways to think about it. One could be that folks have not seen their vote have an impact. You know, when they have voted in the past, their candidates haven’t very often won. It could also be that some of these folks with lower incomes are just super busy, they’re working multiple jobs, they may lack transportation, it might just be harder for them to get out. That is why early voting can be a really big help. But I think there’s a lot more for us to dig into and understand. We don’t yet know the age difference of folks that turned out so you know, it’d be interesting to see if older people voted far more than younger people that is typically the case. Wondering if that’s different this time around if Gen Z and millennials came out in a bigger way, we’ll find that out more. But there’s a lot to dig into, I think, in this precinct data, because our goal here, as you know, Nathaniel, is really just to get folks engaged in democracy. You know, as I’ve said many times before, we don’t care who people vote for, we just want them to vote, because the more people that vote, the better decisions are made that are more reflective of the community. So for me, I’m really interested in learning a lot more about this before the 2024 election, to see if we can get folks all over the county showing up in the way that those fine folks of Altamont forest did to take advantage of this opportunity that we have when we get a chance to vote.
Nathaniel DeSantis
Right. And I’m curious is that.. so you mentioned something in lower income households, maybe not having time to go vote right. Now we have early voting, that’s something that can remedy that situation, are we as a state just doing a poor job communicating that? Is that something that many people are just unaware of at the moment?
Katy Smith
We are really lucky in South Carolina, that we have a really excellent Election Commission that does a great job of making data available and doing outreach to the community. If folks want to go back and listen to the episode from July 5, when we looked at primary election voter turnout, some of those themes we talked about, then and I think they’re still true, and that is that candidates themselves do a lot of heavy outreach to those likely voters. So it is a you know, kind of self fulfilling prophecy that if you haven’t voted in the past, candidates aren’t going to reach out to you to get you to vote because they’re kind of wasting time and money, perhaps in their viewpoint. So I think that’s one issue. I think another issue is that our channels of communication have changed. It used to be that local media would be blanketed with information about elections. A lot of people just aren’t plugged in to the newspaper and local news like they used to be, I think, especially folks who are renters who may be younger, who are even less plugged into that then older, more long term households have been so I think you’re just less likely to get all those messages to remind you and nudge you to vote and you haven’t made it a habit yet. I think another thing that suppresses turnout, is the fact that so few of our races in South Carolina and in Greenville County, are competitive races. And by that I mean there’s only one name on the ballot. And a lot of those Whitehorse Road area ballots, folks didn’t have a choice in at least half of the races on their ballot. So just to elaborate on this, if you voted for governor, you saw a couple choices. You could choose Henry McMaster, Joe Cunningham, State Superintendent of Education, same thing. But if you’re voting for county council, you only had Benton Blount as your choice. Not to say I mean, Benton Blount’s great, but it drives people out when there’s competition in the race. We had no competition for William Timmons, our Congress person had no competition there. I think for the auditor, I think for the treasurer, we have no competition. So when your vote is actually not choosing something, it’s hard to get excited to get out and vote with all the other things you have to do. So when we get more folks running for things, it drives conversation, it drives interest, it drives the feeling of motivation that your vote does make a difference.
Nathaniel DeSantis
Okay, very interesting. Was there anything else to add for those listening?
Katy Smith
I think the main message for all of us, if you are as invested in getting folks to turn out as we are, the biggest impact is you reminding your friends and family to go vote. If you remind five or 10 people to make sure they get out there, that has the biggest impact over anything else that we can do because people really value those personal connections. You know, if you’re a parent and your kids are away at school, hound them to get in their absentee ballot request, drive someone to the polls, just get the word out, you can play the biggest role in driving turnout and hopefully we’ll all join together to do that in 2024.
Nathaniel DeSantis
Perfect, well, thank you for coming onto your podcast.
Katy Smith
Thank you Nathaniel.
Catherine Puckett
Simple Civics: Greenville County is a project of Greater Good Greenville. Greater Good Greenville was catalyzed by the merger of the Nonprofit Alliance and the Greenville Partnership for Philanthropy. You can learn more on our website at greatergoodgreenville.org This is a production of the Greenville podcast company.
