Survey of Attendance Practices
Category: Student Well-Being
Changes to electoral systems are relatively rare in established democracies. Conventional explanations for this stability suggest elected officials and citizens who stand to lose influence under new arrangements will oppose change. We explore the nature of public awareness and opinion regarding an electoral institution that has undergone notable change in recent decades—the timing of local school board elections. Traditionally, most of these races were held “off-cycle”—on a different day than the national elections held in November of even-numbered years—depressing voter turnout and making the electorate less representative of the population. However, many districts have shifted to on-cycle races in recent years. Using survey questions and experiments with a sample of 8,625 respondents, including a nationally representative oversample of K-12 public school teachers, we show majority levels of public support for on-cycle elections but low levels of awareness and interest in election timing. The public is easily swayed by arguments both for and against on-cycle elections, but it appears more difficult to increase public perceptions of the issue’s import. Teachers have even higher levels of support for on-cycle elections than the general public. Overall, the patterns of results are inconsistent with the idea that public opinion on this electoral policy is primarily shaped by political self-interest.
Education level
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/6paz-qr57
