Arizona opinion: A tiny slice of Arizona just picked your next leaders

Arizona State University professor Henry Thomson recently published a paper on the distortionary effects of Arizona’s low-turnout odd-year elections. These are the school bond, budget override and city elections that occur at seemingly random times in odd years.

According to Thomson, these low-turnout odd-year elections "amplify organized special interests while weakening democratic accountability," and their voting population is disproportionately "older, wealthier, whiter, and more organized." Thomson’s approximate benchmark for these distortionary elections is below 30%, noting that "recent off-cycle Arizona municipal elections averaged 26.9%."

Judged by this standard, it’s not just odd-year elections that have this problem. Last week’s statewide primary will conclude with turnout under 27% of registered voters. As of July 24, it’s at 26.48%. The total number of votes cast ― about 1.15 million ― is the lowest raw number cast in a statewide primary since 2016. You have to go back further to find a lower percentage turnout.

The reason could be any number of things. The state legislature last year moved the date of the primary to accommodate administrative needs. It now falls smack in the middle of summer vacations.

It’s also the first time since 2014 that we didn’t have a U.S. Senate race on the ballot. It probably matters when you don’t have a candidate on the ballot like Mark Kelly, whose fundraising numbers nearly match the GDP of a small country.

Of the highest-profile statewide races we did have ― governor, attorney general, secretary of state ― none had contested Democratic primaries. On the Republican side, the top two gubernatorial candidates spent far less money than Kari Lake and Karrin Taylor Robson spent in 2022, and most political pundits knew well in advance that Andy Biggs would win by a healthy margin. That doesn’t make for must-see television.

Or it could be that people are just sick of politics.

Regardless of the cause, the current 26.48% turnout doesn’t capture the full extent of the bleak representational picture. If you use the number of eligible voters (18 years old and U.S. citizens) in Arizona (about 5.32 million) as the denominator, as opposed to the number of registered voters (4,306,554), turnout drops to 21.5% of the population.

Additionally, unlike the school bond elections that are the subject of Professor Thomson’s analysis, the primary election splits the electorate in two ― Democrats and Republicans vote separate ballots. Therefore, the winners of the recent primary faced, on average, about 11% of the eligible voters of the jurisdiction. If the winner got about 55% of the votes cast, that means he won with about 6% of eligible voters in the district.

Repeating that for emphasis: 6%.

Somebody might respond that these paltry primary numbers don’t matter because we still have the November general election. In November at least, the full population spectrum is better reflected, and we need not worry about Professor Thomson’s distortionary effects.

But general elections are, for the most part, fictitious foregone conclusions. Only two of our nine congressional districts are competitive – the rest are already baked-in victories for the corresponding party. Of our legislative districts, only five or six districts out of 30 are competitive.

Consider the situation of Mark Lamb. He’s now the Republican nominee for Congressional District 5. Despite his well-documented extracurricular activities, Lamb will absolutely win the November general election. There is zero doubt. It’s a heavy, heavy Republican district. Andy Biggs won that same district by 21% in 2024.

To get to this electorally enviable point, Mark Lamb won 52,352 votes (not yet final), representing 58.7% of the vote share in the primary. There are 537,661 registered voters in Congressional District 5, and there are approximately 664,000 eligible voters.

All said, Lamb secured the support of about 9.7% of the registered voters, and about 7.8% of the eligible voters of the district. Now he will be one of nine people to represent Arizona in the United States House of Representatives.

This, of course, isn’t specific to Lamb. And it’s not his fault. But it’s a bonkers system that can barely be described as representative. If ASU's Professor Thomson is correct (I assume he is; he’s a smart guy), and low-turnout elections "weaken democratic accountability," then presumably that also applies to the microscopic electorate determining our federal and state legislators.

Maybe that’s part of the reason why our politics stinks. At the very least, it sure seems to make our government less one of "we the people," and more one of a "few people who probably aren’t reflective of the larger population." Yuck.