Do Ballot Propositions Affect Elections?
November 6, 2006 Ballot propositions increasingly are being promoted to influence Senate, Congressional and even presidential races, but the actual spillover effects may be smaller than commonly believed, according to a report by the Initiative and Referendum Institute at USC. Controversial ballot initiatives — such as gay marriage, stem cell research and abortion — draw voters who might otherwise abstain from the polls, possibly helping or hurting candidates on the same ballot, according to the report written by Jeffrey R. Makin, a research associate with the Initiative and Referendum Institute. The best-known case occurred in 2004 when a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage in Ohio was alleged to have given George W. Bush the extra votes needed to win the state and the presidency. Yet a review of the growing scholarly evidence suggests that the marriage amendment did not help Bush after all and may even have hurt him. But 2004 may be a bad test case since most politicall
