Closeness and Turnout: a Methodological Note

Many articles in political science have examined the statistical relationship between the closeness of elections and turnout. Usually, a moderate relationship is found: closer elections tend to have higher turnout. This note shows that the operational variable almost universally used in the literature to measure closeness--viz., the percent of the vote garnered by the winner minus the percent of the vote garnered by the runner-up--is spuriously correlated with turnout. An alternative measurement of closeness which avoids this problem is described.