Will Voters Stay Home?

Rhodes Cook suspects voter turnout will decline in 2012:

The negative campaigning is not likely to fuel a huge outpouring of voters in November. Yet high turnouts are not necessary to produce a consequential, even historic election. When Franklin D. Roosevelt was first elected in 1932 — a Depression-era contest that set the stage for the New Deal and a Democratic era in American politics — turnout was less than 60% of the electorate. When Harry Truman scored his fabled come from behind victory in 1948, the turnout rate was a bare majority. And when Reagan was initially elected in 1980, producing a turn to the right in American politics, the rate of voter participation was less than 55%.