Although a large scholarship exists on referendums, few have explored the impact of turnout levels on policy outcomes. There have only been two Swiss studies of turnout bias and referendum results, making the current study the first to employ U.S. state‐level referendums to test the turnout bias hypothesis. Based on 735 cases of morality policy over a four‐decade period (1980–2020) and a subset of 364 mixed morality policies, multivariate analysis found that turnout had no strong or positive effect on liberal outcomes. However, competitive elections did yield more liberal referendum outcomes, and we revisit the long‐standing research stream on the impact of competitive elections and welfare policies. Since one 2020 study found no support for a partisan turnout bias favoring the Democrats, this finding of no turnout bias with respect to referendum outcomes adds credibility to their line of argument.
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