Only 10% of eligible voters turned up at the polls for last week’s primary elections. The turnout was even thinner than the 15.5% that showed up for the Democratic primary in 1998, though the fledgling Independence Party marked a record high 8% turnout. Federal Election Commission numbers from the last two decades of presidential elections paint a picture of what factors raise or lower the percentage of Americans who feel it is worth their time to make their way to the local polling station. In 1980, President Reagan was brought into office with 52.6% of the voting age population casting ballots. This was at a time when the American people were worn out by the economic and foreign policy disaster known as the Carter Era.

In 1988, with people fairly happy with the state of the economy, and looking to extend the Reagan years, only 50.1% of the voting age population turned out. That number shot back up, however, in 1992, when the nation turned on the senior President Bush, blaming him for hard economic times. That year 55.1% of the population came to the polls. Turnout then shrank to historic lows in 1996, as only 49.1% of a relatively satisfied and economically booming nation bothered to vote. As the economic bubble began to burst in 2000, turnout trended upward to 51.2%.

While other factors — such as the tightness of the race and a general sense, or lack thereof, of a civic duty to vote — can influence turnout, a lower turnout can suggest a more satisfied electorate. In the 1960s, when voter turnout was in the 60% range, America stood at the brink of nuclear war with a rival superpower. In the 1980s and 1990s, as Americans turned to the private pursuits of freedom, turnout declined. The point of democratic capitalism is that citizens can turn their attention away from the state. That may be what Americans, and New Yorkers, have been doing, though if they turn unhappy with the economy or the progress of the war, they could come back.