In an election season that is setting records in some states for turnout, campaign spending and existential angst, a new survey of races nationwide offers another chart-topping statistic: Seven in 10 elective offices in this year’s general election are being sought by only one candidate.
BallotReady, a nonpartisan organization promoting civic engagement, which conducted the research, said the share of uncontested races at all levels of government, from local fire districts to Capitol Hill, was greater than in any of its past surveys in 2020, 2022 and 2023.
“Democracy is not working the way it should,” Alex Niemczewski, chief executive of the organization, said on Wednesday. “Voters don’t have a choice.”
The survey covered some 44,650 elective offices across counties with more than 50,000 residents, or about 88 percent of the nation’s population. Both partisan and nonpartisan offices were included. Most single-candidate offices were concentrated in hyperlocal jurisdictions like water-management or conservation boards, and in county governments, the data showed. Competition was more common for city, state and federal offices.
But the findings varied, sometimes wildly, from state to state. A mere 22 percent of elective offices are uncontested this fall in New Hampshire, the lowest total among states (only Connecticut, with 24 percent, came close). Alabama, 90 percent of offices on the November ballot are uncontested was the highest.
In eight jurisdictions, at least 80 percent of offices fielded just one candidate: Arkansas, the District of Columbia, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Texas.
Uncontested races are an old and much-debated phenomenon in American politics, and even the BallotReady survey does not capture its scope. In a nation where many Republicans and Democrats have sorted themselves into separate geographic islands, many elections are so lopsided that they might as well have gone uncontested.
Ms. Niemczewski said she believed that Americans knew too little about the democratic process to be full participants. “People don’t know what’s going to be on the ballot,” she said. “They don’t know who represents them.”
The survey did not break down the list of uncontested races by party, but Ms. Niemczewski said it appeared that more single-candidate offices were in rural areas, which are predominantly Republican.
That is consistent with a study of about 29,400 partisan offices in the 2022 midterms, which found that Democrats were more than three times as likely as Republicans to not field a candidate for the job.
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