Why Is Voter Turnout for Mayoral Elections Always So Abysmally Low?

New York City is holding precisely the kind of local election today that years of data suggest yields low turnout. It's an off year in the national election cycle. There are no presidential candidates on the ballot. There aren't any mid-term congressional decisions to make, either. It's not even a general election. And these are the jobs up for grabs on the primary ballot: mayor, comptroller, public advocate, district attorney, city council, borough president. And here people really start to yawn.

For other obvious reasons – the national spotlight, the multiple sex scandals, the close mayoral contest, the Bloomberg-less novelty of it all – New York's election today is probably as exciting as local elections get. And yet the turnout is still expected to be fewer than a million residents in a city with 4 million voters. (Last time New York City did this, in 2009, only 11 percent of registered Democrats voted.)