Tuesday is the day to head to the polls to cast your vote for the presidential election. AccuWeather Senior Vice President Evan Myers explains the weather's impact on Election Day.
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00:00The 2024 presidential election is Tuesday across the country.
00:04Many of you have already casted or cast your vote by mail or visited the polls early at
00:10your convenience.
00:11But for a long time, you had to head to your polling site in person to cast your vote.
00:17AccuWeather Senior Vice President and President of the State College Pennsylvania City Council
00:23Evan Meyer joins us to discuss the weather's impact on Election Day.
00:27Evan, you've also had a lot of experience in taking part in political campaigns.
00:32Yeah, I have, Bernie.
00:33I've worked with Governor Shapiro in Pennsylvania, his campaign.
00:38And also I've done a lot of research over the years into how the weather impacts folks
00:43voting and elections in general.
00:46So it's a very interesting topic and we're a day away, so it means a lot.
00:51Even the National Voting Day is interesting.
00:54Why is the first Tuesday in November an election day?
00:58It wasn't always like that.
00:59No, and it's the first Tuesday after the first Monday.
01:03So if Tuesday is the first, there's no election day.
01:06It actually used to be over about a month and a half period of time when people could
01:11vote.
01:12And part of the problem occurred, some states would have voted already and released their
01:18results and other states, no one's voted yet.
01:21So back in 1840, I think it was sometime in 1845 or 1865, 1845, it was before the Civil
01:30War.
01:31Yeah.
01:32What occurred then was that there was a Uniform Election Act that was passed by Congress saying
01:37that it was the first Tuesday after the first Monday so that the whole country voted at
01:41the same time.
01:43Now that's when they had to release their votes.
01:46Still, some voting occurred before that.
01:48There was a little bit of early voting even back then.
01:51But most of the time, it was done at that point, that one day.
01:55And the reason that day was chosen, there is somewhat of a weather element.
01:58Well, I was going to say that.
01:59There's a reason why they chose that day given the weather.
02:03Let's answer that.
02:04And then, does weather still impact voter turnout?
02:09Well, so one of the reasons that day was picked or that day was picked was because the coming
02:16winter really hadn't set in yet.
02:18But yet it was right after harvest season.
02:20So the crops were harvested.
02:23Winter hadn't set in to prevent people from going out and voting yet.
02:27And the reason that Tuesday was picked is Sunday a lot of folks went to church.
02:31And Wednesday was market day.
02:34So most people would be back home on their farms because at the time that that act was
02:39passed in the 1840s, almost 95 percent of all Americans lived on farms, not in cities.
02:46And so it was all around that, and it was around the weather to keep it away from the
02:51middle part of winter, just the beginning of winter before really the heavy snow set
02:56in and the real cold weather.
02:58And certainly this year is different because there's been so much early voting.
03:02The question is, does that mean that weather may not have a big, as big of an impact as
03:09it normally would, let's say years ago?
03:11Well, so weather still has an impact, but it's not as significant as it used to be because
03:17of the fact that you can work around what the weather is.
03:20So because of early voting and by election day, probably about 40 to 45 percent of all
03:26ballots cast will have been cast before you actually go to the polls, before the rest
03:31of the folks go to the polls.
03:33So the weather has had an impact in the past.
03:36If it's very stormy, if there is snow, you know, one of the monikers that they talked
03:43about, the campaign started in the snows of New Hampshire.
03:46That's when New Hampshire had the first primary of all the states.
03:50That's not the case anymore.
03:51South Carolina leads off and we have the Iowa caucuses.
03:55But the weather was kind of in our minds back then and still is today.
04:00But because of the fact that you can vote early, you can kind of work around the weather.
04:04If it's going to be a bad day, but you want to wait in line, you can go the next day if
04:07it's sunny.
04:08And so it's interesting.
04:10That may have an impact on the fact that in the last election, the last presidential election
04:15in 2020, that was the highest percentage of eligible voters to vote in 40, no, in 64 years.
04:24You have to go all the way back to 1960 to see the same number.
04:28And it's not a real high number, it's 62.8 percent.
04:32There have been some years where only about 50 percent of eligible voters voted.
04:37It's kind of amazing in the democracy we live in that only half the people that could actually
04:42vote voted.
04:43Is there a voting group that is more influenced, let's say, by weather as far as not to vote?
04:50Yes.
04:51The less committed.
04:52You know, there's always been this idea, well, older people don't vote in higher numbers
04:57when the weather's bad, it's harder for them to get to the polls.
05:00There is no evidence, there is no correlation whatsoever between age and having weather
05:06impact.
05:07The weather really impacts and is impacted by commitment.
05:10So the more committed you are, and generally folks that are older are more committed, that's
05:14what the surveys show, they actually tend to go out and vote no matter what the weather
05:19is.
05:20So if the weather's bad and you're committed to vote, you're going to go vote.
05:23If you're not so sure and there's bad weather, that generally will impact whether you go
05:28to the polls or not.