Coral Gables is moving elections to November. Does it matter? Yes, says a University of Miami political scientist.

Stose: To what extent is voter turnout impacted by when elections are held?

Nelson: For those of us who study urban and local politics, election timing is one of the most important policies for understanding what turnout is going to be. Elections or municipalities that hold their municipal elections off cycle, meaning not in November of either midterm or presidential years.

See voter turnout drop precipitously. And that is true across cities throughout the United States.

So if you look at Miami and Chicago, for a presidential election turnout, it's going to be 70% or in the ballpark of that range. But then when you go to the off-cycle, municipal level elections, that will drop to 20 or 30% in Chicago or in the city of Miami, it oftentimes drops into the teens.

Stose: So could moving the election to November increase voter turnout?

Nelson: When elections are moved on cycle, voter participation increases substantially. We also know that the individuals who participate in off-cycle elections, such as Coral Gables April 2026 election in this case, tend to not be representative of the city as a whole. Voters who participate in off-cycle elections tend to be more affluent, they tend to be older and they tend to be whiter.

Miami has an even steeper decline in its voter turnout in mayoral elections, which are held off- cycle. The most recent Miami mayoral election was actually a higher turnout than it typically is 22%, which is still concerning, to say the least.

Off-cycle elections have significantly lower turnout rates than do elections that are held on cycle. As a comparison, Miami-Dade County has a mayor, and she's been elected on cycle in presidential years. When she gets elected to office, voter turnout looks more like a presidential election because it's held at the exact same time.

So if people are turning out to vote for president, why not vote for mayor as well?

Stose: This election was offered almost entirely by mail-in ballot, with the exception that you could drop off your ballot in person at the Supervisor of Elections office in Doral – not exactly convenient to Coral Gables. But President Trump is trying to eradicate mail-in ballots, and issued an executive order last month restricting mail-in voting. Why is this controversial?

Nelson: Donald Trump himself voted using a mail-in ballot in the most recent special election within his state congressional district. And one of the major miscalculations that I think President Trump is making is the assumption that by limiting the ability for individuals to vote via mail is somehow going to only impact Democrats. We know from states throughout the country, I'm thinking, particularly in Florida and Arizona, that many Republicans do use mail-in voting simply because it's more convenient.

So I'm not surprised that the City of Coral Gables is approaching this election in this way, simply because voting by mail is a lot more convenient for a lot of folks, and especially when you're voting not only for political candidates, but you're voting on eight pretty in-the-weeds policy changes to the city charter. It can make the cost of voting a lot lower. If you're able to sit in your home, have your phone or your laptop out and looking at what these ballot measures are going to do, that perhaps makes more sense than trying to collect all of this information and then also make a plan to physically go to the ballot box.

I think all of the validated vote numbers show that Americans are very politically engaged at present as measured by voter turnout rates. But I think what the president is doing, whether intentional or unintentional, is sowing distrust in electoral processes in the United States. And that is not a good thing. And I do think that individuals that he is selling the most political mistrust with are his own supporters.

Following the 2024 presidential election, where Trump beat Harris, I didn't hear many Democrats saying that the election was a hoax. But I think by Trump calling into question the validity of mail-in ballots, he is planting the seeds of a post-election ecosystem where his own supporters may not trust the results of the election if the polls end up being correct, and Republicans are slated to lose quite a few congressional seats.

I think what he's trying to do is to create an environment that opens the door for his own supporters to be angry, to call into question the results if Republicans do not do well in the midterm elections.

Stose: Opponents of moving Coral Gables elections to November say it will let big money interests dominate local decisions, and that down-ballot issues and candidates will be ignored.

Nelson: So it's interesting that critics of this say that special interests play an outsized role in on-cycle elections, because among the political scientists who study off-cycle elections, they talk about how off-cycle races have that exact problem Essentially, the outcome is essentially determined by interest groups who strategically mobilize their own supporters and no one else. Sarah Anzia (University of California, Berkeley) studies off-cycle elections as it relates to school board referenda and educational funding referenda. And she essentially says that these are races where the teacher's union comes out. They selectively mobilize who it is they want to vote in these elections, and those are the people who end up turning out.”

So the notion that it is only on-cycle elections that are influenced by special interests just does not pan out in the political science research on this topic, because we also know that special interests also play an outsized role within off-cycle elections as well, while simultaneously decreasing voter turnout. 

Having the option of mail-in voting, having more modalities for how individuals can participate in an election, I believe is a good thing. I do think that by potentially only having an election where the only way you can participate is with a mail-in ballot, that potentially creates confusion among voters, who typically make a plan to vote in person, whether that's on Election Day or early.