The last decade of Butler County election results suggests Tuesday's voter turnout will be low.

During elections in odd-numbered years, voters generally weigh in almost exclusively on local elections.

Presidential years tend to see more than double the voter turnout in Butler County as years such as 2019, in which the largest-scale race appearing on the ballot is the statewide race for two Superior Court judge seats.

Even-year mid-term elections — such as last year's when U.S. congressional races appeared on the ballot — draw about twice the turnout of off-year races.

Michael Coulter, a political-science professor at Slippery Rock University, expects the trend to continue Tuesday. “It's a regular and predictable decline in turnout in odd-number years,” Coulter said. “These are local elections where lots of voters don't know a whole lot about the candidates.”

Coulter said such elections occasionally see upticks in turnout when a particular race seems to capture the local zeitgeist, or political climate. According to Coulter, only the common pleas court judge race had risen on his radar as one that might drive some turnout, if any do.

In that race, William “Wink” Robinson Jr. won both the Democratic and Republican nominations in May, but Jennifer Gilliland Vanasdale is running a prominent write-in campaign against him.

“The Court of Common Pleas seems like it might do it,” Coulter said. “It's a little unusual to have an organized write-in effort like that.”

Whatever the case, Coulter, said off-year races statistically do not indicate how much participation an area sees on, say, a presidential year.

He isn't betting on big numbers Tuesday.

“I suspect this will be like other odd-numbered election years,” he said.

Ken Hertzog, president of Butler County's Association of Township Officials, said he suspects local races won't be enough to buck the trend this year, despite what he would like.

“It's the same every off-year election,” Hertzog said. “Hopefully, people come out more than they have in the past.”

After all, Hertzog said, local races determine who is steering the ship in the communities in which voters actually live.

Voter turnout percentages for the last 10 years, according to the Butler County Board of Elections archive.2018:62.38 percent2017:23.6 percent2016:77.1 percent2015: 28.89 percent2014:46.32 percent2013:19.83 percent2012:73.54 percent2011: 25.12 percent2010:55.92 percent2009:26.51 percent