Government contractors – the people who pave your roads give employees time off to vote which impacts another component of government employees voting on election outcomes.
Government employees vote at higher rates than the general population — and the gap is large enough to shape who wins.
Brian Baugus, a Regent University economist quoted by the Public Sector Human Resources Association and Federal Times, estimates that government employees make up roughly 12 to 15 percent of the electorate, despite accounting for less than 10 percent of the population. That is a four-to-five-point overrepresentation at the ballot box, baked into every cycle before a single ad runs.
A Federal Times reader survey covering the 2020 cycle — self-reported and not scientifically representative — found 96 percent of the 1,081 federal worker respondents said they “definitely” voted. General turnout that year was about 66.8 percent of eligible voters. Self-reported numbers run high in every survey, and the Federal Times sample skewed toward Defense Department employees and military veterans. The spread is still too wide to be a measurement artifact.
The most rigorous figure comes from a 2022 American Political Science Review study, “Public Sector Employment and Voter Turnout.” After multivariate controls — age, income, education, homeownership — local public-sector employees still turned out at 1 to 3 percentage points above comparable private-sector employees. Earlier government-records studies put the raw gap at 11 to 12 points and the controlled gap at 4 to 5. The effect is strongest when the employee lives in the same municipality where they work, and it dissipates upon retirement — which the researchers read as evidence that ongoing stake, not civic-mindedness alone, drives the difference.
The public-payroll-adjacent pool is larger than the federal headcount suggests. Paul Light, writing for the Volcker Alliance in 2017, counted roughly 2 million federal civilian employees, 3.7 million federal contractors, 1.6 million federal grantees, 1.3 million active-duty military and nearly half a million Postal Service workers — about 9 million people on or near the federal payroll. State and local government employs another 19 million nationally, with nearly 60,000 state employees in South Carolina alone. Understanding the dynamics of government employees voting can shed light on these numbers.
One caveat: there is no survey-grade turnout figure for federal contractors as a distinct voter category. Contractors get folded into private-sector employment in Census and BLS surveys. The honest claim is “higher than the general population” — not “the most likely voters of any kind.”
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### 1. The structural pro-government bias
In 1965, economist Mancur Olson published *The Logic of Collective Action* and named the dynamic that runs underneath modern politics — concentrated benefits, dispersed costs. A small group with a lot to gain organizes. A large group with a little to lose does not.
Government employment is the textbook case. A federal paycheck, a state pension, a local benefits package — concentrated, identifiable, traceable. The cost is spread across every taxpayer in dollars most of us never calculate. James Buchanan, who won the 1986 Nobel for founding public choice theory with Gordon Tullock, made the same point differently — government decisions are produced by self-interested actors, not benevolent planners. The voters whose interests are concentrated show up at higher rates.
When the people who administer government also vote at higher rates than the people who pay for it, the system carries a built-in pro-government bias. That is not a moral failure of government workers — it is a structural feature of the incentives. A teacher voting for school funding, a county engineer voting for infrastructure dollars, a retiree voting to protect a pension — each is doing exactly what a rational, civically engaged citizen does.
**So what does this mean for you?** The budget will always face stronger pressure to grow than to shrink, regardless of which party holds the gavel. The people on the receiving end of public spending are organized to vote. The people writing the checks are not. If you pay for it but are not employed by it, you are the dispersed cost — and you have to show up to be counted.
### 2. Why this is not a partisan claim
A 2021 UC Berkeley Haas study by Xu, Spenkuch and Teso found Democrats now make up roughly half the full-time federal workforce, while the Republican share has slipped from about 32 percent in 1997 to 26 percent. That shift is real, and worth a separate piece. It is not the point here.
The point here is that both parties’ government workers turn out at higher rates than the general population. The Federal Times made it explicit in 2024 — “federal workers, both Democrat and Republican, eager to vote this fall.” Public-employee unions push Democratic turnout. Republican federal workers — concentrated in defense, law enforcement and veterans’ services — turn out for their own reasons. The structural effect cuts across the ballot.
The public-choice frame is often dismissed as a partisan attack. It is not. Olson and Buchanan were describing how groups behave when one side has concentrated stakes and the other does not. The dynamic does not care which lever you pull. It cares whether you show up.
**So what does this mean for you?** You cannot solve this by voting one party in or the other out. The bias is structural, not ideological. The only durable counterweight is higher turnout among the people who pay for government and do not work for it — and harder questions for every candidate about what they will cut, fund or freeze.
Understanding Government Employees Voting
### 3. The federalism question
Most of the spending that touches your life happens far from your ballot. Federal contractors and grantees are spread across all fifty states. South Carolina pulls federal dollars for highways, hospitals, military bases, university research and disaster relief. The voters whose paychecks depend on that spending vote in local races too.
That creates a federalism problem the classical public choice writers — Vincent and Elinor Ostrom, in particular — flagged decades ago. The further the spending is from the voter, the harder it is to hold accountable. A Horry County resident has direct say over the county council and the school board. They have almost no say over the federal grant that funded the contractor down the road — but the contractor’s vote weighs the same as theirs in every state and local election.
This is not an argument against federal spending. It is an argument for paying attention to where the money goes and who, locally, has a stake in it staying. Polycentric governance — the Ostroms’ phrase — works when decision centers are visible and contestable. It breaks down when one set of decision centers funds another set of voters mobilized to defend it.
**So what does this mean for you?** When a candidate promises specific federal dollars for the Grand Strand, ask who in your county is on the receiving end and who is paying. Both answers are knowable. Neither is in most campaign mailers.
### 4. The Horry County stake
Horry County’s mixed economy puts both sides of the equation in plain view. The dispersed-cost side — tourism workers, hospitality staff, fixed-income retirees on private pensions, small business owners — pays for public services through sales tax, property tax and hospitality fees. They have the least time, the least mobilization and the least built-in stake in any single budget line.
The concentrated-benefits side is substantial here too. Horry County government, the municipalities of Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Conway, Loris, Aynor and Surfside Beach, Horry County Schools, Coastal Carolina University, Horry-Georgetown Technical College, the Postal Service, the VA, military retirees on the Grand Strand, and the federal and state contractors who build the roads and run the clinics — they add up. The headcount is not the scandal. The asymmetry is the story.
**So what does this mean for you?** On June 9, and again in November 2026, your vote competes against an electorate that is mathematically more organized than you are. If you work in tourism, retail, hospitality, construction or any private trade, your turnout matters more, not less — because the structural pressure points the other way.
### 5. The skeptical-optimist close
None of this is an argument against civic engagement by government workers. Teachers should vote. Police officers should vote. County engineers should vote. The public choice writers were not trying to disenfranchise anyone — they were describing how rational actors behave inside a system, and asking the rest of us to notice the shape of the system.
The shape, in 2026, is this — the people who deliver government turn out at higher rates than the people who fund it, and the contracting layer adds a public-payroll-adjacent voter pool large enough to matter at every level of the ballot. That does not require conspiracy. It requires arithmetic.
The answer is not cynicism. The answer is to show up — primary day on June 9, general election in November, the council meetings and school board votes in between. Read the budget, not the speech. Ask what gets cut, not what gets named. Demand specifics. Skepticism is the price of self-government — turnout is the only way to enforce it.
### Further Reading
government employees voting – American Political Science Review (Cambridge Core) — “Public Sector Employment and Voter Turnout” (2022)
government employees voting – UC Berkeley Haas News — “Study finds the cost of partisanship among federal workers” (Xu, Spenkuch, Teso, April 2021)
government employees voting – Federal Times — “Federal workers, both Democrat and Republican, eager to vote this fall” (May 2024)
government employees voting – Public Sector Human Resources Association — “Government Employees Eager to Hit the Voting Booth in November“
government employees voting – Public Choice (Springer) — “Public employees lining up at the polls — the conditional effect of living and working in the same municipality
government employees voting – Brookings — “The true size of government is nearing a record high” (Paul Light)
government employees voting – Pew Research Center — “US federal workers: Key questions and employment trends” (January 2025)
government employees voting- Shanker Institute — “Public Employee Unions and Voter Turnout”
government employees voting – Project On Government Oversight (POGO) — “Contractors and the True Size of Government”
government employees voting – The Volcker Alliance — “The True Size of Government“
government employees voting – Institute of Economic Affairs — “Public Choice: A Primer”
government employees voting – Mancur Olson — *The Logic of Collective Action* (Harvard University Press, 1965)
