Voter turnout in the United States presidential elections

U.S. presidential election popular vote totals as a percentage of the total U.S. population. Note the surge in 1828 (extension of suffrage to non-property-owning white men), the drop from 1890-1910 (when Southern states disenfranchised most African Americans and many poor whites), and another surge in 1920 (extension of suffrage to women). Note also that this chart represents the number of votes cast as a percentage of total population, and does not compare either of those quantities with the percentage of the population that was eligible to vote.

The broadest historical trends in voter turnout in the United States presidential elections have been determined by the gradual expansion of voting rights from the initial restriction to white property owners in the early years of the country's independence, to all citizens aged 18 or older in most of the last century. Voter turnout in the presidential elections has historically been better than the turnout for midterm elections.[1]

Women's suffrage and gender gap

There was no systematic collection of voter turnout data by gender at a national level before 1964, but smaller local studies indicate a low turnout among female voters in the years following Women's suffrage in the United States. For example, a 1924 study of voting turnout in Chicago found that "female Chicagoans were far less likely to have visited the polls on Election Day than were men in both the 1920 presidential election (46% vs. 75%) and the 1923 mayoral contest (35% vs. 63%)." [2] The study compared reasons given by male and female non-voters, and found that female non-voters were more likely to cite general indifference to politics and ignorance or timidity regarding elections than male non-voters, and that female voters were less likely to cite fear of loss of business or wages. Most significantly, however, 11% of female non-voters in the survey cited a "Disbelief in woman's voting" as the reason they did not vote.

The graph of voter turnout percentages shows a dramatic decline in turnout over the first two decades of the twentieth century, ending in 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution granted women the right to vote across the United States. But in the preceding decades, several states had passed laws supporting women's suffrage. Women were granted the right to vote in Wyoming in 1869, before the territory had become a full state in the union. In 1889, when the Wyoming constitution was drafted in preparation for statehood, it included women's suffrage. Thus Wyoming was also the first full state to grant women the right to vote. In 1893, Colorado was the first state to amend an existing constitution in order to grant women the right to vote, and several other states followed, including Utah and Idaho in 1896, Washington State in 1910, California in 1911, Oregon, Kansas, and Arizona in 1912, Alaska and Illinois in 1913, Montana and Nevada in 1914, New York in 1917; Michigan, South Dakota, and Oklahoma in 1918. Each of these suffrage laws expanded the body of eligible voters, and because women were less likely to vote than men, each of these expansions created a decline in voter turnout rates, culminating with the extremely low turnouts in the 1920 and 1924 elections after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Voter turnout by sex and age for the 2008 US Presidential Election.

This voting gender gap waned throughout the middle decades of the twentieth century, and in recent decades has completely reversed, with a higher proportion of women voting than men in each of the last nine presidential elections. The Center for American Women and Politics summarizes how this trend can be measured differently both in terms of proportion of voters to non-voters, and in terms of the bulk number of votes cast. "In every presidential election since 1980, the proportion of eligible female adults who voted has exceeded the proportion of eligible male adults who voted [...]. In all presidential elections prior to 1980, the voter turnout rate for women was lower than the rate for men. The number of female voters has exceeded the number of male voters in every presidential election since 1964" [3] This gender gap has been a determining factor in several recent presidential elections, as women have been consistently about 15% more likely to support the candidate of the Democratic Party than the Republican candidate in each election since 1996.[4]

Race, ethnicity, and voter turnout

Voter turnout in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election by race/ethnicity.

The passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution gave black men the right to vote. While this historic expansion of rights resulted in significant increases in the eligible voting population, and may have contributed to the increases in the proportion of votes cast for president as a percentage of the total population during the 1870s, there does not seem to have been a significant long-term increase in the percentage of eligible voters who turn out for the poll. The disenfranchisement of most African Americans and many poor whites in the South during the years 1890-1910 likely contributed to the decline in overall voter turnout percentages during those years visible in the chart at the top of the article. Ethnicity has had an effect on voter turnout in recent years as well, with data from recent elections such as 2008 showing much lower turnout among people identifying as Hispanic or Asian ethnicity than other voters (see chart to the right).

Youth voting turnout

Recent decades have seen increasing concern over the fact that youth voting turnout is consistently lower than turnout among older generations. Several programs to increase the rates of voting among young people—such as MTV's "Rock the Vote" (founded in 1990) and the "Vote or Die" initiative (starting in 2012)—may have marginally increased turnouts of those between the ages of 18 and 25 to vote. However, the Stanford Social Innovation Review found no evidence of a decline in youth voter turnout. In fact, they argue that "Millennials are turning out at similar rates to the previous two generations when they face their first elections." [5]

Other eligibility factors

Rates of voting in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election by income
Rates in voting in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election by educational attainment

Income and educational attainment are significant factors affecting voter turnout. Educational Attainment is perhaps the best predictor of voter turnout, and in the 2008 election those holding advanced degrees were three times more likely to vote than those with less than high school education. Income correlated well with likelihood of voting as well, although this may be because of a correlation between income and educational attainment, rather than a direct effect of income.

Another factor influencing statistics on voter turnout is the percentage of the country's voting-age population who are ineligible to vote due to non-citizen status or prior felony convictions. In a 2001 article in the American Political Science Review, Michael McDonald and Samuel Popkin argued, that at least in the United States, voter turnout since 1972 has not actually declined when calculated for those eligible to vote, what they term the voting-eligible population.[6] In 1972, noncitizens and ineligible felons (depending on state law) constituted about 2% of the voting-age population. By 2004, ineligible voters constituted nearly 10%. Ineligible voters are not evenly distributed across the country – 20% of California's voting-age population is ineligible to vote – which confounds comparisons of states.

Election Voting Age Population (VAP)
(thousands)[7]
Turnout
(thousands)[7]
% Turnout of VAP[7][8]
1789
1792
1796
1800
1804
1808
1812
1816
1820
1824
1828 57.6%
1832 55.4%
1836 57.8%
1840 80.2%
1844 78.9%
1848 72.7%
1852 69.6%
1856 78.9%
1860 81.2%
1864 73.8%
1868 78.1%
1872 71.3%
1876 81.8%
1880 79.4%
1884 77.5%
1888 79.3%
1892 74.7%
1896 79.3%
1900 73.2%
1904 65.2%
1908 65.4%
1912 58.8%
1916 61.6%
1920 49.2%
1924 48.9%
1928 56.9%
1932 75,768 39,817 52.6%
1936 80,174 45,647 56.9%
1940 84,728 49,815 58.8%
1944 85,654 48,026 56.1%
1948 95,573 48,834 51.1%
1952 99,929 61,552 61.6%
1956 104,515 62,027 59.3%
1960 109,672 68,836 62.8%
1964 114,090 70,098 61.4%
1968 120,285 73,027 60.7%
1972 140,777 77,625 55.1%
1976 152,308 81,603 53.6%
1980 163,945 86,497 52.8%
1984 173,995 92,655 53.3%
1988 181,956 91,587 50.3%
1992 189,493 104,600 55.2%
1996 196,789 96,390 49.0%
2000 209,787 105,594 50.3%
2004 219,553 122,349 55.7%
2008 229,945 131,407 57.1%
2012 235,248 129,235 54.9%
2016 251,107

‡As of November 16, 2016, votes are still being tabulated in some states.[9]
Note: The Bipartisan Policy Center has stated that turnout for 2012 was 57.5 percent of the eligible voters, which they claim was a decline from 2008. They estimate that as a percent of eligible voters, turn out was: 2000, 54.2%; in 2004 60.4%; 2008 62.3%; and 2012 57.5%.[10] These were the same figures as given by the Center for the Study of the American Electorate.[11]

Later analysis by the University of California, Santa Barbara's American Presidency Project found that there were 235,248,000 people of voting age in the United States in the 2012 election, resulting in 2012 voting age population (VAP) turnout of 54.9%.[12] The total increase in VAP between 2008 and 2012 (5,300,000) was the smallest increase since 1964, bucking the modern average of 9,000,000-13,000,000 per cycle.

See also

References

  1. "The Worst Voter Turnout in 72 Years," New York Times Editorial Board. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/opinion/the-worst-voter-turnout-in-72-years.html
  2. Allen, Jodie T. 2009. "Reluctant Suffragettes: When Women Questioned Their Right to Vote." Pew Research Center. Accessible at http://www.pewresearch.org/2009/03/18/reluctant-suffragettes-when-women-questioned-their-right-to-vote/
  3. "Center for American Women and Politics Fact Sheet: Gender Differences in Voter Turnout." CAWP 2015. Accessible at http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/resources/genderdiff.pdf
  4. Waldman, Paul. 2016. "Why the 2016 election may produce the largest gender gap in history." The Washington Post. Accessible at https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/03/17/why-the-2016-election-may-produce-the-largest-gender-gap-in-history/
  5. Kiesa, Abby, and Peter Levine. 2016. "Do We Actually Want Higher Youth Voter Turnout?" Stanford Social Innovation Review. Accessible at http://ssir.org/articles/entry/do_we_actually_want_higher_youth_voter_turnout
  6. McDonald, Michael P.; Popkin, Samuel L. (December 2001). "The Myth of the Vanishing Voter". The American Political Science Review. 95 (4): 963–974. JSTOR 3117725.
  7. 1 2 3 Between 1932 and 2008: "Table 397. Participation in Elections for President and U.S. Representatives: 1932 to 2010" (PDF). U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012. U.S. Census Bureau.
  8. Between 1828-1928: "Voter Turnout in Presidential Elections: 1828 - 2008". The American Presidency Project. UC Santa Barbara. Retrieved 2012-11-09.
  9. http://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-ca-essential-politics-updates-there-are-more-than-4-million-ballots-1478828215-htmlstory.html
  10. "2012 Voter Turnout," Bipartisan Policy Center. November 8, 2012.
  11. wptv.com "Election results 2012: Report reveals 2012 voter turnout was lower than 2008 and 2004" Chanel 5 report. November 15, 2012. .
  12. "Voter Turnout in Presidential Elections", UC Santa Barbara (American Presidency Project). May 4, 2013.
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