Summary
The 2024 presidential election saw record-high turnout nearing 2020 levels, with over 152 million ballots cast.
Donald Trump won both the Electoral College and the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, defying conventional wisdom that high turnout benefits Democrats.
Key swing states like Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania had increased turnout, with Trump outperforming Kamala Harris in battlegrounds despite her strong voter mobilization.
The GOP’s focus on early and mail voting, as well as targeting infrequent voters, proved effective, signaling a shift in Republican turnout strategies in the Trump era.
The 2024 presidential election saw record-high turnout
nearing 2020 levels
Is it just me or do these two statements directly contradict each other?
3rd highest turnout since 1900 is a bronze metal and absolutely one for the record books.
You’re right. This reeks of choosing your narrative before looking at the data to me.
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Fair point, that is logical.
Trump basically got the same number of votes as 2020. Someone else didn’t show up.
No he didn’t. At last count, he’s sitting at 77.4 million votes, which is a little more than 3 million more votes than he got in 2020 (74.2).
Compared to the nearly 11m dems who stayed home this election, it’s not that much.
Where did you get that 11 million number? Vote totals so far are a little more than 5 million short of 2020. Everyone keeps talking about 11 million, 15 million, 20 million people who stayed home and I think it’s frankly a way to cope with the hard and gross truth that the country shifted right. Some people stayed home this year, but from all the sources I can see, it’s nowhere near 11 million, and the fascist candidate increasing his vote totals every year is very alarming. I get people who don’t want to face that. It’s scary as hell, especially if you’re in an out group. In my traditionally deeply blue state, the split gap between Harris and The Fanta Menace was like 55/45. That’s WAY too close for comfort and while people staying home is a problem, it’s not the main problem this time around.
First of all, we had close to 100 million eligible non-voters. “Didn’t vote” is definitely the winner of this election. Secondly, those numbers are from projections and statistics. At least 10 million democrats who should have voted, didn’t.
How do you know they were Democrats and not independents?
The people that always stay home weren’t gonna come out. They never do. 2020 is said to have had historic levels of turnout and it had 2/3rds of eligible voters coming out to vote. I wouldn’t count on that last third who always sits out to suddenly realize they’re screwing themselves and everyone else. I still don’t know where the 10 million number is coming from. Who’s projections and statistics? Would it be the same people who projected that despite a close race, Harris would be the likely winner? I’m not sure they’re all that credible at the moment. I think people shifted right and I think that sucks a lot. I wish I had a solution, but I don’t. There were any number of good reasons to come out and vote for Harris, or at least against FatPutin, but here we are.
Harris had 73 million votes. Biden had 81 million. The population and consequently the number of democratic voters has also increased by several million.
If you do the very basic arithmetic, there are at least 10 million democratic voters who didn’t turn out in 2024. Hope that helps.
You know, I wasn’t rude to you, so there isn’t any reason for your condescending tone.
That’s possible and what a lot of people are saying.
It’s also possible people who voted for Biden voted for Trump instead.
“Big voter turnout” to me would still be wrong.
155+ million voters in 2020Population increases by roughly 6 million
Less than 150 million voters in 2024.
If we consider decreasing voter turnout high turnout, sure, it was high. That said, yes some voters likely swayed, but I’d like 80-90% voter turnout to be considered high, but we never get that.
Less than 150 million voters in 2024.
It’s more than 150 million. The current count is about 153 million, and there’s still more left to count in California.
11 days later and still counting, jeez. There as to be better ways to do that.
Several states have rules that the mail-in ballots have to be dropped in the mail on election day, and the mail can take a few days to be received, confirmed as eligible/valid, and then counted.
Many states have rules that allow for people to submit provisional ballots to be submitted and set aside while the system verified that the voter is eligible, and they don’t actually unseal and count the ballot until they confirm the voter’s eligibility.
Some even have rules where if a ballot is going to be challenged for not meeting the criteria for voting, such as matching the voter’s signature on file, the voter is given an opportunity to cure the defect. This can take weeks.
Significantly, the largest state, California, does all of these. They do 100% absentee voting, which increases the administrative overhead of counting (each envelope must be validated before being opened, many ballots not received by election day, a long process for disqualifying or curing ballots). So they’re the slowest. And they have the most. But they also have high voter participation rates, which is the goal of these voter-friendly policies that slow down counting.
This is literally the third highest turnout since 1900 by VEP, only behind 2020 and 1960. This is hardly a low turnout election. The last ‘low turnout’ election was 2000, most of the ones since have been average or slightly above.
Also voters died. Old age, COVID, random accidents
Big? Trump got elected with only 20% of USians voting for him.
Anything less than 90% turnout would already start being dangerous for democracy.
Voting is not a right, it’s a duty.This is literally the third highest turnout since 1900 by VEP, only behind 2020 and 1960. This is hardly a low turnout election. The last ‘low turnout’ election was 2000, most of the ones since have been average or slightly above.
That just means that USian democracy is sick for a long time.
Here in Brazil we have lots of problems and room to improve, but I think we do right by requiring everybody to register to vote on turning 18 and if anyone misses an election without justification they are fined.
Our population increases every year. I hate when people compare numbers instead of percentages (of eligible voters).
Did you ever stop and compare how many votes Biden got to Reagan? So much for Reagan having the biggest landslide! /s
They never talk about percentages of eligible voters because it would be obvious that nobody wants any of these creeps and this “democracy” is a total sham.
Seriously I’ve tried to google this information historically. It’s not easy. I saw a zine about this a few years ago but I can never find it.
The VEP is the third highest since 1900, only behind 2020 and 1960. This is an extremely high turnout election
Lot of accurate criticisms in this thread, but something we should also keep in mind, progressives are OK with that. If voters vote and it doesn’t go our way, we don’t look for ways to restrict voting or prevent voters from participating in the process. We don’t call in bomb threats or create arbitrary obstacles to voting. We celebrate high voter turnout, even when we lose. Democracy is bigger than one election.
Too bad this might be the last one
I agree with you, but if the time for another revolution has arrived, we need to remember that it wasn’t democracy that got us here, it was corruption. When we win, we should not seek retribution or tit-for-tat oppressive policies.
That’s how we felt before 2020 anyway. People actively voting for a party trying to destroy democracy changes the calculus a bit and we can no longer ignore the long-term ramifications of placing these kinds of people in power
Do we have any stats showing what percentage of eligible voters turned out this year? If the US population keeps increasing, we’d expect “record turnout” every election.
63 and a half percent. Third highest since 1900, only behind 2020(65.8%) and 1960(high 64s to low 65s depending on source). For context, 2008 was 61.6, 2016 was 59.2, and 2000 was 54.3.
According to Wikipedia, about 155.5 million people voted in 2020 and so far, there are about 150.2 votes counted this time (98% of votes counted). They say that in 2020 we had a 66.6% turnout, but until all the votes are counted, we don’t have a turnout number yet. That said, it seems on track to be a little lower than 2020, although not by a huge margin.
According to Wikipedia, about 155.5 million people voted in 2020 and so far, there are about 150.2 votes counted this time (98% of votes counted).
These numbers exclude third parties and independents.
When those are included, 2020 included 158.4 million votes, and the current count so far in 2024 is about 153 million.
We got 60ish% participation of adults, 64ish% of ‘eligible’ voters.
We need 100ish
64ish is literally the third highest since 1900, only behind 1960(similar range) and 2020(65ish). It was 54% in 2000. This stuff tends to eb and flow. There was a steady decline from 1960 until 2000 and it’s been rising since. 1920-1960 was steady growth, 1870s to 1920s was a decline. Prior to that it was growth more or less since the start
6 million less people voted so far than 2020, which is enough to make up the popular vote difference. I think this article’s conclusion is both* dismissive of population growth and also too generous in assuming those missing votes would have been split the same as those who did show up.
