Voters cast their ballots at Metropolitan Library in Atlanta on Nov. 3, 2020. (Megan Varner/Getty Images)
Voters bandage their ballots at Metropolitan Library in Atlanta on Nov. 3, 2020. (Megan Varner/Getty Images)

Americans voted in record numbers in last twelvemonth's presidential election, casting nigh 158.4 one thousand thousand ballots. That works out to more than vi-in-10 people of voting age and nearly 2-thirds of estimated eligible voters, according to a preliminary Pew Research Heart analysis.

However you measure it, voter turnout jumped in 2020

Nationwide, presidential ballot turnout was about seven percentage points college than in 2016, regardless of which of three different turnout metrics we looked at: the estimated voting-age population as of July 1, that estimate adjusted to Nov. 1, and the estimated voting-eligible population, which subtracts noncitizens and ineligible felons and adds overseas eligible citizens. Based on these measures, turnout was the highest since at least 1980, the earliest twelvemonth in our analysis, and maybe much longer.

The ascent in turnout was fueled in part past the biting fight between incumbent President Donald Trump and challenger Joe Biden: A preelection survey institute a record share of registered voters (83%) maxim it "actually matter[ed]" who won. But another big factor was the dramatic steps many states took to expand mail balloting and early voting considering of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Turnout rates increased in every land compared with 2016, merely of the 10 states where it rose the nearly, seven conducted November's vote entirely or mostly by mail, our analysis shows. Six of those states had recently adopted all-mail service voting, either permanently (Utah and Hawaii) or for the 2020 elections only (California, New Jersey, Vermont and well-nigh of Montana).

The past two months have been among the well-nigh turbulent post-ballot periods in American history, with unfounded but constantly repeated claims of voting fraud culminating in the Jan. half-dozen attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters. Given the continuing divides over the 2020 presidential election, nosotros wanted to put the actual, verified turnout into some broader context. (The Census Agency typically releases a detailed study on registration and voting after every national election, but that's not likely to come out for several months withal.)

Measuring U.Southward. voter turnout is 1 of those things that seems intuitively straightforward but in exercise is annihilation but. U.S. elections are run non by a unmarried national agency, as in many other advanced democracies, but by private states and counties within states. At that place is no primal registry of eligible voters, no compatible rules for keeping registrations electric current, and no requirement to report vote totals in a consistent way.

All of which means that calculating turnout rates inevitably involves judgment calls – both in choosing which votes to include (the numerator) and the population against which to compare them (the denominator).

For this post, we originally wanted to base our analysis on full ballots counted, a metric that includes all ballots regardless of offices voted for. (It's typically slightly higher than the presidential vote, since there are always some voters who skip that contest but vote in down-election races.) But not all states have reported total-ballots data, so we turned our attention to the presidential race, which nearly always is the 1 that attracts the almost votes.

Nosotros compiled the official votes cast and counted for all presidential candidates (including write-in votes, when available) in 2016 and 2020, as certified and reported by each state's chief election office. For the 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012 elections, for which nosotros only needed amass nationwide vote totals, we relied on Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, supplemented when necessary by data from the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives.

For comparative purposes, nosotros calculated the presidential-vote totals as percentages of three separate measures of the potential voter pool: the eighteen-and-over population as of July 1, as estimated by the Census Bureau; those numbers interpolated to November. 1 by Michael McDonald, a political scientist and turnout expert at the University of Florida; and McDonald's estimate of the voting-eligible population, which subtracts noncitizens and ineligible felons and adds overseas eligible citizens.

Estimated turnout rates for other countries, which we've previously written almost, were obtained from the International Plant for Democracy and Electoral Help, which works to promote and support republic around the earth.

In Hawaii, turnout rose from 42.three% of the estimated voting-eligible population in 2016 to 57% last twelvemonth, the biggest turnout increase in the country past this measurement. In Utah, turnout increased past about 11 percentage points, from 56.viii% of estimated eligible voters in 2016 to nearly 68% in 2020.

Voter turnout increased in every U.S. state during the 2020 general election

The smallest turnout increases, as shares of estimated eligible voters, were in North Dakota (3.3 percentage points), Arkansas (3 points) and Oklahoma (2.5 points). Interestingly, the District of Columbia's adoption of all-mail service voting for the 2020 ballot didn't seem to impact turnout much: 63.vii% of estimated eligible D.C. voters voted for president, 3.three percentage points above the 2016 turnout level.

Minnesota had the highest turnout of whatever state final twelvemonth, with 79.4% of estimated eligible voters casting ballots for president. Colorado, Maine and Wisconsin all followed shut behind, at about 75.5%; Washington land, at 75.ii%, rounded out the meridian five. The lowest-turnout states were Tennessee (59.half dozen% of estimated eligible voters), Hawaii and West Virginia (57% each), Arkansas (55.ix%) and Oklahoma (54.8%).

The Census Bureau volition release its own estimates of turnout later this twelvemonth, using a somewhat different methodology (people who say they voted as a share of estimated voting-age population). Just based on the pattern of previous years, it'due south probable the Demography will prove the highest turnout since the 1960s.

Despite the big bump in turnout terminal year, the U.S. still lags behind most of its developed-nation peers when it comes to balloter participation. Out of 35 members of the Arrangement for Economic Cooperation and Development for which estimates of voting-age population in the most contempo national election were bachelor, U.South. turnout ranked an underwhelming 24th.