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With votes still counted, turnout in the 2020 presidential election hit a 50-year high, surpassing the record set by Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential election – an extraordinary commitment in what amounted to a referendum on the leadership of President Donald Trump.
On Sunday, the votes counted represented 62% of the eligible voting age population in the United States. This is an increase of 0.4 percentage points so far from the rate reached in 2008, when the country elected its first black president.
The number of votes also set records, although this is a less remarkable milestone given the country’s growing population. So far, 148 million votes have been cast, with Democrat Joe Biden winning over 75 million – the highest number for a presidential candidate in history. Trump received over $ 70 million – the highest total for a losing candidate.
The numbers will certainly increase as election officials continue to count more ballots. But election experts and supporters are already debating the forces behind the wave of civic participation. Some have referred to the numbers as evidence of what happens when states extend the deadline and of ways voters can vote, as many states have done this year. Others have noted the extraordinary passions provoked by Trump – both pro and con.
The result: the highest turnout since 1968, according to data from The Associated Press and the United States Elections Project, which tracks turnout. Experts believe the 2020 rate could reach heights not seen since the turn of the 20th century, before all women were allowed to vote.
“It’s hard to imagine that we can go any higher than that,” said Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida who heads the Elections Project.
An Associated Press analysis shows that some of the biggest turnout increases to date have occurred in states that have liberalized their postal voting rules. In two states where it was significantly developed, Montana and Vermont, the turnout increased by more than 10 percentage points and more than 9 percentage points, respectively, from the previous presidential election, enough to place states in the top 10 for increases. Hawaii saw the biggest increase in participation, a jump of more than 14 percentage points so far.
Texas, which did not expand postal voting but gave voters more time to vote in person, saw a dramatic increase of more than 9 percentage points in voter turnout from 50% to 59% of its voting age population. .
Many of the states with the highest turnout increases – including Arizona, Texas, and Georgia – were new battlegrounds in the presidential race, places where Democrats sought to mobilize new voters and displace them. Republican strongholds. Some analysts have noted that this number proves the effectiveness of voter education and organizational efforts.
“People vote when they are asked to vote,” said Seth Masket, a political scientist at the University of Denver.
But the record turnout, to Democrats’ surprise, didn’t always help them. The party lost seats in the House and failed to win enough Senate seats to take control of the upper house – which now relies on towers in Georgia. They also failed to divert a single state legislature from Republican control.
These findings undermine the long-held conventional wisdom that Democrats benefit the most from a high turnout. It’s a theory even Trump adopted this year, when he warned of “voting levels” so high that “you would never have an elected Republican in this country again.”
Democrats were excited about the massive early voting in places where voters are normally underachieving, such as Texas: “Our position in Texas has always been that we are not a Red state, we are a non-voting state,” said Gilbert Hinojosa, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, which hoped to take control of the Texas House of Representatives.
Instead, Texas Democrats didn’t even come close, despite the vote surge, losing the presidential vote by 5.5 percentage points, not winning any seats in Congress or catching up to the ground in the Legislature of the state.
The results have led some Democrats to question the party’s decision to suspend door knocking and in-person outreach for months, over fears of the spread of the coronavirus.
“Maybe we weren’t reaching the people we needed for persuasion,” Hinojosa said. “I have to believe it’s much more effective face to face.”
It is still early to know exactly who showed up on Tuesday. But Tom Bonier, a Democratic data analyst, looked at information from three all-mail states – Colorado, Nevada and Oregon – and saw a dramatic increase in the number of younger, non-white voters, as well as others. basic democratic constituencies.
Calculating historical turnout is tricky due to changes in the way voter registers were kept when larger proportions of the population were not allowed to vote. The forecast of a record rate is based on records kept by McDonald’s, which calculated the number of eligible voters in each election year until founding.
The Associated Press determined the current turnout by comparing the number of votes counted to the estimated number of current potential voters in Project Elections in the United States.
The turnout was higher before 1920, when some women were granted the right to vote, because the pool of people who could vote was smaller. That’s why McDonald and others believe the 2020 election could surpass the 1908 record by 65.7%.
The highest turnout after World War II was in 1960, when 63.8% of eligible voters voted, according to McDonald’s records.
The 2020 turnout records come after 2018 saw the highest turnout for a midterm election since 1912. The two recent elections had one thing in common: a chance to send a message about Trump.
“He motivated Democrats who hated him and Republicans who thought he was better than most Republicans,” said Brad Todd, a Republican strategist.
This begs the question of whether future elections will attract as much attention or as many votes. “With him not at the top of the ticket, what does it look like?” Masket asked.
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Associated Press data editor Meghan Hoyer and Associated Press data reporter Angeliki Kastanis contributed to this report.
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