Five quick facts on 2024 election turnout
Only 8 states saw a bump in turnout rates in 2024. Which ones were they?
Now that 99.99% of ballots have been counted, it’s worth spending four minutes looking at voter turnout rates by state in the 2024 presidential election. The map above shows each state’s change in turnout rate in 2024 vs 2020. Stare at it, print it out, tattoo it on your bicep.
And so we’re clear, when I say turnout rate, I mean the percentage of people who voted divided by the percentage of people eligible to vote.
This is a first post in a series of turnout-related posts here on Crash Course, so let’s start with five quick nuggets to set the table.
Despite everyone and their momma declaring this “the most important election of our lifetime,” the 2024 election had a voter turnout rate of 63.88%, down from 65.99% in 2020.
Only 8 out of the 51 states (yes, I’m counting DC) had a higher turnout rate in 2024 compared to 2024.
Five of those eight states were (shocker!), the swing states of GA, MI, NV, PA, and WI. Wisconsin saw the biggest turnout bump—1.89%—of any state. And the top five turnout gaining states all went for Pres. Trump.
Five states saw a drop in voter turnout of more than 5 percentage points versus 2020. That’s a sizable dip.
California had the biggest fall with 6.74 percentage point drop in turnout. Now before you say, “no doi, that’s because The Golden State lost a bunch of people during COVID,” notice that Florida and Texas, two states that saw big population increases over the last decade, both saw a turnout dip of over 3 points. This was a national trend.
That’s it for voter turnout. For now. Go forth friends!