With votes still to be counted, voting in the 2020 presidential election hit a 50-year high, beating Barack Obama’s 200. Recorded the presidential election of, which was an extraordinary alliance for the referendum on the leadership of President Donald Trump.
As of Sunday, U.S. The percentage of long-term votes in is 62% of the voting-age population, an increase of 0.4% so far from the rate spread in 2008, when the nation elected its first black president.
The sheer number of votes also set a record, although it is a less significant target given the country’s growing population. Democrat Jn Biden has won more than 75 million votes, the highest number for a presidential candidate in history, reaching 148 million votes so far. Trump received more than 70 million – the highest total for a losing candidate.
The number is sure to increase as election officials count more ballots. But election experts and parties are already debating the forces behind the growth of civic participation.
Some drew attention to the numbers as evidence of the extent to which some states have done this year and how time voters can vote. Others, on the other hand, noted the extraordinary high spirits Trump had instigated.
Results: The highest turnout since 1968, according to data from the Associated Press and the United States Election Project, which tracks turnout. Experts believe that the rate of 2020 could reach unseen heights from the beginning of the 20th century, before all women were allowed to vote.
“It’s hard to imagine that we would be able to get higher than this,” said Michael MacDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida who runs the election project.
The Associated Press analysis shows that some of the largest polls to date have taken place in states that liberalized their mail-voting rules. Montana and Vermont, the two states where it expanded significantly, gained more than 10 percent and more than 9 percentage points, respectively, compared to the previous presidential election, enough to put the states in the top 10. Hawaii has seen the largest turnout increase, more than 14 percent so far.
Texas, which did not increase mail turnout but gave voters extra time to vote in person, saw a percentage increase in turnout, increasing from 50% of the voting age population to %%%. .
Many of the states with the highest turnout, including Arizona, Texas and Georgia, were the new battlegrounds in the presidential race, where Democrats tried to gather new voters and move Republicans. Some analysts noted that the numbers have proven the effectiveness of the organization’s efforts to reach out to voters.
“People vote when people are asked to vote,” said Seth Muscat, a political scientist at the University of Denver.
But, surprisingly for Democrats, the big participation in this record did not always help them. The party lost seats in the House and failed to win enough Senate seats directly to gain control of the upper chamber – which now survives on a runout in Georgia. They failed to turn a single state legislature out of Republican control.
Those results have long undermined traditional wisdom, which Democrats vote for the most. This is also a principle, when Trump called this year, when he warned of “voting levels” that “you will never have a Republican elected in this country.”
Democrats are excited about early voting in places with generally low-performing voters, such as Texas, said Gaubert Hinojosa. “Our position in Texas has always been that we are not a red state, we are a non-voting state.” President of the Texas Democratic Party, who hoped to take control of the Texas House of Representatives.
Instead, the Texas Democrats lost the presidential vote by 5.5 percent despite a boom in the polls, failing to win congressional seats or a run in the state legislature.
Some Democrats speculated about the party’s decision to keep the party’s doors open for months and disable individual voters, citing concerns about the spread of the coronavirus.
“Maybe we weren’t reaching out to people who needed to be persuaded,” Hinojosa said. “I think it’s more effective than just coping.”
It is too early to say for sure who came out on Tuesday. But Democratic data analyst Tom Bonier looked at data from three mail states – Colorado, Nevada and Reg Reagan – and saw a significant increase in small and non-white voters, as well as other major Democratic constituencies.
The historic turnout is difficult to calculate because of changes in voter records when most people did not vote. Record high rate predictions are based on records maintained by McDonald’s, which has calculated the number of eligible voters each election year, all the way up to its inception.
Associated Press, U.S. The election determined the current turnout rate by comparing the estimated number of potential voters to the election
Voting was high before 1920, when some women gained the right to vote, as the pool of people who could vote was low. That’s why McDonald’s and others believe that the 2020 election could surpass the 1908 high-water level of 65.7%.
According to McDonald’s records, the highest turnout in the post-World War II era was in 1960, when .8 cast. %% eligible voters cast ballots.
The post-2020 poll record came after the 1919 midterm elections saw the highest turnout. The last two elections had one thing in common: the opportunity to send a message about Trump.
“He inspired Democrats who hated him and Republicans who thought he was better than most Republicans,” said Republican strategist Brad Todd.
It raises the question of whether future elections will draw so much attention to how many votes. “Not on top of the ticket with it, what does this look like?” Musket asked.
