Record US Election Turnout: Continuing Trend Since 2000, After Low Turnout During 1960-1996

Record US election turnout: Continuing trend since 2000, after low turnout during 1960-1996

By Binsal Abdulkader ABU DHABI, (Pakistan Point News - 08th Nov, 2020) A record voter turnout in the US Presidential Election 2020 is a continuation of an upward trend in recent history since 2000, after a very low turnout during the elections held between 1960 and 1996, reveals data provided by researchers, experts and media reports.

Americans appear to have voted in the 2020 presidential election at their highest rate in 120 years, said Pew Research Centre, a Washington-based nonpartisan fact tank.

Record votes for winner and loser Although 2020 election data is still incomplete, President-elect Joe Biden has amassed more than 74 million votes as of Saturday, while his opponent and incumbent president Donald Trump has received nearly 70 million – already the most and second-most in the US history.

More than 160 million people may have voted in this presidential election, according to a preliminary estimate by US Elections Project, a nonpartisan elections data website run by University of Florida professor Michael McDonald.

That would mean 66.9 percent of the voting-eligible population turned out in this election the highest rate since 1900, when 73.7 percent of the population voted.

Historic record in 1876 However, this year’s turnout did not come close to surpassing the record set in 1876, according to Associated Press. That year, 81.8 percent of eligible American voters went to the polls.

This upward turnout trend in recent history started in 2000, after a historic low turnout during elections held between 1960 and 1996, said an expert.

"Turnout in the United States has been low compared to other countries. That's a simple fact. There was what we referred to as a secular decline in turnout from 1960 all the way to 1996," said Professor Daron Shaw, a university distinguished teaching professor and the Frank C. Erwin Jr. Chair of State politics at the University of Texas in Austin.

Puzzling turnout during 1960-1966 "This is a little puzzling because during the same period of time, you had the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, which opened up turnout possibilities for African-Americans in a way that they had been denied previously," Shaw pointed out.

Despite higher levels of educational attainment that generally encourages citizens to vote and a number of pieces of legislation that made voting easier, the turnout declined from 1960 through 1996, Shaw explained at a recent virtual briefing for a select group of journalists, organised by Washington Foreign Press Centre, as part of a virtual reporting tour of the election process.

The US Department of State has selected more than 200 journalists from media outlets across the globe, including Emirates news Agency, WAM, for the eight-week long virtual tour.

Upward trend since 2000 Then the voter turnout increased significantly from 2000 to 2008, the professor said. It went back down slightly in 2012, but then up again in 2016.

"So, we have this odd pattern in recent history over the last 70-75 years," observed Shaw who has co-authored a recent book titled ‘The Turnout Myth’ with John Petrocik, published by Oxford University Press.

His first two books, ‘Unconventional Wisdom: Facts and Myths About American Voters’ and ‘The Race To 270’ were published in 2008 and 2006, respectively.

History of turnout since 1824 The first marginally mass franchise election in the United States, which was in 1824, saw extremely low turnout, the professor said.

"Then the Andrew Jackson election of 1828 begins, what we would refer to as really the truly democratic period of presidential elections in the United States, which runs from 1828, really all the way up until 2020," Shaw explained.

About the overall turnout pattern historically, he said, it is extremely high in the 1840s, 1850s, all the way through the 1880s.

There was a decline during the reform era, when political parties were encumbered by a lot of reform-minded laws, which continued until 1920s and then there was a brief rebound, the author said.

"So, beginning of 1944, which is the last election during the Second World War, all the way up and through 2016, you see that turnout increases into the 1950s and it bumps around between 60 percent and 70 percent," the professor noted.

"Then after 1960, you see a long period of what we would call secular [long-term] decline. About 64 percent was the turnout in the Richard Nixon, John Kennedy election of 1960. But then by the time you get to 1988, the election between Michael Dukakis and George H.W. Bush, turnout is only 53 percent. So there is this long decline," he explained.

Even before the 2020 election, over 80 percent of people had said in polls that they were interested in voting. "It's very high comparatively and it's high historically, compared to past US elections," said Shaw who also had served as President George W. Bush's representative on the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and as one of the academic directors for President Barack Obama's Commission for Election Administration.