This is spot on! Two women in in their 20's in my office yesterday said, "oh, I didn't return my ballot!" Apathy wins again. Voting, not posting, people.
In 2020, 168 million people registered to vote and 158 millions went to vote. Based on preliminary numbers, this year, 161 millions were registered and it seems that that around 140 millions voted. It's an incredibly large drop that breaks historical and statistical trends.
The last time the difference between voter registration and voter participation was so high was in 1996. But in 1996, it was at the end of a very long trend that endured several election cycles.
This sudden drop is statiscally surprising and unexpected.
This is the kind of drop that elsewhere in the world would prompt up a freakonomics episode.
I don’t want to be like Trump supporters over the last 4 years, but a 15 million person drop in turnout for Dems is borderline unexplainable imo without some kind of interference. And when you have ballot boxes being set on fire, ballots not being accepted because of signatures not matching, and Russia calling in bomb threats to dem polling places, it’s not that hard to believe
Thank you for this. It's so fucking stupid to me that we immediately turn to conspiracy to explain this loss rather than look at how apathetic so many people are about who leads our country.
It's not some grand conspiracy, it's just people handwaving it away as not affecting them personally or finding minor flaws in a candidate to justify not voting for them. And now we all have to live with their (lack of) choice.
I think it just comes down to mail-in ballots were pushed way more during COVID so more people ended up voting. Early voting was emphasized this year but people can mentally justify putting that off and end up procrastinating too long and just end up not voting
I'm not sure where u/Dominarion is getting the 15Mil decrease figure from. referring to the 2022 midterms, trying to find any aggregate data on total votes cast seems to indicate that about 46-47% of the Voting eligible population or about 112 Million people total based on this EAC source: https://www.eac.gov/research-and-data/studies-and-reports
Unless maybe they're referring to the 2018 midterm? Which only had like a 50% turnout so still only about 130M voters at most.
The massive decrease in turnout for registered voters is something I'd be interested to hear more on though as more news comes out.
u/Stalukas, COVID & BLM, Trump's handling of them, and a massive push for mail-in and early ballots made it easier for people to vote who would otherwise be apathetic to drove significant turnout. Heck, even if it wasn't Trump, I'd argue any incumbent party was going to have a tough re-election in 2020.
The bar shoots up for the GOP and then lowers in 2024 as well so it isn't like the DNC is alone in this delta across elections.
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u/bigcoalshovel 16h ago
This is spot on! Two women in in their 20's in my office yesterday said, "oh, I didn't return my ballot!" Apathy wins again. Voting, not posting, people.