How many people generally vote in an election

Hur, Aram and Christopher H. Leighley, Jan E. Who Votes Now? Princeton : Princeton University Press. Silver, Brian D. Anderson, and Paul. Riker, William H. Wolfinger, Raymond E. Who Votes? New Haven: Yale University Press. Main navigation Research Data Find an Expert. Voter turnout. Provisional ballots. Voting by mail and absentee voting. Voting from abroad. Voter confidence. Voter registration. Election return reporting. Voter identification. Voting technology.

What is 'voter turnout'? Measuring Turnout Studying voter turnout Can reforms increase turnout? What if everyone voted?

Data Sources Suggested Readings. Voter turnout is a measure of civic participation that many people believe best gauges the health of the electoral process.

However, measuring turnout can be more difficult than it first appears, which means that understanding how and why it fluctuates can also be difficult. This explainer was last updated on April 28, Measuring Turnout Turnout can be measured in the aggregate by simply counting up the number who vote in an election. Voting Eligible Population VEP , which is calculated by removing felons according to state law , non-citizens, and those judged mentally incapacitated.

Reported measures of each of these has varied somewhat over time as estimates have been revised and refined. Three propositions underlie most research on turnout.

But before the numbers used are always adjusted for the shifting definition of citizens with voting rights. So women are excluded prior to Voting Eligible Population is an attempt to make an even more precise definition of the population of people who have a legal right to vote—potential voters. Making the estimates of noncitizens and disfranchized felons has been carried out mostly by Professor Michael McDonald and data are published in the U. Elections Project website.

Registered voters counts the total number of eligible people who have taken the additional step of actually registering to vote. This revised table no longer reports registration totals before , consistent with recent CPS publications.

As of , North Dakota had no registration requirement. So it is possible for the number of votes to exceed the number of registered voters. Scholars point out that census data may not be entirely accurate see Bennett House of Representatives which include more than , blank, spoiled or otherwise null ballots.

The One factor behind the consistently high turnout rates in Australia and Belgium may be that they are among the 21 nations around the world , including six in the OECD, with some form of compulsory voting. One canton in Switzerland has compulsory voting as well. In Chile, for example, turnout plunged after the country moved from compulsory to voluntary voting in and began automatically putting all eligible citizens on the voter rolls. In the U. And registered voters represent a much smaller share of potential voters in the U.

The U. As a consequence, turnout comparisons based only on registered voters may not be very meaningful. For instance, U. But registered voters in the U. There are even more ways to calculate turnout.

Using those calculations, U. Since , voting-age turnout has remained within an 8. However, turnout varies considerably among different racial, ethnic and age groups. In several other OECD countries, turnout has drifted lower in recent decades.