Insights into U.S. Presidential Elections: Popular Vote, Early Voting, and Turnout (2000–2024)
I initially planned to publish this just before Donald Trump's second inauguration, but too many things happened in a very short time. Now, since the post was already drafted, here it is.
Over the years, U.S. presidential elections have sparked intense debates, but none more so than the 2020 elections. Following the accusations of fraud related to the 2020 U.S. presidential elections, many voices on X claimed that the data showed anomalies that could support allegations of fraud. I gathered data and created a graph to provide a more comprehensive overview.
The graph combines the popular vote with turnout as a percentage of the voting-eligible population (VEP) and the percentage of votes cast during early voting from 2000 to 2024.
During this period, two major events had a significant impact: the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
In their first elections, both George W. Bush and Donald Trump won the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote. In their subsequent elections, both candidates received more votes than in their first. In contrast, Barack Obama, after his historic victory in 2008, lost the support of over 3.5 million voters in his second election. In 2008, Obama had gained more than 10 million votes compared to the previous Democratic candidate, John Kerry, in 2004.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton managed to recover nearly all the votes Barack Obama had secured at the beginning of his second term, under similar turnout conditions.
In 2020, amidst the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic, voter participation reached historic levels. While Donald Trump increased his vote total by more than 11 million compared to 2016, Joe Biden managed to gain almost 15.5 million more votes than Hillary Clinton. This election made Biden not only the oldest person inaugurated as president but also the most voted-for president in U.S. history.
By 2024, the election atmosphere remained highly charged, with a voting turnout similar to that of 2020. Donald Trump gained 3 million more votes than in the previous election, while Kamala Harris lost over 6 million of the voters that Joe Biden had won in 2020.
Can the differences between the 2020 and 2024 results be attributed solely to early voting—a system that grew increasingly popular over the decades and peaked during the pandemic measures of 2020, despite raising many questions? Or should we attribute them to the reality that challenging times often lead to surprising election outcomes?
For me, one thing is clear. Sometimes it is not the highest number of votes that history remembers as great, but the energy that determines a political comeback.
Data used in the graph:
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