The details are finally emerging about the voter turnout for the presidential election as districts finally are able to close the polls (by now counting absentee’s votes). In what many thought would be the biggest election turnout in history actually didn’t get the turnout expected. I was particularly interested from a generational breakdown perspective how it turned out. Here’s what I’ve found thus far.
A couple sources are indicating that although the voting was higher than the 2004 election, it is only barely so. The 2004 election brought in 60.6% of those eligible whereas the 2008 election was between 60.7 and 61.7%. Still an increase from previous elections but not the massive numbers some predicted and it still wasn’t enough to beat the two highest election turnouts which occurred in 1960 (Nixon/Kennedy) and 1964 (Johnson/Goldwater).
Here is a graph of the voter turnouts since 1948:
In regards to 2008, when you drill down into the demographics you notice that there was definitely a large youth contingent, that swayed Democratic, this election. The initial consensus is that Republicans chose not to show up this year. This could have been due to people believing this election was the Democratics to lose or a belief that a change was indeed needed (but I speculate at this point).
If you look at this chart you can definitely see the more Republican states have lower turnout ratings than years before. I still haven’t seen a good breakdown from an age standpoint but it seems those numbers won’t truly come out until the new census is conducted next year.
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