Question

In a developmental democracy how likely are citizens to vote?

Answer 1

If early voting trends are any indication, a record number of Americans could vote in the 2020 presidential election. As of this writing, more than 100 million early votes have been cast by mail or in person – more than two-thirds of the total number of votes cast in 2016.

We won’t have anything like a definitive assessment of 2020 turnout rates for some time after Nov. 3. But in the 2016 presidential election, nearly 56% of the U.S. voting-age population cast a ballot. That represented a slight uptick from 2012 but was lower than in the record year of 2008, when turnout topped 58% of the voting-age population.

So how does voter turnout in the United States compare with turnout in other countries? That depends very much on which country you’re looking at and which measuring stick you use.

Political scientists often define turnout as votes cast divided by the number of eligible voters. But because eligible-voter estimates are not readily available for many countries, we’re basing our cross-national turnout comparisons on estimates of voting-age population (or VAP), which are more readily available, as well as on registered voters. (Read “How we did this” for details.)