The Return of the Voter: Voter Turnout in the 2008 Presidential Election

Last updated: Jan. 11, 2008

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The number of people who voted for president in 2008 was 131.3 million people. Expressed as a rate, this was 61.6% among those eligible to vote, an increase of 1.5 percentage points over 2004.

Since reaching a modern low in 1996, turnout rates have been increasing for three consecutive presidential elections. This increase comes despite many theories offered by political scientists to explain declining turnout rates: the decline in civic society, lowered trust in government and the tuning out of the electorate by television, among others. Of course, I argue that while turnout rates were at a lower level for the past thirty years, turnout rates never experienced an on-going decline. The "decline" is entirely explained by the increasing ineligible population that used to be included in turnout rates calculations. Perhaps these three elections will finally lay these theories to rest since it is now true that turnout rates are increasing from 1972, the year that lower-turnout 18-20 year olds were granted voting rights. Indeed, turnout rates are now in the low sixty percent range, the same level as the "high" turnout rates in the 1950s and 1960s. This despite the inclusion of lower participatory 18-20 year olds in the electorate and what I preliminarily estimate to be a half to three quarters of a million rejected mail-in ballots.

The 2008 election thus demands political scientists to revise their theories as to why people vote. We will know more when detailed survey data become available in the coming months. Initially, turnout rates among the states and the media's national exit poll provide some clues. Of particular interest, I believe, will be where turnout rates actually declined from 2004. I also suspect that voter mobilization and perhaps early voting provide some keys to understanding why turnout rates have been increasing for the past three presidential elections.

I expound further in this review of the 2008 presidential election published in The Forum, an on-line political science journal.

P.S. Star Wars aficionados may recognize the title's reference to the third movie (sequentially released). The intended pun, which is probably too obtuse if I have to explain it, is that voter turnout has been increasing for three successive presidential elections.