The 2024 presidential election witnessed an extraordinary level of voter participation, nearly matching the historic turnout of the 2020 election. This high turnout challenges the traditional political belief that Republican candidates struggle in elections with broad voter engagement.
Data from the Associated Press indicates that over 153 million votes were cast in the recent contest between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris. This number is expected to rise as ballots from states with slower counting processes, like California, are fully tallied. When all votes are counted, the total will approach the 158 million votes cast in the 2020 presidential election, which had the highest turnout since women gained the right to vote a century ago.
Eitan Hersh, a political scientist from Tufts University, commented on this phenomenon, stating, “Trump is great for voter turnout in both parties.” This observation underscores the significant impact of Donald Trump’s candidacy on energizing voters across the political spectrum.
The election results also defied another long-standing political assumption. Trump’s victory in both the Electoral College and the popular vote – where he leads Harris by nearly 2.5 million votes nationally – contradicts the notion that high voter turnout primarily benefits Democratic candidates. Historically, it has been assumed that increased participation would favor Democrats, but the 2024 election suggests a shift in this dynamic.
In 2020, Donald Trump himself expressed concern about high turnout, particularly regarding mail-in voting. He warned that expanded mail balloting would lead to unprecedented voter numbers, making it difficult for Republicans to win elections. This warning came as Trump began to promote conspiracy theories about mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic, falsely claiming that it led to fraud and caused his 2020 defeat.
Following the 2020 election, numerous GOP-controlled states enacted new laws to tighten voting regulations and restrict certain forms of voting. Conversely, Democratic-led states expanded mail-in voting options. This legislative activity highlights how the battle over voter turnout became a central issue in political discourse. Despite these legislative changes, experts like Hersh argue that such laws typically have minimal impact on actual voter turnout, despite fueling accusations of voter suppression from Democrats and claims of cheating from Republicans.
“It’s such an embarrassing story for proponents on both sides, because it’s so obviously wrong,” Hersh noted, pointing to the limited real-world impact of these voting regulation changes on overall turnout.
However, Trump’s victory in a high-turnout election might lessen the intensity of the ongoing debate over election administration. Patrick Ruffini, a Republican data analyst and pollster, believes that Trump’s win could de-escalate these tensions. Ruffini, who has long maintained that the Republican party can succeed in high-turnout elections with a diverse electorate, stated, “Now I think, you just won the popular vote, I think it’ll quiet down.”
Experts also point out that voter turnout in key swing states was even higher than the national average. These seven swing states were pivotal in determining the election outcome, indicating a concentrated voter engagement in the most competitive areas. Ruffini emphasized this, saying, “This was a campaign in seven states much more so than previous elections have felt like.”
While the national popular vote margin shifted significantly from 2020, when Joe Biden won by 7 million votes (or 4.5 percentage points), the results in swing states were much closer. Interestingly, voter turnout patterns varied geographically. Non-competitive states like Illinois and Ohio saw a decrease in voter turnout compared to 2020, with Illinois recording over 500,000 fewer votes and Ohio reporting over 300,000 less.
In contrast, battleground states including Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin all experienced higher voter turnout in 2024 than in 2020. Arizona’s turnout remained nearly the same as four years prior, with ongoing ballot counting. Notably, Kamala Harris matched or exceeded Joe Biden’s 2020 vote totals in Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. Overall turnout significantly surpassed the 135.6 million votes cast in the 2016 election, when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. The challenge for Democrats was that while they maintained or increased their voter numbers in key areas, Donald Trump improved his performance in these same battleground states.
Democratic data analyst Tom Bonier acknowledged this dynamic, stating, “The Harris campaign did a pretty good job getting voters out who wouldn’t have come out. She did get her voters out. Trump got more.” This suggests that both campaigns were effective in mobilizing their base, but the Trump campaign was particularly successful in expanding its voter support.
Examples of new voters who contributed to the high turnout and favored Trump include first-time voter Jasmine Perez, 26, from Las Vegas, who cited alignment with Trump’s Christian values as her motivation. Similarly, Diego Zubek, 27, who voted for Trump in 2016 but not in 2020, returned to vote for Trump in 2024, driven by a stronger sense of urgency.
A crucial aspect of the Republican strategy was actively engaging in early and mail-in voting, a tactic they had previously avoided due to Trump’s unfounded claims of vote fraud. Republicans invested in voter registration and get-out-the-vote initiatives targeting less frequent voters, a demographic traditionally considered unlikely to support the GOP. Data indicates that over half of all votes in 2024 were cast before Election Day, reflecting the success of early voting efforts.
Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for Turning Point Action, a conservative group involved in get-out-the-vote efforts, cited Stacey Abrams’ successful voter mobilization strategies in Georgia as an inspiration. Abrams’ work in engaging Black voters and other less likely voting groups in Georgia was instrumental in Biden’s 2020 victory in that state. Kolvet explained, “We saw that Trump has this amazing reservoir of low-propensity conservatives who needed a little coaxing. They didn’t think their vote mattered, and their No. 1 pushback was they didn’t understand, really, how to vote.” Kolvet further noted the shift in conservative thinking regarding high turnout, stating, “Our ideas are more popular.”
Looking ahead, the long-term implications of this high-turnout election and the Republican success within it remain to be seen. Kolvet concluded, “It’s going to be up to conservatives to make good on those campaign promises,” suggesting that the future political landscape will depend on the actions taken by conservatives in power.
