Was voter turnout in the 2016 presidential election the lowest in decades? Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who ran in the Democratic primaries before losing the nomination to Hillary Clinton, said so on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
Sanders said, in part, “So many of our people are giving up on the political process. It is very frightening. In the last presidential election, when Trump won, we had the lowest voter turnout in 20 years. And in the previous two years before that, in the midterm election, we had the lowest voter turnout in 70 years.”
He’s right about the midterm election of 2014, but he’s far off regarding turnout for the 2016 presidential election.
We turned to a widely trusted source for voter turnout statistics, the United States Elections Project run by political scientist Michael McDonald of the University of Florida.
There are different ways to measure voter turnout, but McDonald tends to favor the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot for the highest office contested. In presidential election years, that would mean the president.
McDonald has compiled data on voter turnout going back to the 1700s. Here’s the rundown:
Turnout percentages have settled into a range between the low 50s and the low 60s since the early decades of the 20th century, well below what they were during most of the 1800s, but above the rate in the country’s first few decades.
But on Sanders’ specific point, the final turnout figure for 2016 — 59.3 percent — amounted to a middling result for the past 20-year period, the time frame he used. It was lower than in 2004 and 2008, but it exceeded the turnout rate for 1996, 2000, and 2012.
Looking back even further, the 2016 turnout rate is actually even more impressive. You’d have to go back to 1968 to find a year other than 2004 and 2008 in which voter turnout was higher than it was in 2016. And 1968 was the last election before a constitutional amendment took effect guaranteeing that all 18-year-olds could vote. So, starting in 1972, millions of teenagers were added to the voter turnout calculation, a change that tended to depress the percentage somewhat in the elections that followed.
Turnout among the voting-eligible population tends to be a more useful measurement than the percentage of the voting-age population that cast a ballot, because the latter statistic counts ineligible voters including noncitizens and felons whose voting rights have not been restored.
Even using voting-age population instead of voting-eligible population, Sanders isn’t correct.
In 2016, the turnout rate using that measurement was 54.7 percent. While that trailed the rates for 2004 and 2008, it exceeded the rates for 2000 and 2012.
Preliminary, but inaccurate, news reports shortly after the election said voter turnout in 2016 would hit a two-decade low. The counting of late-arriving ballots, such as those from the growing number of states that rely heavily on mailed-in ballots, rendered such assertions moot.
Sanders’ office did not respond to an inquiry.
For the record, Sanders’ statistic for the 2014 midterm elections was accurate.
Turnout among eligible voters was about 36 percent in 2014 — the lowest since the 33.9 percent in 1942, during World War II.
Our ruling
Sanders said that “when Trump won, we had the lowest voter turnout in 20 years.”
That's not correct. In 2016, turnout was lower than it was for two of the elections in that span (2004 and 2008) but higher than it was for three others (1996, 2000 and 2012). We rate his statement False.
“When Trump won, we had the lowest voter turnout in 20 years.”
— Bernie Sanders on Sunday, April 16th, in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union”
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