{"id":12800,"date":"2016-06-10T10:30:12","date_gmt":"2016-06-10T15:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/%year%\/%monthnum%\/%day%\/turnout-was-high-in-the-2016-primary-season-but-just-short-of-2008-record\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T03:18:09","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T08:18:09","slug":"turnout-was-high-in-the-2016-primary-season-but-just-short-of-2008-record","status":"publish","type":"short-read","link":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2016\/06\/10\/turnout-was-high-in-the-2016-primary-season-but-just-short-of-2008-record\/","title":{"rendered":"Turnout was high in the 2016 primary season, but just short of 2008 record"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More than 57.6 million people, or 28.5% of estimated eligible voters, voted in the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries that all but wrapped up Tuesday \u2013 close to but not quite at the record participation level set in 2008.<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2016\/06\/10\/turnout-was-high-in-the-2016-primary-season-but-just-short-of-2008-record\/ft_16-06-08_primaryturnout\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-280635\"><img data-dominant-color=\"f2f1f0\" data-has-transparency=\"false\" style=\"--dominant-color: #f2f1f0;\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"420\" height=\"573\"  srcset=\"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2016\/06\/FT_16.06.08_primaryTurnout.png?resize=420,573 420w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 480px, (max-width: 782px) 782px, 640px\" class=\"wp-image-23830 not-transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2016\/06\/FT_16.06.08_primaryTurnout.png\" alt=\"After a long decline, primary turnout rebounds\" ><\/a><\/figure>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For a while it looked like this year&#8217;s primaries, driven by high\u00a0turnout on the Republican side,\u00a0might eclipse the turnout record set in 2008, when 30.4% of voting-age citizens cast ballots. The GOP did indeed have the highest primary turnout since at least 1980, according to our analysis \u2013 14.8%, compared with 11% in 2008 and 9.8% in 2012. But turnout fell off markedly after Donald Trump <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/05\/04\/us\/politics\/indiana-republican-democratic.html?_r=0\">won the May 3 Indiana primary<\/a> and his two main rivals dropped out of the race.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Turnout in the first 29 GOP primaries \u2013 up to and including Indiana \u2013 averaged 16.6%, according to our analysis. But turnout in the final nine contests, after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, averaged only 8.4%.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><!--more-->By contrast, the heated battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders engaged Democratic voters for longer. Less than a day before the final five states held their primaries, the Associated Press reported that Clinton already had <a href=\"http:\/\/bigstory.ap.org\/article\/4c9c850385c84b12ad5b85fda49743f9\/after-weekend-wins-clinton-cusp-democratic-nomination\">clinched the nomination<\/a>. But turnout in the five primaries held June 7 didn&#8217;t appear to be affected, averaging 14.1% compared with\u00a0an average of 14.5% for the preceding 31 contests. (The District of Columbia will hold its Democratic primary June 14, but there likely won&#8217;t be enough voters there to significantly change the nationwide numbers.)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The overall Democratic turnout of 14.4% was well below the record 19.5% in 2008, but it was still the second-highest since 1988&#8217;s primary season.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"selectionShareable wp-block-paragraph\">All told, 39 states held primaries for one or both major parties this year (38 Republican and 37 Democratic, including next week&#8217;s D.C. primary), with the remaining states using caucuses or conventions to select national party delegates. For each primary state, we calculated turnout by dividing the number of votes reported cast in the party primaries by the\u00a0estimated number of voting-age citizens (derived from our analysis of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.census.gov\/programs-surveys\/cps.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Current Population Survey<\/a> data). We began with 1980, because primaries didn\u2019t become a significant part of the nominating process until after 1968 and available turnout data for 1972 and population data for 1976 were incomplete.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"selectionShareable wp-block-paragraph\">A few caveats: We didn&#8217;t try to measure turnout in caucus states, because caucus attendance isn\u2019t always reliably recorded and reported. Puerto Rico did hold Republican and Democratic primaries (the other U.S. territories held caucuses), but we didn&#8217;t calculate turnout because the CPS doesn&#8217;t include Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"selectionShareable wp-block-paragraph\">Also, because states don\u2019t always hold both Democratic and Republican primaries, the turnout rates for the two parties individually may not equal total\u00a0turnout. In most states, total turnout was calculated as the total number of votes cast in the Republican and Democratic primaries divided by the estimated voting-eligible population; in states that held only one party primary, the vote\u00a0in that\u00a0primary was used to calculate\u00a0turnout.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More than 57.6 million people, or 28.5% of estimated eligible voters, voted in the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries that all but wrapped up Tuesday \u2013 close to but not quite at the record participation level set in 2008.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"sub_headline":"","sub_title":"","_prc_public_revisions":[],"_ppp_expiration_hours":0,"_ppp_enabled":false,"ai_generated_summary":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"relatedPosts":[],"datacite_doi":"","datacite_doi_citation":"","_prc_seo_qr_attachment_id":0,"spoken_article_player_enabled":true,"displayBylines":true,"footnotes":"","prc_watchers":[],"_prc_fork_parent":0,"_prc_fork_status":"","_prc_active_fork":0},"categories":[],"bylines":[842],"collection":[],"datasets":[],"_post_visibility":[],"formats":[467],"_fund_pool":[],"languages":[],"regions-countries":[515],"research-teams":[521,525,529,526,527,528,522,520,523,517,518,519],"workflow-status":[],"class_list":["post-12800","short-read","type-short-read","status-publish","hentry","bylines-drew-desilver","formats-short-read","regions-countries-united-states","research-teams-data-labs","research-teams-global","research-teams-global-migration-and-demography","research-teams-internet","research-teams-journalism","research-teams-methods","research-teams-pew-research-center","research-teams-politics","research-teams-race-and-ethnicity","research-teams-religion","research-teams-science","research-teams-social-trends"],"label":"Short 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