Voter Turnout Hits Historic Levels With States Still Counting Votes
The winner of the presidential race between former Vice President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump is still up in the air, casting a shadow of uncertainty over the country.
As the race narrows to Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada and Georgia, signs that early voting patterns have carried through to high turnout rates can already be seen across the country. States like Florida, Idaho, North Carolina and Delaware have already seen vote counts at or greater than the “historic-high turnout” scenario modeled by data scientist Andrew Therriault for Bloomberg News.
Previously: How early voting shaped 2020 turnout
Pennsylvania and Michigan are still counting thousands of votes, while North Carolina, Georgia signal historically high turnout
Votes counted
as a share of
expected total
More than 80% of expected votes counted
Less than 80%
Bloomberg’s model anticipates the total number of votes cast for president to range from roughly 157.1 million to 165.0 million (68.6%–72.1% of the citizen voting-age population). About votes have been counted as of . (Read more about our model here.)
2020 turnout already exceeds 2016 in states
As vote counts continue to be finalized, states have already seen turnout higher than 2016 levels. Battleground states Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida and North Carolina each have seen turnout as a share of the citizen voting-age population more than 5 percentage points higher than in 2016, based on these preliminary results.
Historically, in states with the highest average turnout, about 60% to 75% of the voting-age population cast ballots. Minnesota tends to lead the pack and in 2016 had the highest turnout among its voting-age population, at 73% according to estimates from the U.S. Elections Project. This year, preliminary turnout results have Minnesota turnout closer to . Florida, North Carolina, Vermont and Wisconsin also have so far seen turnout exceed 70%.