Many of you probably either read or read about Russell Brand's manifesto in the center-left British magazine New Statesman. One thing that irked me about the piece was Brand's disregard for voting--his refusal to do it and his encouragement of others not to vote as well. If Brand was disgusted with the Labour Party after Tony Blair hollowed it out, he could have voted for the Greens. The UK Greens, like the Greens in the US, are not a large party, but they do exist. I don't know where Brand is registered, so I can't analyze the particular candidates from which he had to choose; however, not all Labourites are Blairites.
In the 2010 general election in the UK, only 65% of the population showed up to vote. That missing 35% could have helped usher in a Labour-Lib Dem coalition instead of a Tory-Lib Dem coalition. Would a Labour-Lib Dem coalition be perfect? No. Would it be better than the current coalition? Yes. If the Greens managed to get enough votes, you could have even had a traffic light coalition (green-yellow-red).
Looking at turnout numbers got me thinking about elections here in the U.S., considering how low are turnout rates always are. And that led to the titular question of this diary:
Who was the last president to outpoll non-voters?
We'll work backwards to find the answer.
In determining this, I decided to use "voting age population" (VAP) rather than "voting eligible population" (VEP) because the former is more readily available for elections from many decades past. I used the turnout numbers provided by the American Presidency Project. Professor Michael McDonald of GMU has analyzed the relationship between the two turnout measures, and his graph shows that they began to diverge in the 1980s. Using the voting age population (which includes non-citizen residents, those barred from voting because of criminal history, etc.) as the denominator will deflate the turnout percentage a bit--but not enough to significantly affect our findings.
In the last election, voter turnout was only 53.6%. That means that, of the voting age population (VAP), 46.4% did not vote, 27.4% voted for Obama, and 25.3% voted for Romney. That's right. All of that media coverage and money, and Obama didn't even get the votes of 30% of the voting age population (or, if you check, the voting eligible population).
According to the the data from here and here, Minnesota and Wisconsin were the only states in which both candidates outpolled non-voters among the voting age population. Obama also outpolled non-voters among the voting age populations of DC, Iowa, Maine, and New Hampshire. Both Obama and Romney outpolled non-voters among the voting eligible population of Colorado. Obama also outpolled nonvoters among the voting eligible populations of Maryland, Massachusetts, and Vermont; Romney, Iowa and New Hampshire.
2008 Election:
42.5% non-voters
30.4% Obama
26.3% McCain
2004 Election
44.7% non-voters
28.0% George W. Bush
26.7% John Kerry
2000 Election
48.7% non-voters
24.6% George W. Bush
24.8% Al Gore
1996 Election
51.0% non-voters
24.1% Bill Clinton
19.9% Bob Dole
This was one of only three elections in which non-voters constituted an outright majority. The other two were 1920 and 1924. There were more than twice as many non-voters as there were voters for Clinton. That's pretty depressing when you think about it.
1992 Election
44.8% non-voters
23.7% Bill Clinton
20.7% George H. W. Bush
I believe that Bill Clinton's 23.7% was the record low. It feels weird to realize that Clinton never even had the support of 1/4 of the VAP.
1988 Election
49.8% non-voters
26.8% George H. W. Bush
22.9% Michael Dukakis
1984 Election
46.9% non-voters
31.2% Ronald Reagan
21.6% Walter Mondale
That's right: In Reagan's landslide re-election, he didn't even have the support of 1/3 of the VAP.
1980 Election
47.4% non-voters
26.7% Ronald Reagan
21.6% Jimmy Carter
1976 Election
46.5% non-voters
26.8% Jimmy Carter
25.7% Gerald Ford
1972 Election
44.8% non-voters
33.5% Richard Nixon
20.7% George McGovern
This is the last time a president won more than 1/3 of the VAP.
1968 Election
39.2% non-voters
26.4% Richard Nixon
25.2% Hubert Humphrey
1964 Election
38.1% non-voters
37.8% Lyndon B. Johnson
23.8% Barry Goldwater
So close, LBJ! As a consolation prize, even though he didn't beat the non-voters, he still won the largest share of the VAP of any president in the 20th century.
1960 Election
36.9% non-voters
31.4% John F. Kennedy
31.3% Richard Nixon
1956 Election
39.4% non-voters
34.8% Dwight D. Eisenhower
25.5% Adlai Stevenson
1952 Election
36.7% non-voters
34.9% Dwight D. Eisenhower
28.0% Adlai Stevenson
1948 Election
47.0% non-voters
26.3% Harry Truman
23.9% Thomas Dewey
1944 Election
44.1% non-voters
29.9% Franklin D. Roosevelt
26.7% Thomas Dewey
1940 Election
37.5% non-voters
34.2% FDR
28.0% Wendell Wilkie
1936 Election
39.0% non-voters
37.1% FDR
22.3% Alf Landon
1932 Election
43.1% non-voters
32.7% FDR
22.6% Herbert Hoover
1928 Election
43.1% non-voters
33.1% Herbert Hoover
23.2% Al Smith
1924 Election
51.1% non-voters
26.4% Calvin Coolidge
14.1% John Davis
1920 Election
50.8% non-voters
29.7% Warren G. Harding
16.8% James Cox
1920 was the first presidential election since women gained suffrage nationally. So the share of the voting age population in elections prior is really a constricted population.
1916 Election
38.4% non-voters
30.3% Woodrow Wilson
28.4% Charles Evans Hughes
1912 Election
41.2% non-voters
24.6% Woodrow Wilson
13.6% William Taft
1908 Election
34.6% non-voters
33.7% William Taft
28.1% William Jennings Bryan
1904 Election
34.8% non-voters
36.8% Theodore Roosevelt
24.5% Alton B. Parker
We have a winner!
And to fill out the century....
1900 Election
26.8% non-voters
37.8% William McKinley
33.3% William Jennings Bryan
Both candidates actually beat the non-voters!
If my calculations are correct, the president who won the highest share of the voting age population* ever was William Henry Harrison, who spent just over a month in office. A bit ironic.
*The franchise in 1840 didn't include women, the enslaved population of the South, most of the free blacks of the North, and Native Americans, and many states still had property requirements. I'm using "voting age population" because that's how it is used in turnout data sources; however, that population was quite small.
