According to exit polling in ten key states of the 2024 presidential election in the United States, 57 percent of surveyed white voters reported voting for Donald Trump. In contrast, 85 percent of Black voters reported voting for Kamala Harris.

According to exit polling in the 2020 Presidential Election in the United States, 87 percent of surveyed Black voters reported voting for former Vice President Joe Biden. In the race to become the next president of the United States, 57 percent of white voters reported voting for incumbent President Donald Trump.

According to exit polling in ten key states of the 2024 presidential election in the United States, Donald Trump received the most support from white voters between the ages of 45 and 64. In comparison, 84 percent of Black voters between the ages of 18 and 29 reported voting for Kamala Harris.

According to exit polling in ten key states of the 2024 presidential election in the United States, 46 percent of voters with a 2023 household income of 30,000 U.S. dollars or less reported voting for Donald Trump. In comparison, 51 percent of voters with a total family income of 100,000 to 199,999 U.S. dollars reported voting for Kamala Harris.

According to exit polling in the 2020 Presidential Election in the United States, 62 percent of surveyed 18 to 29 year old voters reported voting for former Vice President Joe Biden. In the race to become the next president of the United States, 51 percent of voters aged 65 and older reported voting for incumbent President Donald Trump.

According to exit polling in ten key states of the 2024 presidential election in the United States, almost two-thirds of voters who had never attended college reported voting for Donald Trump. In comparison, a similar share of voters with advanced degrees reported voting for Kamala Harris.

According to exit polling in ten key states of the 2024 presidential election in the United States, Donald Trump received the most support from men between the ages of 45 and 64. In comparison, 61 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 29 reported voting for Kamala Harris.

In the 2020 election, around 42.8 percent of Asian voters exercised their right to vote. An additional 57.7 percent of Black voters voted. Voting rates have generally declined in presidential elections since 1996.

According to a survey taken in March, 2024, just over 50 percent of American voters aged between 50 and 64 years had more confidence in Donald Trump to preserve democracy in the United States than Joe Biden. However, this was the only age group polled who believed this, with voters aged 65 years and over believing Biden to be the better candidate for democracy.

This graph shows the percentage of votes of the 2016 presidential elections in the United States on November 9, 2016, by income. According to the exit polls, about 53 percent of voters with an income of under 30,000 U.S. dollars voted for Hillary Clinton.

According to exit polling in the 2020 Presidential Election in the United States, 55 percent of surveyed college graduate voters reported voting for former Vice President Joe Biden. In the race to become the next president of the United States, 49 percent of voters without a college degree reported voting for incumbent President Donald Trump.

As of March 2022, a survey conducted among registered voters in the United States found that 12 percent of respondents aged between 35 and 44 years old expect to use Donald Trump's new social platform, Truth Social, a lot. Overall, 28 percent of 18 to 34 year olds reported they would use the former Presidents social media network sometimes. The majority of respondents stated that they did not expect to use Truth Social, owned by Trump Media and Technology, at all.

This graph shows the percentage of votes of the 2016 presidential elections in the United States on November 9, 2016, by age. According to the exit polls, about 56 percent of voters aged 18 to 24 voted for Hillary Clinton.

Since 1824, when the popular vote was first used to determine the overall winner in U.S. presidential elections, the share of the population who participate in these elections has gradually increased. Despite this increase, participation has never reached half of the total population; partly due to the share of the population below the voting age of eighteen, but also as many potential voters above the age of eighteen do not take part, or are ineligible to vote. For example, in the 2016 election, approximately twenty million U.S. adults were ineligible to vote, while over 94 million simply did not participate; in this election, Donald Trump won the electoral college with 63 million votes, which means that 19.4 percent of the total U.S. population (or 27.3 percent of eligible voters) voted for the current president.

Development throughout history

While the figures for the 2016 election may appear low, over 42 percent of the total population participated in this election, which was the third highest participation rate ever recorded (after the 2008 and 2020 elections). In the first election decided by a popular vote in 1824, only 350 thousand votes were cast from a total population of 10.6 million, although this increased to over four million votes by the 1856 election, as restrictions that applied to non-property holding white males were gradually lifted. Participation levels then dropped during the Civil War and Reconstruction era, as those who lived in Confederate states could not vote in 1864, and many white southerners were restricted or discouraged in the following election. Although universal suffrage was granted to black males in the wake of the Civil War, the majority of black Americans lived in the southern states, where lawmakers introduced Jim Crow laws in the late 1800s to suppress and disenfranchise the black vote, as well as poor white voters.

The next major milestone was the introduction of women's suffrage in 1920, which saw voter participation increase by seven million votes (or seven percent) between the 1916 and 1920 elections. Between the 1910s and 1970s, the Great Migration saw many black Americans move away from the south to northern and western states, where they faced fewer obstacles when voting and greater economic mobility. This period of black migration began to decline in the 1960s and 1970s, during which time many Jim Crow laws were repealed in the south, through legislation such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Female participation also grew gradually, and has exceeded male voting participation in all elections since the 1980s. The minimum voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 in all states in 1971, although this seemingly had a minimal impact on the short-term trajectory of voter participation.

Recent elections

The 1992 election was the first in which more than one hundred million votes were cast, which was almost 41 percent of the total population. All elections since 2004 have also had more than one hundred million votes cast, which has again been more than forty percent of the total population. Another key factor in the increase in voter participation is the fact that people are living longer than ever before, and that those aged 65 and over have had the highest turnout levels since 1992. While some figures may be subject to change, the 2020 election set new records for voter turnout. Despite the global coronavirus pandemic, which many thought could cause the lowest turnout in decades, a record number of voters cast their ballots early or by mail, setting a new record of votes just shy of 160 million. In the 2020 election, Joe Biden and Donald Trump received 81.3 million and 74.2 million votes respectively, both beating Barack Obama's previous record of 69.3 million ballots in 2008.

According to exit polling in ten key states of the 2024 presidential election in the United States, 53 percent of surveyed women reported voting for Kamala Harris. In the race to become the next President of the United States, 55 percent of men reported voting for Donald Trump.

According to exit polling in ten key states of the 2024 presidential election in the United States, 63 percent of Protestant Christian voters reported voting for Donald Trump. In comparison, only 22 percent of Jewish voters reported voting for Trump.

According to exit polling in the 2020 Presidential Election in the United States, 56 percent of surveyed females reported voting for former Vice President Joe Biden. In the race to become the next president of the United States, 49 percent of men reported voting for incumbent President Donald Trump.

This statistic shows the response of millennials on who they would vote for if the 2016 U.S. presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were held today. Of millennial respondents who are likely to vote, 54 percent would vote for Hillary Clinton if the 2016 U.S. presidential election were held at the time of polling.

Youth Voter Turnout

Youth voters (eligible voters from the age of 18 to 29) are consistently the least represented age group in elections in the United States. Only 45 percent of eligible youth voters participated in the 2012 U.S. presidential election. In comparison, 72 percent of eligible voters over the age of 65 voted in the election. Efforts, such as Rock the Vote, have been made to increase the turnout of youth voters. While an increase in the youth vote is credited with helping President Obama win the U.S. presidential election in 2008 it remains to be seen whether the trend of low turnout will change course in the future. In a recent Harvard Institute of Politics poll of millennials only 50 percent of respondents indicated that they would definitely be voting in the 2016 presidential election.

Voter turnout in the United States as a whole is lower than that of other industrialized countries. The total turnout for the 2012 presidential election was just 54.87 percent of the population. Some of the reasons speculated for the low turnout among millennials are the lack of a national holiday for voting, the often convoluted voter registration process, the frequency of moving that many youth experience during and after their college years, and ironically, feeling as though the government does not address their issues.

Every four years in the United States, the electoral college system is used to determine the winner of the presidential election. In this system, each state has a fixed number of electors based on their population size, and (generally speaking) these electors then vote for their candidate with the most popular votes within their state or district. Since 1964, there have been 538 electoral votes available for presidential candidates, who need a minimum of 270 votes to win the election. Because of this system, candidates do not have to win over fifty percent of the popular votes across the country, but just win in enough states to receive a total of 270 electoral college votes. The use of this system is a source of debate in the U.S.; those in favor claim that it prevents candidates from focusing on the interests of urban populations, and must also appeal to smaller and less-populous states, and they say that this system preserves federalism and the two-party system. However, critics argue that this system does not represent the will of the majority of American voters, and that it encourages candidates to disproportionally focus on winning in swing states, where the outcome is more difficult to predict. Popular results From 1789 until 1820, there was no popular vote, and the President was then chosen only by the electors from each state. George Washington was unanimously voted for by the electorate, receiving one hundred percent of the votes in both elections. From 1824, the popular vote has been conducted among American citizens, to help electors decide who to vote for (although the 1824 winner was chosen by the House of Representatives, as no candidate received over fifty percent of electoral votes). Since 1924, the difference in the share of both votes has varied, with several candidates receiving over ninety percent of the electoral votes while only receiving between fifty and sixty percent of the popular vote. The highest difference was for Ronald Reagan in 1980, where he received just 50.4 percent of the popular vote, but 90.9 percent of the electoral votes. Unpopular winners Since 1824, there have been 49 elections, and in 18 of these the winner did not receive over fifty percent of the popular vote. In the majority of these cases, the winner did receive a plurality of the votes, however there have been five instances where the winner of the electoral college vote lost the popular vote to another candidate. The most recent examples of this were in 2000, when George W. Bush received roughly half a million fewer votes than Al Gore, and in 2016, where Hillary Clinton won approximately three million more votes than Donald Trump.

The 2008 US presidential election was contested between Barack Obama of the Democratic Party, and John McCain of the Republican Party. This was the first election since 1952 where the incumbent president or vice president was not on the ballot, as President George W. Bush was not eligible to run for a third term, and Vice President Cheney chose not to run. The initial Democratic frontrunner was Hillary Clinton, however Barack Obama then moved ahead in the polls shortly before the Iowa caucus, where he won a surprising victory, before Clinton's victory in New Hampshire set off a competitive race between the two (Joe Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucus and joined the Obama campaign as his running mate). Following Super Tuesday, Obama and Clinton were neck-and-neck, but throughout the remaining primaries Obama gradually moved ahead and sealed the Democratic nomination in June 2008, making him the first African American to win the nomination of a major US party. Early in the Republican primaries, former New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani led the polls, before Mitt Romney and John McCain also gained popularity by the time of the Iowa caucus. McCain then became the favorite following the New Hampshire primaries, with Giuliani dropping out and endorsing McCain before Super Tuesday, with Romney doing the same two days after the Tuesday primaries. McCain was eventually named as the Republican candidate, with widespread support across his party. No third party candidates made a significant impact on the election. Campaign The Iraq War was the main topic of debate early in the campaign, with Obama strongly against the war, while McCain supported the invasion and called for an increased security presence in the region. The age difference between the candidates also became an issue, as it had done in the 1996 campaign; and similarly to Clinton, Obama (47) avoided mentioning his opponent's age (72) directly, instead claiming that his politics and ideas were old fashioned, while McCain pointed to his experience, and appointed Sarah Palin as his running mate to combat these insinuations. Obama also proposed universal healthcare, setting in motion proposals for what would later be known as "Obamacare". The development of the financial crisis of 2008 then went on to dominate the election campaign, as the world faced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression in the 1930s. McCain refused to debate Obama until some progress had been made on the issue, and suspended his campaign in order to work on preventative measures in the Senate that would help the economy. McCain's actions in the Senate were then scrutinized heavily, and public perception was that he was not making a significant contribution to the proceedings. Results Obama won a convincing victory, and became the 44th President of the United states, and was the first African American to hold this position (this was also the first time in US history where neither the president nor vice president were white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants). Obama won approximately 53 percent of the popular vote, giving him a 68 percent share of the electoral vote. McCain received the remainder of the electoral votes, and took just under 56 percent of the popular votes, with the remainder of the popular votes split among various third party candidates. Much of Obama's success has been attributed to his energy and message of hope, particularly in the face of an economic crisis, while McCain was often seen as the continuation of President Bush's policies, whose popularity was at it's lowest ever levels. Obama won this election with the highest number of popular votes for a winning candidate in US history, receiving 3.4 million more votes than he received in 2012, and 6.3 million more votes than Donald Trump in 2016.