Under this agreement the American Association of Motor Vehicles (AAMVA) will provide connectivity, billing services, and staff a help desk to the MVAs of States, District of Columbia, and territories of the US, for SSA. SSA will, through AAMVA's network, provide verification of certain voter registration information to the State MVAs for their use in the registration of voters for elections for Federal office. SSA is providing the verified information in accordance with the Help America Vote Act of 2002.

This dataset represents the results of the 4-digit match performed using the Social Security - Help America Vote Verification (HAVV) system.

The 1960 US presidential election was the first to take place in all fifty states (although not Washington DC), and the first time where the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution prevented the incumbent president from running for a third term in office. The race was contested between John F. Kennedy of the Democratic Party, and incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon of the Republican Party. Kennedy defeated future-President Lyndon B. Johnson in the Democratic National Convention and asked Johnson to serve as his running mate, while Nixon won the Republican nomination comfortably, despite an early challenge from Nelson Rockefeller. This campaign is also notable for being the first to use televised debates between the candidates, including one that used split-screen technology, allowing the candidates to speak live from opposite sides of the country.

Campaign

Early in the campaign, both candidates were vibrant and charismatic, and garnered a loyal follower base. Kennedy spent most of his campaign criticizing the previous administration for falling behind the Soviet Union in terms of the military, economy and the space race, while Nixon highlighted the achievements made by Eisenhower's administration, and promised to build on them. Most historians agree that Kennedy's campaign was more structured and used better tactics than Nixon's, by canvassing heavily in swing states and districts instead of giving equal attention to all parts of the country (as Nixon did), with Kennedy focusing on metropolitan areas while Johnson canvassed in the south. Nixon's campaign was also more prone to mistakes, such as not preparing and refusing make-up for televised debates (making him look ill), while his running mate promised to elect African-Americans to the cabinet, however this just alienated black voters who were ambivalent in their reaction. Kennedy's connection with Martin Luther King Jr. also helped him to take a much larger share of the black vote than his opponent.

Results and Controversy

The popular vote was split by fewer than 120,000 out of seventy million votes. Kennedy took 49.7 percent of the popular vote, while Nixon took 49.5 percent. Nixon, however took more states than Kennedy, carrying 26 to Kennedy's 22, but Kennedy's tactical campaigning paid off, as his 22 states returned 303 electoral votes to Nixon's 219. Unpledged Democratic electors in the south gave 15 electoral votes to Harry F. Byrd, as they opposed Kennedy's stance on civil rights. Due to the close nature of the results, many Republicans called for recounts and accused the Kennedy campaign of cheating or committing voter fraud. For example, they highlighted that more votes were cast in certain districts of Texas (Johnson's home state) than the number of registered voters, and when Nixon lost Illinois despite winning 92 out of 101 counties, many suggested a link between the Kennedy campaign and organized crime syndicates in Chicago. These claims have subsequently been proven to be false, and historians generally agree that Kennedy's campaigning methods and Nixon's wastefulness won Kennedy the election. John F. Kennedy was subsequently named the 35th President of the United States, and is remembered favorably as one of the most popular and charismatic leaders in US history. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, less than three years into his first term, and was succeeded by his Vice President, Lyndon B. Johnson.

Throughout United States history, voter turnout among the voting eligible population has varied, ranging from below twelve percent in uncontested elections, to 83 percent in the 1876 election. In early years, turnout in presidential elections was relatively low, as the popular vote was not used in every state to decide who electors would vote for. When this was changed in the 1824 election, turnout increased dramatically, and generally fluctuated between seventy and eighty percent during the second half of the nineteenth century. Until the 1840 and 1842 elections, midterm elections also had a higher turnout rate than their corresponding presidential elections, although this trend has been reversed since these years.

Declining turnout in the twentieth century An increase in voting rights, particularly for black males in 1870 and for women in 1920, has meant that the share of the total population who are legally eligible to vote has increased significantly; yet, as the number of people eligible to vote increased, the turnout rate generally decreased. Following enfranchisement, it would take over fifty years before the female voter turnout would reach the same level as males, and over 150 years before black voters would have a similar turnout rate to whites. A large part of this was simply the lack of a voting tradition among these voter bases; however, the Supreme Court and lawmakers across several states (especially in the south) created obstacles for black voters and actively enforced policies and practices that disenfranchised black voter participation. These practices were in place from the end of the Reconstruction era (1876) until the the Voting Rights Act of 1965 legally removed and prohibited many of these obstacles; nonetheless, people of color continue to be disproportionally affected by voting restrictions to this day.

Recent decades In 1971, the Twenty-sixth Amendment lowered the minimum voting age in most states from 21 to 18 years old, which greatly contributed to the six and eight percent reductions in voter turnout in the 1972 and 1974 elections respectively, highlighting a distinct correlation between age and voter participation. Overall turnout remained below sixty percent from the 1970s until the 2004 election, and around forty percent in the corresponding midterms. In recent elections, increased political involvement among younger voters and those from ethnic minority backgrounds has seen these numbers rise, with turnout in the 2018 midterms reaching fifty percent. This was the highest midterm turnout in over one hundred years, leading many at the time to predict that the 2020 election would see one of the largest and most diverse voter turnouts in the past century, although these predictions then reversed with the arival of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. However, 2020 did prove to have the highest turnout in any presidential election since 1900; largely as a result of mail-in voting, improved access to early voting, and increased activism among grassroots organizations promoting voter registration.

Since 1964, voter turnout rates in U.S. presidential elections have generally fluctuated across all age groups, falling to a national low in 1996, before rising again in the past two decades. Since 1988, there has been a direct correlation with voter participation and age, as people become more likely to vote as they get older. Participation among eligible voters under the age of 25 is the lowest of all age groups, and in the 1996 and 2000 elections, fewer than one third of eligible voters under the age of 25 participated, compared with more than two thirds of voters over 65 years.

United States presidential elections are quadrennial elections that decide who will be the President and Vice President of the United States for the next four years. Voter turnout has ranged between 54 and 70 percent since 1964, with white voters having the highest voter turnout rate (particularly when those of Hispanic descent are excluded). In recent decades, turnout among black voters has got much closer to the national average, and in 2008 and 2012, the turnout among black voters was higher than the national average, exceeded only by non-Hispanic white voters; this has been attributed to Barack Obama's nomination as the Democratic nominee in these years, where he was the first African American candidate to run as a major party's nominee. Turnout among Asian and Hispanic voters is much lower than the national average, and turnout has even been below half of the national average in some elections. This has been attributed to a variety of factors, such as the absence of voting tradition in some communities or families, the concentration of Asian and Hispanic communities in urban (non-swing) areas, and a disproportionate number of young people (who are less likely to vote).

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.

In U.S. presidential elections since 1964, voters in the 18 to 24 age bracket have traditionally had the lowest turnout rates among all ethnicities. From 1964 until 1996, white voters in this age bracket had the highest turnout rates of the four major ethnic groups in the U.S., particularly those of non-Hispanic origin. However participation was highest among young Black voters in 2008 and 2012, during the elections where Barack Obama, the U.S.' first African-American major party candidate, was nominated. Young Asian American and Hispanic voters generally have the lowest turnout rates, and were frequently below half of the overall 18 to 24 turnout before the 2000s.

In U.S. presidential elections since 1964, voter turnout among male and female voters has changed gradually but significantly, with women consistently voting at a higher rate than men since the 1980 election. 67 percent of eligible female voters took part in the 1964 election, compared to 72 percent of male voters. This difference has been reversed in recent elections, where the share of women who voted has been larger than the share of men by around four percent since 2004.

As of 2020, Georgia has taken part in every presidential election contested in the United States, apart from the 1864 election, when Georgia was a member of the Confederacy. In these 58 elections, Georgia has voted for the winning candidate 34 times, giving a success rate of 59 percent. As with most southern states, Georgia has traditionally voted for the more conservative candidate of the major parties; primarily voting Democrat in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, before switching to the Republican Party in the 1960s (although it was considered a swing state in the 1970s and 1980s). Major party candidates have won the popular vote in Georgia in every elections, except in 1968 when George Wallace of the American Independent Party carried the state. Georgia has voted for the Democratic nominee 34 times, including every possible election from 1852 until 1960, and the Republican nominee on ten occasions, including all elections from 1996 to 2016. In the 2020 election, however, Georgia proved to have one of the closest counts nationwide, with Democratic nominee Joe Biden eventually flipping the state by a 0.2 percent margin after several recounts.

Exceptions As previously mentioned, Georgia has predominantly voted Republican since the 1960s, however it did vote for the Democratic nominee in both the 1976 and 1980 elections. In these elections, Georgia native Jimmy Carter carried his home state with over two thirds of the vote in 1976, and defeated Republican favorite Ronald Reagan by 15 percent in 1980. As of 2020, Jimmy Carter is the only Georgia native to have ascended to the presidency, while John C. Frémont, who was the Republican nominee in 1856, is the only other major party nominee to have been born in Georgia. The only other times where Georgia voted Democrat since the 1960s were in 1992, where Bill Clinton defeated the incumbent President George H. W. Bush by just 0.6 percent of the popular vote (this was the closest result of any state in this election) and, as previously mentioned, in 2020 (which, again, was the closest result of any state in this election, along with Arizona). The swing in 2020 has been attributed to increased voter registration and turnout among urban and suburban voters, as a result of Democratic grassroots organizations; as well as the unpopularity of restrictive healthcare policies implemented by the Republican administration within the state.

Electoral votes

Georgia's allocation of electoral votes has generally increased over the past 230 years, with some fluctuation. It has grown from just four votes in the 1800 election, to sixteen votes in 2012; along with Michigan, this is the eighth-highest allocation in the country, contributing to Georgia's position as one of the most influential states in the 2020 election.

The District of Columbia is the only non-state entity of the United States with a share of electoral votes in U.S. presidential elections. Since the 23rd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted Washington D.C. representation in these elections, the nation's capital has had three electoral votes in each election since 1964. In these 16 elections, Washington D.C.'s citizens have chosen the overall winner seven times, giving a success rate of 44 percent, which is the lowest in the country. As of 2024, no U.S. president has ever been born in Washington D.C., although former Vice President and Democratic nominee in the 2000 election, Al Gore, is the only major party candidate to have been born there, during his father's term in the House of Representatives. Always Democratic The District of Columbia has voted for the Democratic Party's nominee in every presidential election that has been contested in the capital. Not only do Democratic nominees perform well in D.C., they win these electoral votes by significant margins; Democrats have won over ninety percent of D.C.'s popular vote in the past four elections, and the worst performance ever by a Democrat was in 1980, where Jimmy Carter only won 75 percent of the popular vote. Factors such as heavy urbanization and ethnic diversity are generally cited as the reasons for D.C.'s strong Democrat voter base. Fifty-first state? The only time when a Democratic nominee did not receive all three electoral votes was in 2000, when one elector abstained from casting her ballot, as a protest of D.C.'s lack of voting representation in Congress. While the District of Columbia can take part in presidential elections, it is a federal district under Congress' jurisdiction, and does not have voting representation in either chamber of Congress. The statehood movement aims to make Washington D.C. the newest state to join the union, possibly under the name "New Columbia" or "Washington, Douglass Commonwealth" (named after the abolitionist, Frederick Douglass), and bring an end to what it sees as "taxation without representation". Generally speaking, lawmakers are split along party lines on whether D.C. should receive statehood or not; with Democrats in favor of the proposition, while Republicans are opposed to the idea (as it would likely bolster the Democrat's numbers in Congress). A survey conducted in June 2020, showed that roughly 40 percent of registered voters support the idea of D.C. statehood, while 41 percent oppose the idea, and the remainder are undecided; the topic gained renewed attention in 2020 when President Trump used the capital's National Guard to disperse peaceful protesters from near the White House during the George Floyd protests.

In the 2020 presidential election, about 55 percent of voters aged between 18 and 29 participated in the election -- a significant increase from the previous election year, when about 44 percent of youths voted in the election. The highest youth turnout rate was in 1972, when 55.4 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 voted in the election.