In 2024, Black Americans are estimated to make up almost ** percent of all eligible voters in the United States, the highest percentage in U.S. election history. While relatively similar from the past few years, the rate has continued to climb since 2008, when only **** percent of all U.S. eligible voters were Black.

This graph shows the democratic and republican percentages of two-party presidential vote in the U.S. from 1948 to 2008 for the black voters. **% of the voters voted for the democratic candidate in 1948.

Between 1964 and 2020, turnout among black voters in U.S. presidential elections fluctuated between 48 and 62 percent, with the highest turnouts coming in 2008 and 2012, when Barack Obama (the first African American candidate from a major party) was the Democratic candidate. Voter turnout has always been lowest among those under 25 years of age, although younger black voters did participate in high numbers in the 1960s, during the civil rights movement, and again in 2008, during Obama's first election campaign; young black voters also participated in higher numbers than white voters of the same age between 2000 and 2012.

In 1964, black voters over the age of 65 voted at a similar rate to those in the 18 to 24 bracket, however they have consistently had the highest turnout rates among black voters in recent years, overtaking voters in the 45 to 64 years bracket (whose voting rate has consistently been between 60 and 70 percent) in the 1996 election.

According to exit polling in the 2020 Presidential Election in the United States, ** 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, ** percent of white voters reported voting for incumbent President Donald Trump.

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).

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

Analysis of ‘US non-voters poll data’ provided by Analyst-2 (analyst-2.ai), based on source dataset retrieved from https://www.kaggle.com/yamqwe/us-non-voters-poll-datae on 28 January 2022.

--- Dataset description provided by original source is as follows ---

About this dataset

This dataset contains the data behind Why Many Americans Don't Vote.

Data presented here comes from polling done by Ipsos for FiveThirtyEight, using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel, a probability-based online panel that is recruited to be representative of the U.S. population. The poll was conducted from Sept. 15 to Sept. 25 among a sample of U.S. citizens that oversampled young, Black and Hispanic respondents, with 8,327 respondents, and was weighted according to general population benchmarks for U.S. citizens from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey March 2019 Supplement. The voter file company Aristotle then matched respondents to a voter file to more accurately understand their voting history using the panelist’s first name, last name, zip code, and eight characters of their address, using the National Change of Address program if applicable. Sixty-four percent of the sample (5,355 respondents) matched, although we also included respondents who did not match the voter file but described themselves as voting “rarely” or “never” in our survey, so as to avoid underrepresenting nonvoters, who are less likely to be included in the voter file to begin with. We dropped respondents who were only eligible to vote in three elections or fewer. We defined those who almost always vote as those who voted in all (or all but one) of the national elections (presidential and midterm) they were eligible to vote in since 2000; those who vote sometimes as those who voted in at least two elections, but fewer than all the elections they were eligible to vote in (or all but one); and those who rarely or never vote as those who voted in no elections, or just one.

The data included here is the final sample we used: 5,239 respondents who matched to the voter file and whose verified vote history we have, and 597 respondents who did not match to the voter file and described themselves as voting "rarely" or "never," all of whom have been eligible for at least 4 elections.

If you find this information useful, please let us know.

License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Source: https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data/tree/master/non-voters

This dataset was created by data.world's Admin and contains around 6000 samples along with Race, Q27 6, technical information and other features such as: - Q4 6 - Q8 3 - and more.

How to use this dataset

• Analyze Q10 3 in relation to Q8 6
• Study the influence of Q6 on Q10 4
• More datasets

Acknowledgements

If you use this dataset in your research, please credit data.world's Admin

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--- Original source retains full ownership of the source dataset ---

Some racial and ethnic categories are suppressed to avoid misleading estimates when the relative standard error exceeds 30%. Margins of error are estimated at the 90% confidence level.

Data Source: Current Population Survey (CPS) Voting Supplement, 2020

Why This Matters

Voting is one of the primary ways residents can have their voices heard by the government. By voting for elected officials and on ballot initiatives, residents help decide the future of their community.

For much of our nation’s history, non-white residents were explicitly prohibited from voting or discriminated against in the voting process. It was not until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that the Federal Government enacted voting rights protections for Black voters and voters of color.

Nationally, BIPOC citizens and especially Hispanic and Asian citizens have consistently lower voter turnout rates and voter registration rates. While local DC efforts have been taken to remove these barriers, restrictive voter ID requirements and the disenfranchisement of incarcerated and returning residents act as institutionally racist barriers to voting in many jurisdictions.

The District's Response

The DC Board of Elections has lowered the barriers to participate in local elections through online voter registration, same day registration, voting by mail, and non-ID proof of residence.

Unlike in many states, incarcerated and returning residents in D.C. never lose the right to vote. Since 2024, DC has also extended the right to vote in local elections to residents of the District who are not citizens of the U.S.

Although DC residents pay federal taxes and can vote in the presidential election, the District does not have full representation in Congress. Efforts to advocate for DC statehood aim to remedy this.

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 ** and **. In comparison, ** percent of Black voters between the ages of ** and ** reported voting for Kamala Harris.

How does the context in which a person lives affect his or her political behavior? I exploit an event in which demographic context was exogenously changed, leading to a significant change in voters' behavior, and demonstrating that voters react strongly to changes in an outgroup population. Between 2000 and 2004, the reconstruction of public housing in Chicago caused the displacement of over 25,000 African Americans, many of whom had previously lived in close proximity to white voters. After the removal of their African American neighbors, the white voters' turnout dropped by over ten percentage points. Consistent with psychological theories of racial threat, their change in behavior was a function of the size and proximity of the outgroup population. Proximity was also related to increased voting for conservative candidates. These findings strongly suggest that racial threat occurs because of attitude change rather than selection.

The U.S. midterm elections are general elections that are held in four year intervals, approximately two years after each presidential election. Midterm elections are used to determine all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, approximately one third of all Senate seats, two thirds of state governors, and a variety of local and municipal positions. Midterm elections traditionally have a much lower turnout than presidential elections, with turnout among U.S. adults ranging between 38 and 56 percent, compared with a range between 54 and 70 percent in presidential elections. Since 1964, white voters have consistently had the highest turnout rate in midterm elections, particularly non-Hispanic whites. Black voters have been voting at a similar rate to the national average in the past decade; although it is still just one percent below the national average. Since records became available, Asian and Hispanic voters have traditionally voted at a much lower rate than black or white voters, and have consistently had turnout rates at approximately half of the national average. The 2018 midterm elections saw an unprecedented increase in voter turnout, with the national average increasing by over ten percent; the high turnout in this election has been characterized as a reaction to "Trump's America", and saw significant gains for the Democratic Party, particularly for candidates who were female, non-white or members of the LGBT community.

Abstract: Debates over racial voting, and over policies to combat vote dilution, turn on the extent to which groups' voting preferences differ and vary across geography. We present the first study of racial voting patterns in every congressional district in the US. Using large-sample surveys combined with aggregate demographic and election data, we find that national-level differences across racial groups explain 60 percent of the variation in district-level voting patterns, while geography explains 30 percent. Black voters consistently choose Democratic candidates across districts, while Hispanic and White voters’ preferences vary considerably across geography. Districts with the highest racial polarization are concentrated in the parts of the South and Midwest. Importantly, multi-racial coalitions have become the norm: in most congressional districts, the winning majority requires support from minority voters. In arriving at these conclusions, we make methodological innovations that improve the precision and accuracy when modeling sparse survey data.

In 1860, about half of Fauquier County’s population was made up of free and enslaved African Americans. On the heels of the historical periods of slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the great migration, civil rights and integration, descendants of these residents now make up less than 10 percent of Fauquier’s population. Only remnants of their many communities are still present, yet their contributions to Fauquier County remain.

This story map attempts to tell the history of the lives of these often overlooked and forgotten Americans.

As community-driven nonprofit organizations, the Afro-American Historical Association of Fauquier County and The Piedmont Environmental Council rely on member support, feedback and engagement. If you feel inspired by what you see in the story map, learn more about Fauquier’s historic African American communities and expand or share your knowledge by:

Visiting www.aahafauquier.org and searching the available databases for more information which include 1867 Voters, African American Marriages, Bible Records, Born Free & Emancipated, and AAHA Archives. Reaching out to info@aahafauquier.org with photos, information, documentation, stories etc…or simply to share your response to the story map. We would love to hear from you! Contacting your elected officials and asking them to support greater local, state and federal recognition of these important, but often overlooked communities and historic resources. Looking forward, AAHA and PEC are already thinking on ways to add, enhance or add new resource layers to this story map project. Potential future additions include: church and community cemeteries, burial sites of the enslaved, and known small family burial sites; sites of impactful historical events; names and location of early African-American owned businesses; sites of fraternal lodges and the story of civic role they played in the African American community, and more!Stay tuned and please contact AAHA with questions and feedback: www.aahafauquier.org/contact

This graph shows the percentage of votes of the 2016 presidential elections in the United States on November 9, 2016, by race. According to the exit polls, about 37 percent of white voters voted for Hillary Clinton.

Traditionally in the United States, voters who identify as white have the highest turnout rate of all major ethnic groups; when white voters of non-Hispanic origin (defined as European Americans, Middle Eastern Americans and North African Americans) are analyzed separately, the turnout rate increases further. In the past four decades, turnout among non-Hispanic white voters has fluctuated between 59 and 70 percent; three to five percent more than all white voters. In the six most recent elections, over seventy percent of non-Hispanic white people aged 65 and above have voted in presidential elections. In contrast to this, the youngest age bracket of non-Hispanic white voters, those aged 18 to 24 years old, had a turnout rate of just 37 percent in some years; this group still generally has the highest turnout rate among all ethnicities of this age, although black voters aged 18 to 24 did have the highest turnout rate in the 2008 and 2012 elections.

The 1956 presidential election in the United States saw a rematch of the two main candidates who contested the 1952 election. Incumbent President Dwight D. Eisenhower was seeking re-election for the Republican Party, while Adlai E. Stevenson was again on the ballot for the Democratic Party. Eisenhower maintained his considerable popularity from the Second World War, by keeping his campaign promise of ending the Korean War, as well as growing the economy and being an effective and charismatic leader. Despite a heart attack in 1955, Eisenhower faced no competition for the Republican Party's re-nomination, with Richard Nixon returning as his running mate. The Democratic primaries were not as certain however, yet Stevenson was re-nominated in due course, as his campaign was better funded and organized than any of his opponents. The Democratic National Convention nominated Stevenson on the first vote (future-President Lyndon B. Johnson was also on the ballot), but then Stevenson made an unprecedented move by allowing the DNC to also choose his running mate. Estes Kefauver was eventually named as Stevenson's running mate, with John F. Kennedy and Al Gore Sr. coming in second and third place respectively. Eisenhower's campaign boost In 1954, during Eisenhower's first term, his administration had supported the Supreme Court's ruling in the Brown v Board of Education, which ended the racial segregation of schools. While this angered many white voters in the Deep South (where segregation was deeply entrenched in daily life), it did earn Eisenhower the support of almost forty percent of black voters, which was the last time a Republican candidate received such support from the African-American community. In the weeks before the election, Eisenhower's response to the Soviet invasion of Hungary and the British-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt also increased his popularity at home. Eisenhower condemned both invasions while speaking at the UN, and even pressured the withdrawal of troops from Egypt. Results Eisenhower won by yet another landslide, increasing his margins of victory in the 1952 elections. Eisenhower carried 41 states, taking 84 percent of the electoral vote, and 57 percent of the popular vote. Stevenson won a majority in just seven states, taking 42 and 14 percent of the popular and electoral votes respectively. A faithless elector in Alabama also cast one electoral vote for Walter Jones (a local judge) instead of giving it to Stevenson. This was the final election to be contested in just 48 states, with Hawaii and Alaska being represented from 1960 onwards.

In the 1824 U.S presidential election, which was the first where a popular vote was used to determine the overall winner, approximately three percent of the U.S. population voted in the election, while only one percent actually voted for the winner. Over the following decades, restrictions that prevented non-property owning males from voting were gradually repealed, and almost all white men over the age of 21 could vote by the 1856 election. The next major development was the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution following the American Civil War, which granted suffrage to all male citizens of voting age, regardless of race. Turnout then grew to almost twenty percent at the turn of the century, however Jim Crow laws played a large part in keeping these numbers lower than they potentially could have been, by disenfranchising black communities in the south and undoing much of the progress made during the Reconstruction Era. Extension of voting rights Female suffrage, granted to women in 1920, was responsible for the largest participation increase between any two elections in U.S. history. Between the 1916 and 1920 elections, overall turnout increased by almost seven percent, and it continued to grow to 38 percent by the 1940 election; largely due to the growth in female participation over time. Following a slight reduction during the Second World War and 1948 elections, turnout remained at between 36 and forty percent from the 1950s until the 1990s. Between these decades, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Twenty-Sixth Amendment in 1971 respectively re-enfranchised many black voters in the south and reduced the voting age in all states from 21 to 18 years old. Participation among female voters has also exceeded male participation in all elections since 1980. Recent trends The 1992 election was the first where more than forty percent of the total population cast ballots, and turnout has been above forty percent in all presidential elections since 2004. Along with the extension of voting rights, the largest impact on voter turnout has been the increase in life expectancy throughout the centuries, almost doubling in the past 150 years. As the overall average age has risen, so too has the share of the total population who are eligible to vote, and older voters have had the highest turnout rates since the 1980s. Another factor is increased political involvement among ethnic minorities; while white voters have traditionally had the highest turnout rates in presidential elections, black voters turnout has exceeded the national average since 2008. Asian and Hispanic voter turnouts have also increased in the past twenty years, with the growing Hispanic vote in southern and border states expected to cause a major shift in U.S. politics in the coming decades.

In terms of the most popular presidents, in the 1940 election, Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first president to have been elected by more than one fifth of the total population. Three presidents were elected by more than 22 percent of the total population, respectively Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, Richard Nixon in 1972 and Barack Obama in 2008, while Ronald Reagan's re-election in 1984 saw him become the only president in U.S. history to win with the support of more than 23 percent of the total population. While the vote count for the 2020 election is still to be finalized, President-elect Joe Biden has already received 81.28 million votes as of December 02, which would also translate to over 24.5 percent of the total population, and will likely near 25 percent by the end of the counting process.

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.

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.