American Government and Politics Today, Brief Edition, 2014-2015

ChAPTER EighT • CAmPAigns AnD ElECTions 189

Voting-Age Population

The number of people of

voting age living in the

country at a given time,

regardless of whether they

have the right to vote.

Vote-Eligible

Population

The number of people

who, at a given time,

enjoy the right to vote in

national elections.

voter participation presumably signals apathy about our political system in general. It also

may signal that potential voters simply do not want to take the time to learn about the

issues.

Others are less concerned about low voter participation. They contend that low par-

ticipation simply indicates more satisfaction with the status quo. Also, they believe that

representative democracy is a reality even if a very small percentage of eligible voters vote.

If everyone who does not vote thinks that the outcome of the election will accord with his

or her own desires, then representative democracy is working. The nonvoters are obtain-

ing the type of government—with the type of people running it—that they want to have

anyway.

The Voting-Age Population and the Vote-Eligible Population. In the past, the

press and even many political scientists calculated voter turnout by taking the number

of people who vote as a percentage of the nation’s voting-age population. Until about

1972, this was a reasonable way to obtain an approximate figure for turnout. In recent

decades, however, turnout figures based on the voting-age population have become less

and less reliable. The problem is that the voting-age population is not the same as the

population of eligible voters, the vote-eligible population. The figure for the voting-

age population includes felons and ex-felons who have lost the right to vote. Above all,

it includes a large number of new immigrants who are not yet citizens. Finally, it does not

include Americans living abroad, who can cast absentee ballots.

In 2012, the voting-age population included 3.2 million ineligible felons and ex-felons

and an estimated 20.5 million noncitizens. It did not include 4.7 million Americans abroad.

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Vo

te-Eligible Population

Year

Presidential Elections

Congressional Elections

1912 1916 1920 1924 1928 1932 1936 1 940 1944 1948 19521956 1960 19641968 1972 1976 1980 19841988 1992 1 996 2000 200 420082012

FiguRE 8–1: Voter Turnout for Presidential and

Congressional Elections, 1910–2012

The peaks represent voter turnout in presidential election years. The troughs represent voter turnout in off years with no

presidential elections.

Note: Prior to 1948, the voting-age population is used as a proxy for the population eligible to vote.

Sources: Historical Data Archive, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research; Michael P. McDonald and Samuel L. Popkin,

“The Myth of the Vanishing Voter,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 95, No. 4 (December 2001), p. 966; and the United States

Elections Project.

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