Turnout in U.S. has soared in recent elections but by some measures still trails that of many other countries
When comparing turnout among the voting-age population in recent national elections in 50 countries, the U.S. ranks 31st.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
When comparing turnout among the voting-age population in recent national elections in 50 countries, the U.S. ranks 31st.
Americans voted in record numbers in last year’s presidential election, casting nearly 158.4 million ballots.
We identified 261 U.S. jurisdictions that have adopted some voting method other than the winner-take-all system most American voters know.
As of the end of 2017, 57% of 167 countries with populations of at least 500,000 were democracies of some kind, and only 13% were autocracies.
Many of the millions of Americans voting in Tuesday’s midterm elections will have to do so while working around the demands of their jobs – hitting their polling places before work, taking an extra-long lunch break or going afterward and hoping to make it before the polls close. As they stand in line, many of them may wonder why it is that the United States votes on a Tuesday, of all days.
On election night 2018, besides the exit polls there will be an additional source of data on who voted and why, developed by The Associated Press, Fox News and NORC at the University of Chicago and based on a very different methodology. That means that depending on where you go for election news, you may get a somewhat different portrait of this year’s electorate.
The U.S. House of Representatives has one voting member (435 in total) for every 747,000 or so Americans. That’s by far the highest ratio of population to representatives of any industrialized democracy, and the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history.
Courtney Kennedy of Pew Research Center, who chaired survey researchers organization AAPOR’s task force on political polling in the 2016 U.S. elections, discuss the group’s findings and recommendations.
Though many Americans say they’re concerned about possible election fraud, the U.S. electoral system generally ranks high in cross-national comparisons.
The Supreme Court today voided a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, meaning several states and local jurisdictions no longer have to get federal approval for changes to their voting laws and procedures. The 5-4 opinion, written by Chief Justice Roberts, didn’t strike down the “preclearance” provision of the law itself, but rather the decades-old […]
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