Amid pandemic, the long decline of in-person voting on Election Day is likely to accelerate this year
Votes cast on Election Day have grown steadily less significant over the past several election cycles as a share of total votes cast.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Votes cast on Election Day have grown steadily less significant over the past several election cycles as a share of total votes cast.
Americans voted in record numbers in last year’s presidential election, casting nearly 158.4 million ballots.
Here’s a look back at some of the closest races of elections past and an assessment of just how common such races are.
Looking back at presidential elections since 1828, the winner’s electoral vote share has, on average, been 1.36 times his popular vote share.
In the 2016 general election, voters submitted nearly 33.5 million mail ballots, but more than 400,000 (1.2% of the total) weren’t counted.
We developed this explainer to help people understand how, and why, the complex U.S. electoral process is even more so this time around.
Mail-in ballots accounted for just over half of this year’s primary votes cast in the 37 states (plus D.C.) for which data is available.
After months of campaigning, debating, polling and fundraising, Democratic presidential candidates face their first real-world test Feb. 3.
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.
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.
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