Case Study 1: The 2020 Turnout Surge
What happens when American turnout hits a 120-year peak? The 2020 election delivered the highest VEP turnout since 1900, and it did so under conditions that were supposed to depress participation: a global pandemic, polling-place uncertainty, and the largest one-time expansion of mail voting in American history. The result was a record turnout from both parties, in a deeply polarized election. The lessons remain contested.
The numbers
In 2020, approximately 158 million Americans voted in the presidential election. Total turnout was 67% of the voting-eligible population (VEP). This was:
- The highest U.S. presidential turnout since 1900 (when turnout was 73%, in a much smaller electorate that excluded most women, most non-white men, and people in many disenfranchised southern states).
- An increase of 7 percentage points over 2016 (60%).
- An increase of 10 percentage points over 2012 (58%).
Joe Biden received about 81 million votes, the most in any U.S. presidential election. Donald Trump received about 74 million votes, the most ever for a losing candidate and more than the winning total in 2016.
The key fact: the 2020 turnout surge was bipartisan. Both parties' bases turned out at modern record levels. This was not a one-sided mobilization that one side won by showing up while the other stayed home. It was a high-stakes election in which both sides showed up.
What drove the surge
Several factors aligned in 2020 to push turnout higher than any cycle in modern memory.
Mail-vote expansion (COVID-driven)
The pandemic forced rapid adaptation of voting infrastructure. State governments — Republican and Democratic alike — expanded access to mail and absentee voting on emergency grounds. The result:
| State category | 2016 mail share | 2020 mail share | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| All-mail states (CA, CO, OR, WA, etc.) | ~75% | ~85% | +10 |
| No-excuse absentee states | ~25% | ~50% | +25 |
| Excuse-required absentee states | ~10% | ~35% | +25 |
About 65% of all 2020 votes were cast before election day, up from about 35% in 2016. This was the largest single-cycle change in vote modality in American history.
The mail-vote expansion lowered the time and logistical cost of voting for millions of Americans. It particularly benefited voters with inflexible work schedules, transportation barriers, or health concerns about polling places during a pandemic. It is one of the leading candidate explanations for the turnout surge.
Intense partisan engagement
The 2020 election was widely understood by voters of both parties as exceptionally consequential. The Trump presidency had polarized American politics; pandemic response was contested; racial-justice movements following the killing of George Floyd had elevated stakes; and a Supreme Court vacancy (the death of Justice Ginsburg in September 2020) had crystallized concerns about constitutional direction.
Self-reported "voter interest" in 2020 polling was at modern record levels — among Republicans and Democrats both. When voters tell pollsters they care a lot about an election, they are substantially more likely to actually vote.
Mobilization on both sides
Both parties invested heavily in mobilization. The Trump campaign and Republican Party put substantial resources into election-day in-person mobilization, correctly anticipating that their voters would disproportionately use that mode. The Biden campaign and Democratic Party invested heavily in mail and early-vote mobilization, correctly anticipating that the COVID-driven shift toward mail voting would advantage their coalition.
Outside groups added further mobilization layers. The 2020 cycle saw record outside spending on both sides, and many of those dollars went to door-knocking, phone-banking, mail, and digital mobilization.
Demographic shifts in young-voter turnout
Voters under 30 — historically the least reliable turnout group — turned out at approximately 50% of VEP in 2020, well above their historical average (40-45%). The increase was visible in both parties: young-voter Democratic turnout was up, and young-voter Republican turnout was up. The young-voter surge added millions of votes that would not have been cast in a normal-turnout cycle.
The partisan effects
Did the surge benefit one party? The honest answer: it benefited both, in different ways, and the net partisan effect was small relative to the gross participation gain.
What might have been expected
Political scientists have long argued that higher turnout tends to favor Democrats, because non-voters are disproportionately Democratic-leaning (younger, more diverse, lower-income). This was the conventional wisdom going into 2020.
What actually happened
The conventional wisdom was partly correct and partly wrong. Higher turnout did add Democratic-leaning groups to the electorate — young voters, Hispanic voters in some states, lower-income voters. But it also added many marginal Republican-leaning voters who had been disengaged in previous cycles, particularly non-college whites in rural and exurban areas.
The 2020 result was a Biden win by 4.5 points in the popular vote, which (after accounting for state-level distribution) gave Biden 306 electoral votes to Trump's 232. But the underlying movement was partisan-symmetric: each side's turnout went up substantially, in ways that were mostly proportional to the existing partisan distribution. The net partisan tilt of the surge was modest — Biden's victory was real, but it was not driven primarily by asymmetric mobilization.
This finding is consequential for political theory. It suggests that the "low turnout favors Republicans" conventional wisdom is more contingent than political scientists once thought. When elections become high-salience and both parties mobilize aggressively, both bases turn out. The composition of the marginal turnout addition depends on which voters were previously disengaged and whether they lean toward one party or the other.
The 2022 and 2024 follow-throughs
Whether the 2020 turnout level was a one-time spike or a durable shift was a matter of intense interest going into 2022 and 2024.
2022 midterm: Turnout was 46% of VEP, the second-highest midterm turnout in a century (after 2018's 50%). The 2018 and 2022 cycles together suggested that midterm turnout had reset upward from the pre-2016 norm of 36-41%. The Trump-era mobilization architecture appeared to be sustaining itself.
2024 presidential: Turnout was approximately 64% of VEP — slightly below 2020 but well above pre-2020 norms. Biden's withdrawal in July, the ascension of Harris, and the salience of inflation as an issue produced a different mobilization environment than 2020, but turnout stayed elevated.
The most defensible interpretation: 2020 represented a permanent or semi-permanent shift in the U.S. turnout floor, not a one-time spike. Pre-2016 turnout norms (~58-60% in presidential cycles) appear to have been replaced by post-2016 norms (~64-67%). Whether this reflects (1) durable partisan polarization and intensity, (2) mail-voting infrastructure that has reduced the marginal cost of voting for many Americans, or (3) generational replacement bringing in higher-engagement younger voters is unsettled.
What the 2020 surge does not prove
Three caveats on the lessons of 2020.
First, the surge was election-specific in important ways. A pandemic, an incumbent who polarized turnout decisions, a racial-justice movement at peak salience, a Supreme Court vacancy. These conditions are unlikely to recur exactly. The fact that 2024 stayed elevated but below 2020 suggests some 2020-specific factors mattered.
Second, mail-vote expansion in 2020 was emergency-driven and partly reversed in subsequent cycles. Some states retained the expanded mail-voting access; others (Georgia, Texas, others) restricted it after the cycle. The infrastructure that enabled the 2020 surge does not exist uniformly across states going forward.
Third, higher turnout does not necessarily produce better governance or lower polarization. The 2020 election was the highest-turnout cycle in 120 years, and it was followed by January 6, 2021, contested certification, and continued polarization. Whatever turnout's intrinsic democratic merits, it does not by itself solve the substantive problems of American governance.
The lessons
What 2020 (and 2018, 2022, and 2024) showed:
- The American turnout ceiling can be raised. The pre-2016 assumption that ~60% was the modern presidential maximum was wrong. With sufficient stakes, mobilization, and infrastructure, the United States can hit 67%.
- Both parties can turn out at record levels in the same election. Turnout is not a zero-sum competition where one side's record numbers come at the expense of the other.
- Mail-voting infrastructure matters at the margin. States with expansive mail-voting access saw bigger turnout gains than states without.
- Mobilization investment by both parties matters. When both parties mobilize aggressively, marginal voters from both coalitions show up.
- Whether the 2020 ceiling stays raised is genuinely contested. 2024 was modestly below 2020 but well above the pre-2020 norm. The structural factors that made 2020 possible — high stakes, emergency mail-voting access, intense engagement — may or may not persist.
The deeper takeaway for the chapter: turnout is the result of stakes, infrastructure, and mobilization — not destiny. American voters, when given reasons and means, will participate at levels that compete with peer democracies. When the reasons or means change, so does turnout. The 2020 election demonstrated this in real time.
What it did not demonstrate is that high turnout produces consensus, or that participatory democracy heals the conditions that made the election so high-stakes in the first place. The ceiling moved. The other problems didn't.