No one expects 100%. Australia hovers around 90% turnout.
The rest below is me just working out some numbers, and isn’t meant to convince anyone of anything.
There are ~236 million Americans citizens of voting age, of whom 73.6% (174 million) are registered to vote.
Of the 174 million registered voters, 155.2 million voted.
Of the 155.2m, 77.3m voted for Trump, 75.0m voted for Harris, and 2.9m voted for someone else. Not that this is how the system works, but more people voted for “someone other than Trump” than voted for him.
If 90% of the 174m voters had voted, that would have increased turnout by 1.4m voters. Not enough to change the popular vote, even if they were all for Harris (though depending on distribution there is at least some small chance the Electoral College votes would have changed enough).
If 90% (212.4m) of the 236m eligible voters had voted, that’s 57.2m more votes to cast.
Pew Research says that polled non-voters went 44% for Trump, 40% for Harris. Applying that to our hypothetical 57.2m voters, it’s 22.9m more for Harris and 25.2m more for Trump, bringing our totals to 102.5m Trump, 97.9m Harris, and a new block of 9.2m undecided. Note that two of those figures rounded up, so the apparent total is 212.6m rather than 212.4m.
The difference between Trump-Harris at this point is 4.6m votes. For Harris to tie/win the popular vote on the new undecided block, she would have needed 75% of them (Harris 6.9% vs. Trump 2.3m).
All of that hinges on polls reflecting reality, which lately is much easier to question (not based on misinformation, just with polling managing so often not matching the real vote results).
Thank you for going on this numbers journey with me.
No one expects 100%. Australia hovers around 90% turnout.
The rest below is me just working out some numbers, and isn’t meant to convince anyone of anything.
There are ~236 million Americans citizens of voting age, of whom 73.6% (174 million) are registered to vote.
Of the 174 million registered voters, 155.2 million voted.
Of the 155.2m, 77.3m voted for Trump, 75.0m voted for Harris, and 2.9m voted for someone else. Not that this is how the system works, but more people voted for “someone other than Trump” than voted for him.
If 90% of the 174m voters had voted, that would have increased turnout by 1.4m voters. Not enough to change the popular vote, even if they were all for Harris (though depending on distribution there is at least some small chance the Electoral College votes would have changed enough).
If 90% (212.4m) of the 236m eligible voters had voted, that’s 57.2m more votes to cast.
Pew Research says that polled non-voters went 44% for Trump, 40% for Harris. Applying that to our hypothetical 57.2m voters, it’s 22.9m more for Harris and 25.2m more for Trump, bringing our totals to 102.5m Trump, 97.9m Harris, and a new block of 9.2m undecided. Note that two of those figures rounded up, so the apparent total is 212.6m rather than 212.4m.
The difference between Trump-Harris at this point is 4.6m votes. For Harris to tie/win the popular vote on the new undecided block, she would have needed 75% of them (Harris 6.9% vs. Trump 2.3m).
All of that hinges on polls reflecting reality, which lately is much easier to question (not based on misinformation, just with polling managing so often not matching the real vote results).
Thank you for going on this numbers journey with me.