What would happen if the voter turnout improved?

With the 2020 presidential election upon us, activists of both political parties are urging voters to hit the polls. There has been an increasing trend among citizens of forgoing their vote, especially in states in which the majority vote is predictable. Many of these Americans either don’t care much for politics or struggle to find the time to cast their vote. The real question is what level of voting power is the country missing out on and how much of a difference could it really make in electing the next president?

The graph above shows the five states with the lowest voter turnout rate, which is below 55 percent of each state’s total voter population. These five states are Hawaii (47.3 percent voter turnout rate), New Mexico (54.8 percent), Tennessee (54 percent), Texas (55.4 percent), and West Virginia (50.8 percent). These states only account for a small fraction of the total number of votes being missed out on, but the amount of people not voting in these states sums to about 40 million Americans. Needless to say, getting more of these Americans to vote could very well change the course of the election for either side.

In the 2016 election, Donald Trump won by what seemed to be a whopping 77 electoral votes; however, he lost the popular vote by about three million. The Data-Z chart above reveals that the five states with the lowest voter turnout rate in the country total 63 electoral votes. The entire progression of the election could change by properly educating voters and persuading the unheard voices of Americans to stand behind a candidate.

Joe Rohaly is a senior at Indiana University majoring in Public Finance. He is interning in the Data Research department at Truth in Accounting, a nonprofit government finance watchdog based in Chicago.