Every four years, Americans turn out in big numbers to choose a president.
In 2020, about two-thirds of eligible voters cast a ballot, the highest rate in over a century, and 2024 came close behind. But when the midterms roll around two years later, a large share of those voters stay home. Historically, midterm turnout has hovered around 40 percent of eligible voters, roughly 20 points lower than in presidential years. Even the strong recent midterms, about 50 percent in 2018 and 46 percent in 2022, left tens of millions of presidential-year voters on the sidelines.
Presidential races dominate the news for more than a year, with debates, nonstop ads, and a single high-profile contest that’s easy to follow. Midterms are spread across hundreds of races for Congress, governor, state legislature, and local office, which can feel less dramatic and harder to keep track of. Many people also aren’t sure who their representatives are or what those offices actually do, so there is a disconnect.
The reality is that midterms often shape day-to-day life more directly than presidential elections do. They decide control of the House and a third of the Senate, which determines what legislation passes and which nominees get confirmed. They elect governors, state legislators, attorneys general, school boards, judges, sheriffs, and ballot measures that set policy on taxes, schools, roads, housing, and public safety in your own community. And because fewer people vote, each individual ballot carries more weight. Local races are regularly decided by a few hundred votes, sometimes fewer.
Below is a tool that allows you to explore the gap between midterm and presidential turnout. You can view nationwide and individual state level turnout, see how large the gap is, and which states perform better or worse than the rest.