Midterm vs. Presidential Turnout

Share of registered voters who cast a ballot  ·  All states  ·  2014–2024

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01Turnout rises and falls with the presidential cycle
02Where the drop is biggest

State tile map

Each tile is a state, shaded by how many points lower midterm turnout was than the presidential year. Click a tile to inspect it.

Smaller drop Bigger dropDashed: no usable data
03Every state, presidential year vs. midterm

Each row connects a state's presidential-year turnout to its midterm turnout in the selected cycle. A longer line is a bigger drop.

Presidential yearMidterm year
04All elections by state
05How to read this
Turnout here is ballots cast (EAVS item F1a, total participation) divided by registered voters (item A1a), added up across each state's reporting jurisdictions. It is not turnout of the voting-eligible population, so levels differ from figures that use that base.
Compare a state with itself. States count inactive registrants differently, which makes levels hard to compare across states. The change between a state's own elections is the safer comparison.
Cycle pairs compare a presidential year with the midterm that follows it. The 2014 midterm is shown for context but has no presidential partner, because the files supplied for 2012 contain only military and overseas voting data.
Ballots not cast is a what-if, not a count: each state's midterm registration times the gap between its presidential and midterm turnout rates.
Left out: U.S. territories, and the state-years below. They are excluded from all rates, rankings and national totals.
Source: U.S. Election Assistance Commission, Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS) public-release data files for 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024, summed from jurisdiction rows to states. Items used: A1a (registered voters) and F1a (total participation).