2020 Presidential Nomination Contests Turnout Rates

Presented here are turnout rates for those eligible to vote, sometimes referred to as the voting-eligible population or VEP.

The numerator for these VEP turnout rates is the total number of ballots counted. In presidential nomination contests, election officials run primary contests and state parties may run their own primaries and caucuses. Election officials often will report total ballots counted through their normal election results reporting. State parties may not report these data, choosing instead to report votes for some candidates or turnout estimates. Where possible, I use the most accurate available data from state parties, understanding these data may have reliability challenges.

Timing is an issue for presidential nomination contests in that some state parties choose to run their nomination contests on different days. I order the contests by date, as reported by The Green Papers and the Frontloading Blog. My general rule is to compute a turnout rate only once both parties have held their nomination contests.

The denominator for these VEP turnout rates is constructed by estimating the voting-age population or VAP (everyone age 18 and older residing in the United States) estimated as of the first of the month of a nomination contest. Ineligible populations are subtracted from the VAP consisting of non-citizens and felons (depending on state disenfranchisement laws).

Data used to construct these voting-eligible turnout rates are provided below. For more information on the sources and methods used to construct these VEP turnout rates, please see the documentation available on the Election Lab data archive.