Cartographer Philip Kearney has put together this map showing the scale of non-voting in the presidential election of 2016. In that election, the percent of Americans who could have voted but didn’t far exceeded the percentage of votes cast for either Trump or Clinton. Each grey county represents where the sentiment of apathy exceeded the votes cast for any one candidate.
Overall, according to a Knight Foundation report, Americans eligible to vote behaved this way in 2016:
41.3% Didn’t Vote
28.5% Voted for Clinton
27.3% Voted for Trump
02.9% Voted for Another Candidate
The inset on Kearney’s map shows that only in a few states did active sentiment for one candidate or the other truly prevail.
Image: from this source.
Republished with permission.
Hi Susan, Thank you for this map. Is there data on historical trends? Margie
It would probably be hard to find a series of maps like this one, showing county-level voter abstention rates. But there are many more general writings on voter engagement and how it has changed over time. And here is a table
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnout-in-presidential-elections
Brookings is predicting massive turnout for this coming election:
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/08/14/election-2020-a-once-in-a-century-massive-turnout/
In addition, the Knight Foundation completed a detailed survey of non-voters, which has prompted others to give this important group more attention:
https://knightfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/The-100-Million-Project_KF_Report_2020.pdf
Susan