Tellers in Seoul, South korea, count ballots from the May 2017 presidential ballot. (Jean Chung/Getty Images)

If early voting trends are any indication, a record number of Americans could vote in the 2020 presidential election. Equally of this writing, more than than 100 million early votes accept been cast by mail or in person – more than two-thirds of the total number of votes bandage in 2016.

We won't have anything similar a definitive assessment of 2020 turnout rates for some time after Nov. iii. Simply in the 2016 presidential election, near 56% of the U.S. voting-historic period population cast a election. That represented a slight uptick from 2012 but was lower than in the record twelvemonth of 2008, when turnout topped 58% of the voting-age population.

So how does voter turnout in the U.s. compare with turnout in other countries? That depends very much on which country you're looking at and which measuring stick you use.

Political scientists ofttimes ascertain turnout as votes bandage divided by the number of eligible voters. Just because eligible-voter estimates are non readily available for many countries, nosotros're basing our cross-national turnout comparisons on estimates of voting-historic period population (or VAP), which are more readily available, as well as on registered voters. (Read "How we did this" for details.)

Comparison U.S. national election turnout rates with rates in other countries can yield different results, depending on how turnout is calculated. Political scientists ofttimes define turnout as votes cast divided by the estimated number of eligible voters. Just eligible-voter estimates are difficult or impossible to find for many nations. And so to compare turnout calculations internationally, we're using two different denominators: full registered voters and estimated voting-historic period populations, or VAP, considering they're readily available for most countries.

Nosotros calculated turnout rates for the nigh recent national election in each country, except in cases where that election was for a largely formalism position or for European Parliament members (turnout is often essentially lower in such elections). Voting-age population turnout is derived from estimates of each land's VAP by the International Found for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. Registered-voter turnout is derived from each country's reported registration information. Because of methodological differences, in some countries Thought's VAP estimates are lower than the reported number of registered voters.

In addition to information from Thought, data is likewise drawn from the U.S. Census Agency, the Function of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, and individual nations' statistical and election regime.

Overall, 245.5 million Americans were ages xviii and older in Nov 2016, nearly 157.6 million of whom reported existence registered to vote, according to Census Bureau estimates. Just over 137.5 million people told the census they voted that yr, somewhat higher than the actual number of votes tallied – nearly 136.viii million, according to figures compiled by the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. Business firm of Representatives (which include more 170,000 bare, spoiled or otherwise null ballots). That sort of overstatement has long been noted by researchers; the comparisons and charts in this analysis utilize the House Clerk'south figure, along with data from the International Found for Republic and Electoral Assist and individual nations' statistical and elections authorities.

The 55.seven% VAP turnout in 2016 puts the U.South. behind most of its peers in the Arrangement for Economic Cooperation and Development, most of whose members are highly developed democratic states. Looking at the most recent nationwide election in each OECD nation, the U.S. places 30th out of 35 nations for which data is bachelor.

By international standards, 2016 U.S. voter turnout was low

Country % of voting historic period population % of registered voters
Iceland (2017) NA 81.xx%
Japan (2017) NA 53.65%
Turkey (2018)* 88.97% 86.24%
Sweden (2018) 82.08% 87.18%
Australia (2019)* 80.79% 91.89%
Belgium (2019)* 77.94% 88.38%
South Korea (2017) 77.92% 77.23%
Israel (2020) 77.90% 71.52%
Netherlands (2017) 77.31% 81.93%
Denmark (2019) 76.38% 84.60%
Hungary (2018) 71.65% 69.68%
Norway (2017) 70.59% 78.22%
Finland (2019) 69.43% 68.73%
Deutschland (2017) 69.eleven% 76.15%
France (2017) 67.93% 74.56%
Mexico (2018)* 65.98% 63.43%
Poland (2020) 65.40% 68.18%
Slovakia (2020) 65.39% 65.81%
Italy (2018) 65.28% 73.05%
Austria (2019) 64.forty% 75.59%
Hellenic republic (2019)* 63.53% 57.78%
New Zealand (2020) 63.16% 68.35%
Canada (2019) 62.42% 67.04%
United kingdom (2019) 62.32% 67.86%
Portugal (2019) 61.13% 48.60%
Spain (2019) 60.29% 66.23%
Republic of lithuania (2019) 59.28% 53.88%
Czech Democracy (2017) 58.02% 60.79%
Colombia (2018) 57.28% 53.38%
Ireland (2020) 56.65% 62.71%
Estonia (2019) 56.45% 63.67%
Usa (2016) 55.72% 86.80%
Slovenia (2018) 54.58% 52.64%
Republic of latvia (2018) 53.55% 54.56%
Chile (2017) 52.20% 49.02%
Luxembourg (2018)* 48.16% 89.66%
Switzerland (2019)* 36.06% 45.12%

Pew Enquiry Center

The highest turnout rates among OECD nations were in Turkey (89% of voting-age population), Sweden (82.1%), Australia (lxxx.8%), Belgium (77.9%) and Southward Korea (77.nine%). Switzerland consistently has the lowest turnout in the OECD: In 2019 federal elections, barely 36% of the Swiss voting-historic period population voted.

One factor behind the consistently high turnout rates in Australia and Belgium may be that they are among the 21 nations around the world, including six in the OECD, with some form of compulsory voting. One canton in Switzerland has compulsory voting as well.

While compulsory-voting laws aren't e'er strictly enforced, their presence or absence can have dramatic effects on turnout. In Chile, for example, turnout plunged after the country moved from compulsory to voluntary voting in 2012 and began automatically putting all eligible citizens on the voter rolls. Even though essentially all voting-historic period citizens were registered to vote in Republic of chile's 2013 elections, turnout in the presidential race plunged to 42%, versus 87% in 2010 when the compulsory-voting police force was still in place. (Turnout rebounded slightly in the 2017 presidential election, to 49% of registered voters.)

Republic of chile's situation points to yet another complicating factor when comparison turnout rates across countries: the distinction betwixt who'southward eligible to vote and who's actually registered to do so. In many countries, the national regime takes the atomic number 82 in getting people's names on the rolls – whether past registering them automatically once they get eligible (every bit in, for example, Sweden or Deutschland) or by aggressively seeking out and registering eligible voters (every bit in the United kingdom and Australia). As a issue, turnout looks pretty similar regardless of whether you lot're looking at voting-age population or registered voters.

In the U.S., past contrast, registration is decentralized and mainly an private responsibility. And registered voters represent a much smaller share of potential voters in the U.S. than in many other countries. Only about 64% of the U.Due south. voting-historic period population (and seventy% of voting-age citizens) was registered in 2016, according to the Demography Bureau. The U.S. rate is much lower than many other OECD countries: For example, the share of the voting-age population that is registered to vote is 92% in the Great britain (2019), 93% in Canada (2019), 94% in Sweden (2018) and 99% in Slovakia (2020). Luxembourg also has a low rate (54%), although it represents something of a special case because nearly half of the tiny land's population is foreign born.

Turnout in U.S. presidential elections

As a consequence, turnout comparisons based only on registered voters may not be very meaningful. For instance, U.Southward. turnout in 2016 was 86.8% of registered voters, 5th-highest amid OECD countries and second-highest among those without compulsory voting. Simply registered voters in the U.Due south. are much more than of a self-selected group, already more likely to vote considering they took the trouble to register themselves.

There are fifty-fifty more means to calculate turnout. Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida who runs the U.s. Ballot Project, estimates turnout as a share of the "voting-eligible population" by subtracting noncitizens and ineligible felons from the voting-historic period population and calculation eligible overseas voters. Using those calculations, U.S. turnout improves somewhat, to 60.1% of the 2016 voting-eligible population. Nevertheless, McDonald doesn't calculate comparable estimates for other countries.

No affair how they're measured, U.South. turnout rates take been fairly consequent over the by several decades, despite some election-to-election variation. Since 1976, voting-historic period turnout has remained within an 8.v pct point range – from simply under 50% in 1996, when Bill Clinton was reelected, to just over 58% in 2008, when Barack Obama won the White Firm. Nevertheless, turnout varies considerably among unlike racial, ethnic and age groups.

In several other OECD countries, turnout has drifted lower in recent decades. Greece has a compulsory-voting constabulary on the books, though it's non enforced; turnout there in parliamentary elections vicious from 89% in 2000 to 63.5% last year. In Norway's nigh recent parliamentary elections, 2017, 70.6% of the voting-age population cast ballots – the lowest turnout rate in at least 4 decades. And in Slovenia, a burst of enthusiasm followed the country's independence from Yugoslavia in 1992, when 85% of the voting-age population cast ballots – simply turnout has fallen almost 31 percent points in two-and-a-one-half decades of republic, sinking to 54.6% in 2018.

On the other hand, turnout in recent elections has bumped up in several OECD countries. Canadian turnout in the ii most contempo parliamentary elections (2015 and 2019) topped 62%, the highest charge per unit since 1993. In Slovakia's legislative elections this past February, nigh two-thirds (65.4%) of the voting-age population cast ballots, upwards from 59.4% in 2016. And in Hungary's 2018 parliamentary elections, nearly 72% of the voting-age population voted, up from 63.iii% in 2014.

Notation: This is an update of a postal service originally published May half-dozen, 2015.