Many of you probably either read or read about Russell Brand's manifesto in the center-left British magazine New Statesman. One thing that irked me about the piece was Brand's disregard for voting--his refusal to do it and his encouragement of others not to vote as well. If Brand was disgusted with the Labour Party after Tony Blair hollowed it out, he could have voted for the Greens. The UK Greens, like the Greens in the US, are not a large party, but they do exist. I don't know where Brand is registered, so I can't analyze the particular candidates from which he had to choose; however, not all Labourites are Blairites.

In the 2010 general election in the UK, only 65% of the population showed up to vote. That missing 35% could have helped usher in a Labour-Lib Dem coalition instead of a Tory-Lib Dem coalition. Would a Labour-Lib Dem coalition be perfect? No. Would it be better than the current coalition? Yes. If the Greens managed to get enough votes, you could have even had a traffic light coalition (green-yellow-red).

Looking at turnout numbers got me thinking about elections here in the U.S., considering how low are turnout rates always are. And that led to the titular question of this diary:

Who was the last president to outpoll non-voters?

We'll work backwards to find the answer.

In determining this, I decided to use "voting age population" (VAP) rather than "voting eligible population" (VEP) because the former is more readily available for elections from many decades past. I used the turnout numbers provided by the American Presidency Project. Professor Michael McDonald of GMU has analyzed the relationship between the two turnout measures, and his graph shows that they began to diverge in the 1980s. Using the voting age population (which includes non-citizen residents, those barred from voting because of criminal history, etc.) as the denominator will deflate the turnout percentage a bit--but not enough to significantly affect our findings.

In the last election, voter turnout was only 53.6%. That means that, of the voting age population (VAP), 46.4% did not vote, 27.4% voted for Obama, and 25.3% voted for Romney. That's right. All of that media coverage and money, and Obama didn't even get the votes of 30% of the voting age population (or, if you check, the voting eligible population).

According to the the data from here and here, Minnesota and Wisconsin were the only states in which both candidates outpolled non-voters among the voting age population. Obama also outpolled non-voters among the voting age populations of DC, Iowa, Maine, and New Hampshire. Both Obama and Romney outpolled non-voters among the voting eligible population of Colorado. Obama also outpolled nonvoters among the voting eligible populations of Maryland, Massachusetts, and Vermont; Romney, Iowa and New Hampshire.



2008 Election:

42.5% non-voters

30.4% Obama

26.3% McCain

2004 Election

44.7% non-voters

28.0% George W. Bush

26.7% John Kerry



2000 Election

48.7% non-voters

24.6% George W. Bush

24.8% Al Gore



1996 Election

51.0% non-voters

24.1% Bill Clinton

19.9% Bob Dole

This was one of only three elections in which non-voters constituted an outright majority. The other two were 1920 and 1924. There were more than twice as many non-voters as there were voters for Clinton. That's pretty depressing when you think about it.

1992 Election

44.8% non-voters

23.7% Bill Clinton

20.7% George H. W. Bush

I believe that Bill Clinton's 23.7% was the record low. It feels weird to realize that Clinton never even had the support of 1/4 of the VAP.

1988 Election

49.8% non-voters

26.8% George H. W. Bush

22.9% Michael Dukakis

1984 Election

46.9% non-voters

31.2% Ronald Reagan

21.6% Walter Mondale

That's right: In Reagan's landslide re-election, he didn't even have the support of 1/3 of the VAP.

1980 Election

47.4% non-voters

26.7% Ronald Reagan

21.6% Jimmy Carter

1976 Election

46.5% non-voters

26.8% Jimmy Carter

25.7% Gerald Ford

1972 Election

44.8% non-voters

33.5% Richard Nixon

20.7% George McGovern

This is the last time a president won more than 1/3 of the VAP.



1968 Election

39.2% non-voters

26.4% Richard Nixon

25.2% Hubert Humphrey

1964 Election

38.1% non-voters

37.8% Lyndon B. Johnson

23.8% Barry Goldwater

So close, LBJ! As a consolation prize, even though he didn't beat the non-voters, he still won the largest share of the VAP of any president in the 20th century.

1960 Election

36.9% non-voters

31.4% John F. Kennedy

31.3% Richard Nixon



1956 Election

39.4% non-voters

34.8% Dwight D. Eisenhower

25.5% Adlai Stevenson

1952 Election

36.7% non-voters

34.9% Dwight D. Eisenhower

28.0% Adlai Stevenson

1948 Election

47.0% non-voters

26.3% Harry Truman

23.9% Thomas Dewey

1944 Election

44.1% non-voters

29.9% Franklin D. Roosevelt

26.7% Thomas Dewey



1940 Election

37.5% non-voters

34.2% FDR

28.0% Wendell Wilkie

1936 Election

39.0% non-voters

37.1% FDR

22.3% Alf Landon

1932 Election

43.1% non-voters

32.7% FDR

22.6% Herbert Hoover

1928 Election

43.1% non-voters

33.1% Herbert Hoover

23.2% Al Smith

1924 Election

51.1% non-voters

26.4% Calvin Coolidge

14.1% John Davis



1920 Election

50.8% non-voters

29.7% Warren G. Harding

16.8% James Cox

1920 was the first presidential election since women gained suffrage nationally. So the share of the voting age population in elections prior is really a constricted population.

1916 Election

38.4% non-voters

30.3% Woodrow Wilson

28.4% Charles Evans Hughes

1912 Election

41.2% non-voters

24.6% Woodrow Wilson

13.6% William Taft



1908 Election

34.6% non-voters

33.7% William Taft

28.1% William Jennings Bryan

1904 Election

34.8% non-voters

36.8% Theodore Roosevelt

24.5% Alton B. Parker

We have a winner!

And to fill out the century....



1900 Election

26.8% non-voters

37.8% William McKinley

33.3% William Jennings Bryan

Both candidates actually beat the non-voters!

If my calculations are correct, the president who won the highest share of the voting age population* ever was William Henry Harrison, who spent just over a month in office. A bit ironic.

*The franchise in 1840 didn't include women, the enslaved population of the South, most of the free blacks of the North, and Native Americans, and many states still had property requirements. I'm using "voting age population" because that's how it is used in turnout data sources; however, that population was quite small.