What California’s 2024 Turnout Says About National Voting Trends
Voter turnout in California plummeted nearly 5 percentage points in the 2024 general election as voters across the board chose to sit out the cycle, according to a new study released on Tuesday.
The report from the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California’s Price School of Public Policy showed an immense drop off in turnout across the Golden State, with more than one-sixth of voters who cast ballots in 2020 skipping the 2024 election.
In all, more than 1 million fewer Californians voted in the 2024 election than four years earlier.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris carried her home state – and its 54 electoral votes – in the presidential election despite the decline in turnout. Still, the numbers out of the largest state in the country provide insights into larger, national trends that helped shape the outcome of the 2024 elections.
Overall, 62 percent of all eligible Californians voted in the 2024 general election, according to the Center for Inclusive Democracy’s report, down 4.8 percentage points from 2020. But the dropoff was more pronounced among historically underrepresented voting blocs, most notably voters of color and young people.
Latino turnout fell from nearly 54 percent in 2020 to roughly 46 percent last year, while young voters – those between the ages of 18 and 24 – dropped to 42.5 percent in November from over 50 percent four years earlier. Asian Americans also turned out at a lower rate, with turnout among those voters falling to 54 percent from nearly 59 percent in 2020.
Nearly 20 percent of Black voters who cast ballots in 2020 did not vote last year, according to the study.
National Turnout Decline
The dropoff in California’s voter turnout mirrors a broader trend that defined the 2024 elections.
Another report from the Election Assistance Commission released last month found that turnout declined 3 percentage points nationally from 2020 levels. California was among the states that saw the largest decreases in turnout, along with Utah, Hawaii, Washington State, New Jersey, Oregon and Idaho.
Only five states – North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin – saw their turnout rates increase in 2024 over 2020 levels. All of those states were key political battlegrounds in last year’s presidential election.
Another analysis of voter registration and turnout data in four states – Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania – released in June by the American Association of Political Consultants found that turnout as a percentage of voter registration declined in most cases, with Democrats seeing the biggest drop off.
The Center for Inclusive Democracy’s study offered a similar finding: 16 percent of registered California Democrats who voted in 2020 sat out the 2024 election, compared to 12.5 percent of registered Republicans who cast ballots in 2020.
