7 November 2020 — 0810 mst
Montana’s 2020 turnouts were the highest
since the 26th Amendment was approved
Montana’s voter turnouts were the highest for a federal general election since the voting age was lowered to 18 in 1971. Here are the numbers:
Data: Registered voters and votes cast, MT SecST; estimated 2020 population, U.S. Census Bureau estimate for 2019 extrapolated to 2020 by Flathead Memo; voting eligible population, U.S. Elections Project.
The Voting Eligible Population (VEP) is the voting age population (age 18 and older) minus disqualified classes such as foreign nationals and incarcerated felons; the disqualified classes vary according to state law. As noted on Flathead Memo’s data downloads page, it’s the best statistic for voter turnout for two reasons:
- Voter registration rolls contain varying amounts of deadwood, that is people who no longer are voters, usually because they moved without notifying their elections department.
- A high RV turnout in a jurisdiction with a low number of RVers relative to the VEP can present a false picture of robust civic health. Suppose a jurisdiction has a VEP of 100,000, but only 10,000 RV. Suppose further that 9,000 ballots are cast in an election. The RV turnout would be 90 percent, but the VEP turnout would be only 9 percent.
Update. This is a revision of yesterday’s post on turnout. After reviewing my estimated county VEPs, I concluded they were not sufficiently accurate to be useful. Therefore, I’m withdrawing them. I’ll recalculate them if and when I obtain census estimates for the age 18 and older county populations.