User:Hoffannechristine34/Voter turnout in United States presidential elections

1870s: African American male suffrage
The passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1870 gave African American men the right to vote. While this change in the voting status of black men in the United States very likely increased the overall voting population, the systematic collection of data by race did not occur prior to 1964. Therefore, the effects of African American male suffrage on voting trends in presidential elections are not easy to make. The first record of a black man voting after the amendment's adoption was when Thomas Mundy Peterson cast his vote on March 31, 1870 in Perth Amboy, New Jersey in a referendum election, adopting a revised city charter. During Reconstruction (1865-1877), sixteen black men served in Congress, and 2,000 black men served in elected local state and federal positions. While this historic expansion of rights resulted in significant increases in the eligible voting population and may have contributed to the increases in the proportion of votes cast for president as a percentage of the total population during the 1870s, there does not seem to have been a significant long-term increase in the percentage of eligible voters who turn out for the poll. United States vs. Reese (1876), the first supreme court decision interpreting the fifteenth amendment, may have set the cause of African American male suffrage back again. In United States vs. Reese (1876), the supreme court upheld limitations on suffrage, including poll taxes, literacy tests, and a grandfather clause that exempted citizens from other voting requirements if their grandfathers had been registered voters. The Court also stated that the amendment "does not confer the right of suffrage to anyone," but it "invests citizens of the United States with the right of exemption from discrimination." This subtle distinction between suffrage and the right to be exempt from discrimination may have legitimized the disenfranchisement of blacks. The disenfranchisement of most African Americans and many poor whites in the South during the years 1890–1910 likely contributed to the decline in overall voter turnout percentages during those years visible in the chart above.

Voter turnout in United States presidential elections

Early 1920s: Women's suffrage
There was no systematic collection of voter turnout data by gender at a national level before 1964, but smaller local studies indicate a low turnout among female voters in the years following women's suffrage in the United States. For example, a 1924 study of voter turnout in Chicago found that "female Chicagoans were far less likely to have visited the polls on Election Day than were men in both the 1920 presidential election (46% vs. 75%) and the 1923 mayoral contest (35% vs. 63%)." The study compared reasons given by male and female non-voters and found that female non-voters were more likely to cite general indifference to politics and ignorance or timidity regarding elections than male non-voters, and that female voter were less likely to cite fear of loss of business or wages. Most significantly, however, 11% of female non-voters in the survey cited a "Disbelief in woman's voting" as the reason they did not vote.

The graph of voter turnout percentages shows a decline in turnout over the first two decades of the twentieth century, ending in 1920 when the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution granted women the right to vote across the United States. 

With the exception of 1916, voter turnout declined in the decades preceding women's suffrage. Despite this decline, from the 1900s until 1920, several states passed laws supporting women's suffrage. Women were granted the right to vote in Wyoming in 1869, before the territory had become a full state in the union. In 1889, when the Wyoming constitution was drafted in preparation for statehood, it included women's suffrage. Thus Wyoming was also the first full state to grant women the right to vote. In 1893, Colorado was the first state to amend an existing constitution in order to grant women the right to vote, and several other states followed, including Utah and Idaho in 1896, Washington State in 1910, California in 1911, Oregon, Kansas, and Arizona in 1912, Alaska and Illinois in 1913, Montana and Nevada in 1914, New York in 1917; Michigan, South Dakota, and Oklahoma in 1918. Each of these suffrage laws expanded the body of eligible voters, and because women were less likely to vote than men, each of these expansions created a decline in voter turnout rates, culminating with the extremely low turnouts in the 1920 and 1924 elections after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

The lack of systematic data tracking voter turnout in presidential elections before 1964 makes speculation on the voter turnout of women in presidential elections before 1964 challenging. The data from 1964 indicates that voting gender gap waned from 1964 until 1976. These same numbers suggest that from 1976 onward women have consistently turned out in higher numbers than men for presidential elections.

Age, Income and Educational Attainment

Age, income, and educational attainment are significant factors affecting voter turnout. Educational attainment is perhaps the best predictor of voter turnout, and in the 2008 election, those holding advanced degrees were three times more likely to vote than those with less than high school education. Income correlated well with the likelihood of voting as well. The income correlation may be because of a correlation between income and educational attainment, rather than a direct effect of income.