I fell for it. I saw the long lines and believed a local volunteer at the polls--and those "experts" on TV--who said they thought the voter turnout in the 2008 election would approach 85%. New figures show the estimated voter turnout in this presidential election ran about 64.1%. This turnout is the highest since the 1908 election when 65.2% of the people went to the polls, but it still doesn't come close to those wild predictions.
We haven't had even an 80% voter turnout in an American Presidential election since 1876. So it just goes to show you: a lot of Americans may have gone to the polls this year but more than a third of them stayed home, didn't vote by absentee ballot, didn't vote early, and just didn't show.
If you look at the records of the turnouts in all U.S. Presidential elections, the average number is about 50%. So--if you didn't vote, don't complain during the next four years. Twenty percent more voters at the polls--which would have brought turnout up to that 85% number--could have pushed the election either direction in a very big way. (For more info on voter turnout in American elections click on the headline to go to "infoplease".)
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