Voter Turnout As A Percentage Of Voter Eligible Turnout In Presidential Election Years

Voter turnout in the Presidential election in 2020, as a share of people eligible to vote, is projected to be 66.5% and probably exceeded the 65.7% turnout in 1908, but not the record high turnout of 73.7% in the year 1900, which was 120 years ago. 

But this election defied the conventional wisdom that high voter turnout implies a blowout win for Democrats. 

Instead, Biden did only a little bit better than Hillary Clinton did in 2016, making his biggest gains over Clinton in the suburbs, smaller gains in urban areas, and sliding a bit relative to Clinton in rural areas. Specifically, "the biggest average shift was in suburban counties, which went 2.3 points more Democratic than in 2016, vs. urban ones that shifted 1.7 points in the blue direction. (Rural counties shifted just less than a point toward Trump.)."

But, this allowed Biden to win five states (WI, MI, PA, GA and AZ) that Clinton did not, although Biden's margin of victory in all but one of those five states was less than one percentage point. Trump won WI, MI and PA by the narrowest of margins himself in 2016. 

Colorado's 74.5% of eligible voter turnout was tied with New Hampshire for third in the nation behind number one Minnesota (79.5%) and number two Wisconsin (75.5%). The only states that did not set 40 year records were North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho, Utah, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Mississippi, none of which had competitive Presidential or U.S. Senate contests, and all of them except Oklahoma and Mississippi had more than 60% of eligible voters turnout.

From the Washington Post.