11/04/2020 9:49
Clarín.com
World
Updated 11/04/2020 9:49 AM
Turnout in the 2020 US presidential elections was the highest in more than a century, reaching 66.9% of the electorate in a country where voting
is voluntary
and in the midst of the record-setting coronavirus pandemic of anticipated votes.
The Elections Project monitoring center stated that some
160 million people
participated in the elections, representing a rate of 66.9%, the highest since 1900 when it was 73.7%.
The numbers leave out the numbers from the previous century, when turnout surpassed those numbers.
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In 1876, for example, 81.8% of eligible American voters went to the polls, according to a report by the CNN news network.
The winner then was Republican
Rutherford B. Hayes
, although he received fewer votes than his Democratic opponent, Samuel Tilden, with whom he contested 20 electoral college votes.
Neither obtained a majority and the
election went to the House of Representatives
, where a commission created to resolve the lawsuit granted Hayes the presidency.
No reliable data is available until 1828, but during the last two-thirds of the 19th century, voter turnout of more than 70% of those eligible to vote was common.
The second highest turnout,
81.2%, was in 1860,
when Abraham Lincoln defeated Stephen Douglas.
On that occasion, even before Lincoln took office, seven southern states seceded.
In 1920 and 1924,
turnout fell
to 49.2% and 48.9%, respectively, when women won the vote and the number of potential voters doubled.
Since then, in most elections, he has voted between 50% and 60%;
the last time more than 60% voted was in 1968, when Richard Nixon beat Hubert Humphrey and the turnout was 60.7%.
The
lowest
turnout
in
recent years was in 1996, when Democrat Bill Clinton won a second term by defeating Republican Bob Dole.
On that occasion,
the turnout was 49%.
Counting votes in Philadelphia.
Photo: AFP
In 2016, when Donald Trump won the presidency despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, 59.2% voted.
The wide participation is attributed
to the broad rejection of Trump
, along with the possibility of voting by mail or at a polling place in advance to avoid the contagion of coronavirus.
In that framework, more than
100 million Americans
voted early, a record number that represents more than 47% of registered voters nationwide, CNN reported.
With information from agencies
ap
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