This past November, Americans rose up in the midst of a global pandemic to participate in what must be considered one of the highest stakes elections in our nation’s history. In doing so, our nation set a record for total voter turnout in a general election.
In the 150 days since Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were elected, the team at TargetSmart has worked tirelessly to compile and analyze data from state and local election officials to provide the first in the nation look at the electorate that delivered them to the White House.
Today, we have granular data on over 98% of the American voters who cast a ballot.
Our individual-level voter files provide a snapshot of thousands of data points, including age, gender, race/ethnicity, educational attainment, and past voting history.
We are sharing more information than ever before because by democratizing access to this information we can help give a voice to communities that have been historically underserved.
At TargetEarly anyone can compare the 2020 electorate to data from 2018 and 2016 and analyze it by:
- Geographies like state, county, congressional district, state house and media market;
- Demographics like age, race, gender or education;
- Vote history, including first-time voters; infrequent voters and more.
Here are a few key takeaways based on TargetEarly:
- Nationally, total turnout increased by 12% relative to 2016, turnout among AAPI voters surged by 43% and Latino turnout increased by almost a third of all votes cast.
- 49,984,595 Americans who voted in 2020 didn’t vote in 2016.
- 16,865,697 Americans voted for the first time in 2020 and comprised 10.9% of the electorate.
- Non-college educated whites dropped from 53.8% of the electorate in 2016 to 49.2% in 2020.
There are literally thousands of ways that you can parse the data. I hope you’ll be able to take a look and share what you find with your networks.
In the coming weeks, we’ll share regular reports digging in on the data and sharing insights on things like which communities saw the biggest swings from 2016 to 2020, how the exit polls fared, the composition of first-time voters, and much more.
We look forward to continuing this conversation with you. If you have any questions, comments or feedback, feel free to email me at Tom@TargetSmart.com or tweet me at @tbonier.
Sincerely,
Tom Bonier
CEO
TargetSmart
