Less than a quarter of the U.S. population voted for Donald Trump
A perspective on the 2024 U.S. presidential election by the numbers
22.7% of the U.S. population voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. It was not a majority, not even a quarter.
That number is, of course, a a bit misleading because not every constituent of the U.S. population, estimated to have been 340,865,045 million[1] on election day, Nov. 5, 2024, was eligible to vote. So, if we weed out those who were unable to vote due to age, non-citizenship, or other legal reasons, Trump’s numbers improve to something less than a third of eligible voters’ votes (77,302,580/244,666,890). Trump garnered 31.60% to Harris’s 30.66%.[2]
Still, 167 million eligible voters, or 68% of voter-eligible American voters, did not vote for Mr. Trump. 77.9 million who cast ballots voted for someone else.
However, when all the votes were counted, Donald Trump received approximately 49.8% of the votes. Kamala Harris collected 48.32%. The winning margin was closer than for Biden’s victory over Trump and for Hillary Clinton’s popular vote win over Trump in 2016.
Voter turnout for the 2024 election was the second highest since the recording of eligible voters in 1980 (2020 being higher)[3]: about 63.4% in the official FEC record and 63.9% in a post-electoral tally.[4]
How many didn’t vote at all?
31 million registered voters did not vote. Add to that the 58 million voter-eligible Americans who were not registered, and you reach a total of 89 million Americans who opted out.
Finally, no matter how you compile the numbers, Trump’s 1.5-point win was a win, but not a mandate.
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[1] U.S. Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/popclock/embed.php?component=pop_on_date&date=20241105
[2] 77,302,580/244,666,890 and 75,017,613/244,666,890. Note that in this article, "Total Eligible to Vote" is the same as the Voter Eligible Population (VEP).
[3] The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu, Accessed 02/05/2025.
[4] https://election.lab.ufl.edu/2024-general-election-turnout/. Turnout is based on the percentage of registered voters who actually voted. This higher percentage was recorded on 2/5/2025, after the states’ estimates for Jan. 6, 2025 (officially recorded for the national archives by fec.gov on Jan. 16, 2025).