The last decade has seen a boom in voter turnout — for both parties. Between the 2012 and 2020 presidential elections, total turnout rose 23%, with Democratic turnout up 23% and Republican turnout up 22%.
Yet, because of the changing distribution of votes, the results significantly varied. The 2012 election was not a close thing: Mitt Romney could not have reversed the Electoral College result without erasing Barack Obama’s margins of 481,806 votes in four states (Florida, Iowa, Ohio, and Virginia). By comparison, Donald Trump won thanks to a margin of only 77,736 votes in three states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), and Joe Biden owes his victory to an even smaller margin of 42,918 votes in three states (Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin).
