Overview

Across the United States, there are elections for critical federal- and state-level offices every two years. A large majority of these are preceded by primaries where voters select candidates from each of the major political parties that will be on the ballot for the general election. However, voter turnout for primaries tends to be much lower than for the general election.

In U.S. elections since 2000, the average turnout rate for primary elections is 27% of registered voters. In contrast, the average turnout rate for general elections is 60.5% of registered voters. This means that, on average, more than half of general election voters do not vote in primary elections.

Primaries are a key part of the democratic process, enabling engaged voters to choose which candidates they want to send to the general election and potentially hold office. Low voter participation in primary elections means that a smaller subset of voters plays an outsized role in shaping our elections. Given the number of Election Deniers running for critical statewide offices, it is more important than ever that people participate in primary elections.

Methodology

Below we present turnout rates since 2000 for both historical primary and general elections in states where there is a 2022 election for statewide office.

Voter turnout rate is computed as the percent of total votes cast divided by the total number of registered voters. This is the method most secretaries of state use to calculate voter turnout. It does not reflect all potential voters, since it excludes eligible voters who have not registered to vote. An alternate way of estimating turnout is to divide the total votes cast by the Citizen Voting Age Population (or the total number of potential voters).

We opted to use only the portion of voters that are registered, to highlight that there were no additional hurdles (i.e., registering) that kept voters from casting their vote in a primary. This shows us that turnout rates for primaries are low even among registered voters and would be even lower among all potential voters.

The data below represents 32 of the 39 states with primary elections for statewide offices this cycle. This encompasses all relevant states where data was available from a secretary of state’s webpage. It excludes states without 2022 races for governor, attorney general, or secretary of state, as they do not have turnout data. Some states only have partial data because they do not report turnout data back to 2000, while others have some missing years.

Overall Turnout in Primaries and General since 2000

In this graph, we show the mean turnout rate per state for primary and general elections since 2000. On average, the primary turnout rate for all of these states combined was 27%, while the general election turnout was 60.5%. This means that less than half of the voters that cast a ballot in the general election turned out for the primary.

Below we look at the average turnout by election year. While we see that primary elections usually have much lower turnout rates than general elections, there has been a steady increase in turnout over time, with 2020 having the highest turnout in primaries. So far in 2022, we have seen similar or higher turnout rates than in 2020. At the end of this year’s primary cycle, we will gather turnout data for 2022 and see how it compares to previous years.

Turnout by States

Alabama

Alaska

Arizona

Arkansas

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Florida

Georgia

Hawaii

Idaho

Illinois

Indiana

Iowa

Kansas

Maryland

Massachusetts

Michigan

Minnesota

Nebraska

Nevada

New Mexico

North Dakota

Ohio

Oregon

Pennsylvania

South Carolina

South Dakota

Tennessee

Texas

Washington

Wisconsin