4-1d Voter Turnout in the United States and in Texas proportion of eligible Americans who actually vote. Such was not the case after 1960; turnout actually declined until at least 1996. This is not to say that the number of voters dropped. In fact, votes for the president increased 30 percent from 70.6 million votes in 1964 to 91.5 million votes in 1996; however, the number of voting-age Americans increased 70 percent from 114 million to 197 million during the same of age or older, grew at a much faster rate than the actual voting population. Figure 4.1 shows voter turnout in presidential elections from 1932 to 2020. Here we can see that turnout peaked in 1960 and then declined thereafter until 1996, when it rebounded fairly consistently. In 2020, turnout among the VAP reached 62.0 percent, the highest level of voter participation since 1960. Figure 4.1 How Many People Vote in the United States? Presidential Election Turnout, 1932-2020 Here we see that turnout declined in the early 1970s and has not changed much since. A little more than half of the voting-age population (VAP) now vote in presidential elections. & 1960: Kennedy vs. Mixon, 1996: B. Clinton vs. Dole, the highest tumout rate the lowest turnout rate in generations (62.8%) 1972: First election after since 1924 (49.0%) voting age lowered from 2110 18. (55.1%) g @ 2 Percentage of Voting-Age Population & 0 1932 '36 '40 '44 "48 '52 'S56 '60 '64 '68 '72 76 'S80 '84 '88 '92 '96 00 04 08 "2 16 '20 Presidential Election Year Describe the groups that are most likely to vote. Does one party or the other benefit more when voter turnout is high? Source: Cengage Learning. Two main reasons explain the dip in voter turnout in the United States after the 1960s. The first reason can be traced to the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 in 1972. The amendment was passed at the height of the Vietnam War, with proponents arguing that a person who could be drafted and sent off to war should be able to vote. By extending the vote to 18- to 20-year-old citizens, the amendment expanded the eligible voting population. As we have already seen, however, these young people are less likely to vote than are older personssince they were given the right to vote, citizens in the 18- to 20-year-old age group have rarely posted turnout rates as high as 40 percent, even in presidential elections. Thus, adding the age group to the lists of eligible voters in 1972 slightly reduced the overall turnout rate