No, voter turnout wasn’t way down from 2012

Stories are still circulating a week after the election that turnout fell sharply from 2012. That’s almost certainly not true. The confusion is the result of news outlets trying to pin down voter turnout figures quickly in a system that doesn’t count millions of votes until weeks after the election.

Approximately 58.1 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in last week’s presidential election, according to the latest estimates from Michael McDonald, associate professor at the University of Florida, who gathers data at the U.S. Elections Project. That’s down only slightly from 2012, when turnout was 58.6 percent, and well above 2000’s rate of 54.2 percent. Turnout may end up being higher than in any presidential election year between 1972 and 2000. (It’s already higher than in any midterm election since 1896, according to McDonald’s numbers, including the paltry 35.9 percent of voters who turned out two years ago.)