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I was watching a Last Week Tonight video on the 2016 DNC and saw this YouTube comment with 600 votes:

9% of the us population decided our presidential nominees are going to be Clinton and Trump. That is incredibly disappointing. (commenter was citing the New York Times).

Is this accurate? Did only 9% of the entire US population vote in the primaries this year for one of the two candidates?

DJClayworth
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J.Todd
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  • The linked article lists their sources: U.S. Census Bureau (population estimates); Federal Election Commission (2012 general election turnout); Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (2016 primary turnout and candidate vote totals); The Sentencing Project (ineligible felon estimates); Pew Research Center – explunit Aug 02 '16 at 23:36
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    Better than the uk, where 0.0005% of the population voted in the election for prime minister. – James K Aug 02 '16 at 23:56
  • @JamesK Compared to the UK, only 7000 delegates voted for the nominees. That's .002...%. A little better than .0005% but not much. The popular vote has no more meaning for U.S. President than U.K. Prime Minister. – Brythan Aug 03 '16 at 00:08
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    While not relevant to the truthiness of this claim, "9% of the entire US population" seems like a meaningless standard. Many Americans are too young to vote, or live in states where only party members can vote in primaries, or states where ex-felons cannot vote. Also, the US has the highest incarceration rates in the world and there are many state-level restrictions on voting. http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-voting-rights.aspx A more accurate figure would require research, but I feel would be more effectively bleak. – Will Aug 03 '16 at 00:17
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    @Will you asked the same thing I did in the answer. I would say great minds and all, but I don't really think mine is great, so I will just say I must have copied you. :) – JasonR Aug 03 '16 at 12:14
  • I would say that all eligible voters "decided" our presidential nominees. Some by action (voting) and some by inaction (staying home). – James Aug 04 '16 at 12:32
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    @JamesK that's the nature of parliamentary democracies - the citizenry do not directly elect a leader. – user1666620 Aug 04 '16 at 16:35
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    @JamesK. 0.0005% is way better than the 0% that voted for the prime minister in 2007 :) – daveb Aug 05 '16 at 09:40
  • @daveb In Italy we are now getting used to not having voting rights to elect the government. I don't even rememeber how many governments ago were the last elections... – Bakuriu Aug 05 '16 at 15:07
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    @Will You could say that those categories (only party-members, no ex-felons,...) are part of the problem this claim is trying to address. – LisaMM Aug 10 '16 at 09:27

1 Answers1

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Approximately 13 million primary voters cast votes for Trump. Approximately 16 million primary voters cast votes for Clinton. (Source)

In total, approximately 62 million people voted in the primaries. Pew Research says 57.6 million (and compares to previous elections).

The US population in 2016 is approximately 324 million.

How many could have voted?

According to Voting Statistics, and the Census Bureau (2012 data):

Total number of Americans eligible to vote: 218,959,000

Total number of Americans registered to vote: 146,311,000

Summary

enter image description here

This visualization gives a step-by-step breakdown of these groups of people.

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    Out of those 324 million though, how many are eligible to vote? I think that would be the more accurate measure. – JasonR Aug 03 '16 at 12:03
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    @JasonR The claim is "9% of the population". – DJClayworth Aug 03 '16 at 13:16
  • @DJClayworth fair point. :) Although that would mean the claim itself is biased and bogus, as the entire population is _never_ involved in elections. – JasonR Aug 03 '16 at 13:32
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    @JasonR Nice edit, I think it answers the spirit of the claim if not the letter. Still proves how truly dismal this election has been. Now I'm wondering how this compares to 2008... – Will Aug 03 '16 at 13:50
  • @Will Thank you. Overall the US has dismal voter participation. According to this page http://www.fairvote.org/voter_turnout#voter_turnout_101 the 2008 presidential election had a turnout of 61% of the _eligible_ electorate. Although, considering only 66% of the eligible electorate is even registered, maybe it isn't as bad as one would think? – JasonR Aug 03 '16 at 14:58
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    @Will this is an interesting set of graphs as well: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/08/02/u-s-voter-turnout-trails-most-developed-countries/ – JasonR Aug 03 '16 at 15:10
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    @Dawn If you look at your source for the 15,805,136 number, you can see that many states and territories are not included: Nevada, Iowa, Maine, Washington state, Alaska, Guam etc., and that for other places the number is not individual voters, but instead an indication of number of caucus locations won (this is why North Dakota and Wyoming have less than 1,000 votes each). – DavePhD Aug 03 '16 at 15:32
  • So... the answer's "Approximately, yes" then? It'd be nice to have that at the start to save every reader dividing (13 + 16) / 324 `:-)` – user56reinstatemonica8 Aug 04 '16 at 16:59
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    @user568458 There is debate in the comments about what is meant by "decided by". ([here](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/34800/did-9-of-the-us-population-decide-our-presidential-nominees-are-going-to-be-cli/34801?noredirect=1#comment130891_34800), and one other deleted comment). Rather than taking a position on what the "right" numerator and denominator are, I just presented all the numbers and I *do* include a summary table at the end where you can see what the % would be for various choices of numerator and denominator. –  Aug 04 '16 at 17:08
  • @user568458 I understand your preference for a short conclusion statement :) I've just explicitly avoided it because it would require making a personal judgement about a subjective labelling. –  Aug 04 '16 at 17:15
  • What you've done with that summary table is really good, I just somehow missed it, instinctively assuming that if there was a summary it'd be at the start, and somehow my brain subconsciously dismissed the grey box at the end as something like a references section despite the big word "Summary" above it! Maybe I'm just tired and/or it's like a form of ad-blindness... – user56reinstatemonica8 Aug 04 '16 at 17:18
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    tables should be added to SE for this reason. – J.Todd Aug 05 '16 at 09:42
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    I seem to be the only one to remember the following studies (seems to be an underlying feeling of non-representation in US politics, which, in my opinion, strongly contributes to lack of voter participation): http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 http://thefreethoughtproject.com/land-free-ranks-dead-west-fair-elections/ http://static1.squarespace.com/static/51841c73e4b04fc5ce6e8f15/t/56e97017b09f951532074016/1458139160759/POQ_Early_Access.pdf http://static1.squarespace.com/static/51841c73e4b04fc5ce6e8f15/t/56e97017b09f951532074016/1458139160759/POQ_Early_Access.pdf – MER Sep 19 '16 at 20:12