About half of Americans voted in the 2016 presidential election, early results suggest, a much lower turnout than expected.
Based on votes counted by early Wednesday, approximately 124 million people cast a ballot for the next president.
Republican candidate Donald Trump became president elect early Wednesday morning, capturing the 270 electoral college votes needed to claim the White House.
Turnout totals will likely fluctuate in the coming days, but with about 241 million people of voting age in the United States (200 million of those were actually registered to vote in this election), the number is likely to settle somewhere around the 51 or 52 per cent mark.
“I don’t think it’s terribly surprising,” said Donald Abelson, professor and chair in the department of political science at the University of Western Ontario.
“Democrats tend to do well when there’s big voter turnout, so that could have helped.”
Part of Trump’s strategy, he added, was telling voters that it’s OK if they don’t vote for him, as long as they didn’t vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton.
“Part of their thinking was, ‘Let’s turn off a lot of voters so they don’t even want to vote.'” Abelson said of the Trump campaign.
I said it again, but y'all should really not blame WHITE UNEDUCATED PEOPLE !!111!!! when HALF of your society did not vote. Y'all have SERIOUS issues to work out, it's not like democracy is a new concept in the US.
This is not surprising. Plus, they should take in account the fact that there was a lot of voter suppression like taking away nearly 100 polls for people to vote at as well as all of this identification that people didn't even have the money or transportation to obtain. The government's actions are reflecting on the turnout.
