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SALT LAKE CITY — Utah's turnout rate during the 2020 general election increased about 11% over 2016, more than every state except Hawaii, according to data gathered by the U.S. Elections Project.
That vaulted Utah from the 37th-highest turnout rate in 2016 to the 23rd-highest rate in 2020, the state elections office said. Hawaii saw its turnout increase more than 14% over 2016, the highest rate in the country, while Utah was followed closely by increases in California, Washington and Arizona.
All four of the states with the largest increase, and six of the top seven, used primarily mail-in balloting in the 2020 election.
Michael McDonald, a professor at the University of Florida and researcher behind the U.S. Elections Project, said the nationwide turnout increases can be explained primarily by one man: Donald Trump.
"The 2020 general election had the highest turnout rate since 1900, with about two-thirds of those eligible to vote participating, " McDonald told KSL.com. "And that came on the heels of the 2018 election, which was the highest turnout rate since 1914. ... If you look back at the 2014 election, we had the lowest turnout rate for an election since 1942. So we went from one of the lowest turnout rates for a midterm election to the highest turnout rates for a midterm election in the span of four years, and the only thing that changed in our politics was the presence of Donald Trump."
Mail-in voting also played a factor, McDonald said, but that's a more "complicated story."
"I do think the mail balloting contributed to higher turnout rates in the 2020 election," he said, "but our past analysis and study of mail balloting suggests that it has an effect on turnout, but that effect isn't usually witnessed in presidential elections. The increase you get in turnout is usually in a state or a local election where people aren't aware the election is taking place. Suddenly a ballot appears in their mailbox and they're like, 'Oh, yes, I need to vote.'"
But 2020 was different, McDonald said, because of the coronavirus pandemic. States that made voting easier voting had higher turnout-rate increases than states that were "more restrictive" in how they offered mail-in voting.
"So I think there was a lot of demand for people to vote in the 2020 election," he said, "but people wanted to vote safely. And where they were given the opportunity to do so through expanded mail balloting options, they did take advantage of it."
Utah director of elections Justin Lee agreed, saying that "a large part" of Utah's big jump in turnout was probably attributable to mail-in balloting.
"In 2016, we had 21 of our counties voting by mail, not all 29 voting by mail yet," Lee said. "And Utah County is the big factor there. Utah County was not voting by mail in 2016. So I think the fact that we had all counties voting by mail, and the accessibility, that certainly made a difference."
Nice job Utah! In 2016 we were 37th for turnout in the country. In 2020 we jumped up to 23rd for turnout. https://t.co/rI62U9E4Cg
— Vote Utah (@ElectionsUtah) January 26, 2021
Lee said he thinks Utah's improved turnout rate will continue moving forward based on that being the case in every county that votes by mail.
"The first year they vote by mail, you still have quite a few people showing up in person," he said. "But going forward, this will feel very normal to voters. They'll be used to it, and hopefully that keeps our turnout numbers high."
But he cautioned that "competitive races" are "a big part of the equation when looking at the data." If no local races are competitive in 2022, for example, the "numbers may not be as high, but we hope they stay up there."
The 2018 election was a good example of competitive races driving voter turnout, Lee said, as Utahns showed up en masse to weigh in on ballot propositions regarding medical marijuana, Medicaid expansion and more.
And though turnout has improved, McDonald believes 2020 is "truly a once-in-a-lifetime event."
"The question moving forward is, what happens now?" he said. "Now that Trump's been deplatformed from social media and his presence is not looming as large, do we continue to see these high levels of engagement?"
As a result, McDonald said turnout rates could go back down to "normal levels" seen before Trump's presidency, but added that "voting is habitual." Once a person votes, he contends, they're more likely to vote again.
"There's a record of you voting," he said. "Campaigns are going to reach out to you and encourage you to vote because they know that you're a voter. And so, the fact that you vote once, it tends to feed on itself and make you a person more likely to vote. So in that argument, you can say maybe we'll see some persistent higher turnout rates than we saw before Trump. And I think the truth is probably going to lie somewhere in between."
About 69% of Utah's eligible population cast a ballot in the 2020 general election and more than 90% of registered voters did so.
