>Is this a percentage of registered voters? Wasn't Ronald Reagan's
>percentage very low also?
>
>What are the figures when you look at eligible voters? 20% maybe?
Here are the numbers for presidential elections since 1948. The first column is the winner's share of the total vote; the second, the winner's votes as a percentage of the voting-age population.*
% of vote % of VAP 1948 49.6% 25.3% 1952 55.1% 34.0% 1956 57.4% 34.1% 1960 49.7% 31.2% 1964 61.1% 37.8% 1968 43.4% 26.4% 1972 60.7% 33.5% 1976 50.1% 26.8% 1980 50.7% 26.7% 1984 58.8% 31.2% 1988 53.4% 26.7% 1992 43.0% 23.8% 1996 49.2% 23.3%
---- *The VAP includes noncitizens. The Census Bureau uses that as the denominator because as they rightly argue, responses to citizenship questions are extremely unreliable, and (this surprised me a bit when I heard it from the Census election specialist), since noncitizens have to obey the law and pay taxes, they should be included in the count.