Voters’ Overall Representation of California’s Electorate is 89.36%
With WalletHub’s National Voter Representation Index at 87 percent and very different demographic groups supporting Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report examining the States with the Best & Worst Representation on Election Day.
To identify those states, WalletHub’s analysts compared the distribution of the 50 states’ voters to the distribution of their electorates by key demographic characteristics, including age, race and gender.
Voters’ Representation of California’s Electorate:
- Overall Representation: 89.36%
- Racial Representation: 84.11%
- Age Representation: 86.65%
- Gender Representation: 97.32%
According to Adam McCann, a financial writer for WalletHub, election history reveals a perpetually glaring problem in America: low voter turnout among certain demographic groups, including young, minority and low-income citizens. Although demographic composition does not necessarily reflect Americans’ political conscience, the data historically have helped to predict voting behavior among different segments of society and consequently have impacted election outcomes. A recent Pew Research report, for instance, found that very different demographic groups support Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
In previous analyses of the U.S. electorate, WalletHub determined which states’ and metro areas’ populations most closely mirror the rest of the nation, according to McCann. We also compared the likeness of the U.S. with Iowa and New Hampshire. On the heels of those reports and ahead of this November’s presidential election, WalletHub’s analysts determined which of the 50 states’ voters are most demographically representative of their electorates. More specifically, we compared each state’s voter distribution to its electorate distribution by race, age and gender to determine the state’s Voter Representation Index. We then applied the same approach to determine the National Voter Representation Index, which compares U.S. voters to the national electorate based on four additional demographic categories: employment status, family income, educational attainment and marital status.
For the full report, click here.
Image Sources
- Election Day: iStock
