General Discussion

The deceptive statistic is that “turnout” is measured as a percentage of the registered population rather than the eligible adult population. And California has registered millions of people who had no intention of ever voting.

In the last twenty years or so, the population of the state has increased by a bit over 15%… but the number of registered voters has increased at almost three times that rate. So the same number of voters looks like a smaller and smaller “turnout” - but it’s entirely artificial.

The last twenty years have consistently seen 12-13 million Californians voting… then last cycle it skyrocketed to over 17 million. This year looks like it will be 15.5 million. That’s down moderately from four years ago and lower than the country as a whole… but it’s still the second best performance in the history of the state.