The 2020 presidential election set a participation record, with more than 157 million people casting their ballots. Turnout increased in every state and in 98 percent of the nation’s counties.
According to an analysis of the NBC News election results, Hawaii and Vermont saw the biggest increase in turnout compared to 2016. Each state had more than a 13 percentage point increase in ballots cast by the voting-age population.
Third and fourth on that list was Utah and Arizona. Arizona saw turnout increase by 11 points as the state supported a Democratic candidate for the first time in more than 20 years.
Other states that had significant increases in turnout included Washington, Montana, Oregon and California, where turnout among the voting eligible population increased by more than 10 points.
In swing states such as Georgia, Texas, Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Pennsylvania, turnout increased anywhere from 6 to 9 points compared to 2016.
Across the board, turnout increased in every state, though not every ballot has been counted.
Several states in the upper Midwest had remarkable turnout numbers. In Minnesota, its turnout rate was greater than 75 percent — tops in the nation — while Maine, New Hampshire, Colorado and Wisconsin were close behind, with turnout ranging from 72 percent to 74 percent.
Those states were heavily targeted by both Trump and Biden. NBC News projected that Biden won all four of those contests. In 2016, Trump won Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania while coming very close to flipping Minnesota red for the first time in more than 40 years.
CORRECTION (Dec. 2, 2020, 3:40 p.m. ET): A previous version of the "U.S. turnout" map mislabeled parts of Virginia. Some of the designations are cities, not counties.
CORRECTION (Dec. 18, 2020, 2:20 p.m. ET): A previous version of the "U.S. turnout" map miscalculated the turnout rate for each county. The number of votes should have been divided by the number of voting-age residents of a county, not all county residents. The map has been fixed.
