The Pew Research Center has recently released a report on voting in the 2008 election titled Dissecting the 2008 Electorate: Most Diverse in U.S. History. As indicated by the report’s title, the big finding was that this election featured best-ever turnout numbers for non-whites, such as African Americans and Hispanics.
The report, which looks at voting by ethnicity and gender, discloses a surprising statistic: black women had the highest voter turnout among all all groups in the 2008 election. This is noted in the following chart:
These are some other gender and race based aspects of the 2008 vote:
• This was the first time ever that black female eligible voters cast ballots at the highest rate among all voters.
• Female eligible voters participated in the 2008 election at a higher rate than male eligible voters—65.7% versus 61.5%. Nearly 10 million more women voted than men.
• The voter turnout rate among black female eligible voters was 5.1 percentage points higher in 2008 than in 2004—68.8% versus 63.7%.
• The voter turnout rate among male eligible voters was lower in 2008 than in 2004—61.5% versus 62.1%.
• The voter turnout rate of male eligible voters in 2008 trailed the voter turnout rate of female eligible voters, continuing a trend that started in the mid-1980s.
• The gap in voter participation between male and female eligible voters was wider in 2008 than in 2004—4.2 percentage points versus 3.3 percentage points.
