Voters wait in line, socially distanced from each other, to cast early ballots on Oct. 19, 2020, in Miami, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Voters wait in line, socially distanced from each other, to cast early on ballots on Oct. nineteen, 2020, in Miami, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

The Usa holds a presidential election every four years, but information technology'southward not just the candidates and issues that change from one campaign cycle to the next. The electorate itself is in a slow but abiding country of flux, too.

The contour of the U.S. electorate can modify for a variety of reasons. Consider the millions of Americans who have turned 18 and tin vote for president for the first time this year, the immigrants who have become naturalized citizens and can bandage ballots of their own, or the longer-term shifts in the country'southward racial and indigenous makeup. These and other factors ensure that no 2 presidential electorates look exactly the aforementioned.

So what does the 2020 electorate look similar politically, demographically and religiously as the race between Republican President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden enters its last days? To answer that question, here's a roundup of recent Pew Research Center findings. Unless otherwise noted, all findings are based on registered voters.

Political party identification

Share of registered voters who identify with the GOP has ticked up since 2017

Effectually a 3rd of registered voters in the U.S. (34%) identify as independents, while 33% identify every bit Democrats and 29% identify as Republicans, according to a Middle analysis of Americans' partisan identification based on surveys of more than 12,000 registered voters in 2018 and 2019.

Near independents in the U.Due south. lean toward one of the 2 major parties. When taking independents' partisan leanings into account, 49% of all registered voters either identify every bit Democrats or lean to the party, while 44% identify equally Republicans or lean to the GOP.

Party identification among registered voters hasn't changed dramatically over the past 25 years, but there have been some modest shifts. Ane such shift is that the Democratic Party'due south advantage over the Republican Political party in party identification has become smaller since 2017. Of course, merely because a registered voter identifies with or leans toward a detail party does not necessarily hateful they volition vote for a candidate of that political party (or vote at all). In a study of validated voters in 2016, 5% of Democrats and Democratic leaners reported voting for Trump, and 4% of Republicans and GOP leaners reported voting for Hillary Clinton.

Race and ethnicity

Nonwhites make up four-in-ten Democratic voters but fewer than a fifth of Republican voters

Non-Hispanic White Americans make upward the largest share of registered voters in the U.S., at 69% of the total as of 2019. Hispanic and Black registered voters each account for 11% of the full, while those from other racial or ethnic backgrounds account for the remainder (viii%).

White voters account for a diminished share of registered voters than in the past, declining from 85% in 1996 to 69% ahead of this year's election. This change has unfolded in both parties, but White voters have consistently accounted for a much larger share of Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters than of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters (81% vs. 59% as of 2019).

The racial and ethnic limerick of the electorate looks very different nationally than in several central battlefield states, according to a Center analysis of 2018 information based on eligible voters – that is, U.S. citizens ages 18 and older, regardless of whether or not they were registered to vote.

White Americans deemed for 67% of eligible voters nationally in 2018, but they represented a much larger share in several fundamental battlegrounds in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, including Wisconsin (86%), Ohio (82%), Pennsylvania (81%) and Michigan (79%). The opposite was truthful in some battleground states in the West and South. For example, the White share of eligible voters was below the national average in Nevada (58%), Florida (61%) and Arizona (63%). You tin run into racial and ethnic breakdown of eligible voters in all 50 states – and how it changed between 2000 and 2018 – with this interactive feature.

Age and generation

The aging U.S. electorate: A majority of Republican voters - and half of Democrats - are 50 and older

The U.S. electorate is crumbling: 52% of registered voters are ages 50 and older, up from 41% in 1996. This shift has occurred in both partisan coalitions. More than than half of Republican and GOP-leaning voters (56%) are ages fifty and older, up from 39% in 1996. And among Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, one-half are 50 and older, upwardly from 41% in 1996.

Another mode to consider the aging of the electorate is to expect at median age. The median historic period amidst all registered voters increased from 44 in 1996 to 50 in 2019. It rose from 43 to 52 amid Republican registered voters and from 45 to 49 amongst Autonomous registered voters.

Despite the long-term aging of registered voters, 2020 marks the first time that many members of Generation Z – Americans born after 1996 – will exist able to participate in a presidential election. One-in-ten eligible voters this twelvemonth are members of Generation Z, up from just 4% in 2016, according to Pew Research Eye projections. (Of course, non all eligible voters finish up registering and actually casting a election.)

Teaching

Share of Democratic voters with no college experience has fallen sharply; much less change among the GOP

Around two-thirds of registered voters in the U.S. (65%) practice not have a college caste, while 36% practise. Simply the share of voters with a college degree has risen essentially since 1996, when 24% had one.

Voters who identify with the Democratic Party or lean toward it are much more probable than their Republican counterparts to accept a college caste (41% vs. 30%). In 1996, the contrary was true: 27% of GOP voters had a college degree, compared with 22% of Autonomous voters.

Religion

Christians business relationship for the majority of registered voters in the U.S. (64%). But this figure is down from 79% as recently as 2008. The share of voters who identify as religiously unaffiliated has nearly doubled during that span, from 15% to 28%.

The share of White Christians in the electorate, in item, has decreased in recent years. White evangelical Protestants account for 18% of registered voters today, down from 21% in 2008. During the same period, the share of voters who are White non-evangelical Protestants fell from 19% to thirteen%, while the share of White Catholics barbarous from 17% to 12%.

Effectually eight-in-x Republican registered voters (79%) are Christians, compared with nearly half (52%) of Democratic voters. In turn, Democratic voters are much more than likely than GOP voters to place as religiously unaffiliated (38% vs. xv%).

Self-identified Christians continue to make up a large majority of Republican voters, but are now only about half of Democrats

The key question: What about voter turnout?

Turnout in U.S. presidential elections

Surveys tin can provide reliable estimates well-nigh registered voters in the U.S. and how their partisan, demographic and religious profile has inverse over time. But the critical question of voter turnout – who will be motivated to bandage a election and who volition not – is more difficult to answer.

For ane thing, not all registered voters finish upwards voting. In 2016, around 87% of registered voters cast a ballot, co-ordinate to a Pew Research Center analysis of Demography Agency data shortly after that twelvemonth's election.

Besides, voter turnout in the U.S. is not a constant: It can and does alter from one election to the next. The share of registered voters who bandage a ballot was higher in 2008 than 4 years ago, for example.

Turnout also varies past demographic factors, including race and ethnicity, age and gender. The turnout rate among Black Americans, for instance, exceeded the charge per unit amid White Americans for the first time in the 2012 presidential election, only that pattern did non hold four years afterward.

So what does all this mean for 2020? There are some early indications that overall turnout could reach a record high this twelvemonth, just as turnout in the midterms 2 years ago reached its highest point in a century. But 2020 is far from an ordinary twelvemonth. The combination of a global pandemic and public concerns well-nigh the integrity of the ballot have created widespread incertitude, and that uncertainty makes it fifty-fifty more difficult than usual to assess who will vote and who won't.