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. 19, 2020, in Miami, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

The Us holds a presidential election every four years, just information technology's non but the candidates and bug that alter from i entrada wheel to the side by side. The electorate itself is in a irksome just constant state of flux, likewise.

The contour of the U.Due south. electorate can modify for a multifariousness of reasons. Consider the millions of Americans who have turned eighteen and can vote for president for the first time this year, the immigrants who have become naturalized citizens and can cast ballots of their own, or the longer-term shifts in the land's racial and ethnic makeup. These and other factors ensure that no ii presidential electorates look exactly the same.

And so what does the 2020 electorate look like politically, demographically and religiously as the race between Republican President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden enters its final days? To answer that question, here'south a roundup of recent Pew Inquiry Heart findings. Unless otherwise noted, all findings are based on registered voters.

Party identification

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

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

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

Party identification among registered voters hasn't inverse dramatically over the by 25 years, simply there have been some small-scale shifts. 1 such shift is that the Democratic Party's advantage over the Republican Party in party identification has get smaller since 2017. Of course, just considering a registered voter identifies with or leans toward a particular party does not necessarily mean they volition vote for a candidate of that party (or vote at all). In a report of validated voters in 2016, 5% of Democrats and Democratic leaners reported voting for Trump, and four% 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

Not-Hispanic White Americans make up the largest share of registered voters in the U.Southward., at 69% of the total every bit of 2019. Hispanic and Blackness registered voters each business relationship for eleven% of the total, while those from other racial or indigenous backgrounds account for the remainder (8%).

White voters business relationship for a diminished share of registered voters than in the past, declining from 85% in 1996 to 69% ahead of this twelvemonth'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 Autonomous 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 key battleground states, according to a Center analysis of 2018 information based on eligible voters – that is, U.S. citizens ages xviii and older, regardless of whether or not they were registered to vote.

White Americans accounted for 67% of eligible voters nationally in 2018, merely they represented a much larger share in several cardinal battlegrounds in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, including Wisconsin (86%), Ohio (82%), Pennsylvania (81%) and Michigan (79%). The opposite was true 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 can run into racial and ethnic breakdown of eligible voters in all 50 states – and how it changed between 2000 and 2018 – with this interactive characteristic.

Age and generation

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

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

Another manner to consider the aging of the electorate is to await at median age. The median age among all registered voters increased from 44 in 1996 to fifty in 2019. It rose from 43 to 52 among Republican registered voters and from 45 to 49 amidst Democratic registered voters.

Despite the long-term crumbling of registered voters, 2020 marks the first time that many members of Generation Z – Americans built-in after 1996 – will be able to participate in a presidential ballot. One-in-ten eligible voters this year are members of Generation Z, up from just iv% in 2016, according to Pew Research Centre projections. (Of course, not all eligible voters stop upwardly registering and really casting a ballot.)

Educational activity

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

Effectually two-thirds of registered voters in the U.S. (65%) practice not take a college degree, while 36% do. But the share of voters with a college degree has risen substantially since 1996, when 24% had 1.

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

Religion

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

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

Around 8-in-ten Republican registered voters (79%) are Christians, compared with about half (52%) of Autonomous voters. In plow, Democratic voters are much more than likely than GOP voters to identify as religiously unaffiliated (38% vs. fifteen%).

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 provide reliable estimates about 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 cast a ballot and who volition non – is more hard to answer.

For one thing, not all registered voters end up voting. In 2016, around 87% of registered voters cast a ballot, according to a Pew Research Heart analysis of Census Bureau data shortly after that year's election.

Too, voter turnout in the U.Southward. is not a constant: Information technology can and does change from one election to the side by side. The share of registered voters who cast a ballot was higher in 2008 than 4 years ago, for example.

Turnout too varies by demographic factors, including race and ethnicity, age and gender. The turnout charge per unit among Black Americans, for instance, exceeded the charge per unit amid White Americans for the outset time in the 2012 presidential election, just 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, but as turnout in the midterms 2 years agone reached its highest point in a century. But 2020 is far from an ordinary year. The combination of a global pandemic and public concerns about the integrity of the election have created widespread dubiousness, and that incertitude makes information technology even more than hard than usual to assess who will vote and who won't.