KRMG In Depth: Voter turnout among Democrats plummets in 2024

TULSA — This has been a presidential election cycle unlike any other in U.S. history.

It was more or less foreordained, it seems, that the 2020 race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump would be repeated in 2024.

A number of Republican challengers stepped up, but got trounced - and there was never a viable challenger on the Democratic side.

[Hear the KRMG In Depth Report on voter turnout HERE]

All this may explain why voter turnout on Super Tuesday was low - in Oklahoma, down about 30 percent from four years ago.

But there’s a longer, more disturbing trend of nonparticipation which bears closer examination.

Corie Wagner is Senior Industry Analyst with InMyArea.com, a website which helps people stay on top of trends or obtain services in their community.

She told KRMG that her company wanted to know more about why people don’t vote.

“We know that not everyone shows up to the polling place or sends in their mail-in ballot, so we kind of wanted to understand why that might be happening,” Wagner said.

They dug into data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau, and determined the number one reason people say they don’t vote is because they’re too busy.

The second most given reason was a lack of interest in politics, and third was being ill or taking care of someone who was ill.

InMyArea also wanted to know why some people don’t register at all, and this time apathy about politics topped the list.

The second most common excuse was that they simply missed the deadline to register.

And roughly 11% of respondents said they’re not eligible because of residency status, criminal convictions, or similar reasons.

In Oklahoma, voter participation during presidential primaries seems to vary wildly.

The drop-off in Democratic primary votes between 2020 and 2024 was especially dramatic, as illustrated in the table below.