A common line in American politics is that high turnout in elections benefits Democrats. Evidence for this proposition is pretty weak, yet both Democrats and Republicans believe it. Professors Daron Shaw and John Petrocik wrote a book refuting the notion called The Turnout Myth in 2020. As they summarized it in a 2021 article in National Affairs, “Put simply, there is no evidence that turnout is correlated with partisan vote choice.”

New research on the 2024 election from Pew confirms their findings. First, Pew notes that 2020 had the highest turnout of any election in the past 100 years, and the 2024 election was tied for the second-highest. These two very high turnout presidential elections resulted in one win for Democrats and one win for Republicans, so there’s no inherent advantage either way.

The details show why. Eligible voters who cast a ballot in 2024 but did not do so in 2020 favored Trump over Harris by a margin of 54–42. The opposite was true when comparing 2016 to 2020. Eligible voters who cast a ballot in 2020 but did not do so in 2016 favored Biden over Trump by a margin of 51–46.

The data even suggest that had turnout been higher, Trump would have won by more. In 2024, nonvoters told Pew they preferred Trump over Harris by a margin of 44–40. In 2020, nonvoters preferred Biden, so his win might have been larger with higher turnout as well.

What all this means is that higher turnout in and of itself doesn’t give Democrats or Republicans an advantage. It matters more which voters are showing up. General measures to increase turnout aren’t more likely to help Democrats than Republicans, and general measures to reduce turnout aren’t more likely to help Republicans than Democrats.

So Republicans should stop freaking out about absentee voting or early voting benefiting Democrats, and Democrats should stop freaking out about photo ID laws or keeping voter information current benefiting Republicans. If they want to win elections, Republicans should make sure that their voters who want to vote absentee or early are able to do so, and Democrats should make sure that their voters are properly registered and have a photo ID Opposing these policies in general is pointless.