Stanislaus County presidential election voter turnout lowest since Obama reelected
Stanislaus County voter turnout for the presidential election was the lowest since 2012 despite 80% of eligible voters being registered.
The elections office has tallied slightly over 126,000 ballots so far and still is counting about 81,900 vote-by-mail, provisional, conditional and miscellaneous ballots. After these are counted, voter turnout is expected to be 67%.
That’s well below turnout in the two previous presidential elections: 78% in 2020 and 73% in 2016. In 2012, when President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were reelected, Stanislaus County turnout was 67%.
As of Oct. 21, 80% of eligible voters were registered to vote in Stanislaus County, 4% less than California as a whole, but about what it was in the county in 2020.
Of those registered, only around 39% voted in person on Election Day or submitted their vote-by-mail ballots before Election Day, according to the county registrar.
The state of California currently shows a 48% voter turnout, with many vote-by-mail ballots received by Election Day yet to be counted.
Tuesday, the vote center at 720 12th St. in downtown Modesto saw quick vote turnaround with voters trickling in periodically in the late afternoon.
Ivan Marquez, who voted downtown, said that the process was quick and he hoped that people would come out and “do what they gotta do.”
Ryan Weidman, who voted at the same location, said there were “not a lot of people in there.”
The largest registered block in terms of age range is the 26 to 35 year olds in Stanislaus, making up around 19% of registered voters. Young voters are often less likely to vote, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
So far, a little over 1,500 voters decided to skip the presidential race when casting their ballots.
John Goering, 25, of north Modesto, who referred to himself as a left-leaning moderate, said he decided to leave the presidential section of his ballot blank because the strategy Democrats ran on didn’t match his priorities.
“I didn’t appreciate how it felt like we had a candidate shoved down our throats without a say,” he said. “Many Democrats felt cheated when Joe Biden was chosen over Bernie Sanders. It felt the same way when Kamala Harris was chosen this year.”
Goering also said he was treated like an idiot by other Democrats for considering not voting for Harris.
Registered party affiliations in the county are about even. Roughly 37% of registered voters were Democrats, 36% were Republicans and 19% had no party preference, with the remaining 8% split among third parties, according to registration as of Oct. 21. This is about the same as it was in the presidential election in 2020.
The city of Modesto leans Democrat, with about 46,500 registered Democrats and 38,400 Republicans.
Despite this, the preliminary results indicate the county leaned considerably more right this election than expected based on registration alone. Republican candidates including Donald Trump and Steve Garvey retained a healthy majority of over 55% of the votes tallied in Stanislaus county to-date.
This story was originally published November 8, 2024 at 1:00 PM.
