Elections expert: 2020 turnout could be highest since 1916

An elections expert is predicting that the 2020 presidential election could have the highest voter turnout since at least 1916, Axios reports.

Michael McDonald, a political science associate professor at the University of Florida and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Axios that 2020 voter turnout could be as high as 67 percent.

{mosads}McDonald said the prediction partially comes from President Trump, who is driving unhappy voters to the polls. He added that the number of Trump voters is not increasing.

“It doesn’t seem to be the candidates who were running in 2018; there wasn’t hyper competition driving turnout; some states made it easier to vote, but that can’t explain it because the increase was happening in every state,” McDonald told the outlet.

“So, the only explanation is Donald Trump because he’s the only major factor that’s changed in our politics since 2014.”

McDonald predicted that young people, people of color and low-income people, who typically vote Democratic, will likely vote in larger numbers next year. Two dozen Democrats are currently vying for the party’s nomination to take on Trump for the White House.

Voter turnout was about 61.4 percent in the 2016 elections, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.