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Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

No.

There were 3,684,726 active registered voters on Nov. 1, 2020, and an additional 219,045 voters registered on Election Day, so the 3,308,805 ballots cast represented 85% of registered voters.

But “registered voter turnout” is less relevant than actual turnout of eligible voters. The Wisconsin Elections Commission calculates voter turnout as a percentage of people age 18 and above as estimated by the state Demographic Services Center.

Wisconsin’s official 2020 election turnout was 71.7%, according to a 2020 Census voting age population of 4,612,301 as provided by the Department of Administration.

Election deniers have pointed to high turnout as a reason for skepticism about the results, but turnout was lower in 2020 than the 73.2% turnout in 2004.

Contrary to the claims of election skeptics, these numbers aren’t unusually high. All 50 states and the District of Columbia experienced similar turnout, according to the Associated Press.

This Fact Brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

State of Wisconsin: General Election Voter Registration and Absentee Statistics 1984-2022.xlsx

Associated Press: Wisconsin’s turnout of registered voters in the 2020 election was not suspicious or abnormal

State of Wisconsin: Nov. 1, 2020 Voter Registration Statistics

Wisconsin Department of Administration: County Population Estimate

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Tom Kertscher joined Wisconsin Watch as a full-time reporter in October 2024. He started as a fact checker in January 2023 and contributes to our collaboration with the The Gigafact Project to fight misinformation online. Kertscher is a former longtime newspaper reporter, including at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He is a contributing writer for Milwaukee Magazine and sports freelancer for The Associated Press.