What percentage of eligible voters voted for Harris in 2024?

1. What the mainstream counts do report: votes cast and vote shares

News organizations counted ballots: the Associated Press reported that more than 153 million ballots were cast in the 2024 presidential race and that Trump led Harris in total votes by roughly 2.5 million nationally ^[1]. Major post-election survey products such as AP VoteCast and exit-poll reporting give vote shares among people who voted (for example, AP’s breakdowns showing group-level percentages like 56% of Latino voters for Harris in 2024), but those are shares of voters, not shares of the entire eligible population ^{[2] [1]}.

2. Turnout vs. vote share — two different denominators that cause confusion

Analysts distinguish between (a) turnout — the share of eligible or citizen voting-age population who actually voted — and (b) vote share — the percentage of those who voted who selected a particular candidate. Ballotpedia reports average turnout in states Biden/Harris won of about 66.4% (turnout among eligible/citizen voting-age populations by state-level aggregation), but that still does not translate directly to “percentage of eligible voters who voted for Harris” without combining turnout and Harris’s vote share in each jurisdiction ^[4]. Observers warn that narratives about “lost turnout” or “vote share” must specify which denominator they use ^[5].

3. Survey and CPS sources that could be combined — what they reveal and what they don’t

The Census Bureau’s CPS Voting and Registration tables are the authoritative source for turnout and registration patterns and would contain the building blocks needed to compute “percent of eligible voters who voted for X,” but the press release in the provided results only notes that the CPS tables are available; it does not itself publish the computed percentage for Harris ^[6]. Pew Research and other post-election analyses provide validated-voter vote shares and describe the composition of nonvoters — for example, Pew reports that among eligible nonvoters in 2024, 40% said they would have voted for Harris if they had voted, and that nonvoters slightly leaned Democratic (48% identified/leaned Democratic) ^[3]. That helps explain how voter preferences among nonvoters differed from those who actually voted, but it is not the direct answer to the user’s question ^[3].

4. Example of how to compute the figure — not provided directly in media pieces

To get “percent of eligible voters who voted for Harris” you need: (A) the number of citizens eligible to vote (or the citizen voting-age population), (B) the number of ballots cast for Harris, and (C) divide B by A. AP reported total ballots cast (153+ million) and media outlets reported Harris’s popular vote totals (implied by saying she trailed by ~2.5 million), but none of the provided items supply a nationwide citizen-eligible population figure and a definitive, single Harris vote total in a single cited paragraph among these search results to produce that percent directly ^{[1] [7]}. Therefore, available sources do not mention a single computed national percentage of eligible voters who voted for Harris ^{[1] [6]}.

5. State- and group-level patterns useful for context

If you want contextual measures instead of a single national percentage: Ballotpedia gives state-level turnout averages in states Harris carried (66.4% average turnout in states she won), which implies relatively high voter activation where she prevailed ^[4]. AP and AP VoteCast show that Harris matched or exceeded Biden’s totals in some states (Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin) even as she lost nationally, showing geographic variation in support ^[1]. Demographic analyses from PBS and Pew show group vote shares among voters — e.g., AP VoteCast reported 56% of Latino voters backed Harris ^[2] — and Pew documents how differential turnout and nonvoter preferences shifted the overall result ^{[8] [3]}.

6. Conflicting narratives and what to watch for

Some commentators blamed “low Democratic turnout” for Harris’s loss; others point to Republican gains and switching among demographic groups as the decisive factors. Research pieces (Split-Ticket, Pew, Ballotpedia) emphasize different mechanics: lower turnout in some Democratic-leaning areas, turnout increases in Republican areas, and turnout-driven changes among specific demographic groups all played roles ^{[5] [8] [4]}. Watch whether a source is reporting “share of voters” (who voted) versus “share of eligible voters” — conflating the two generates the common misinformation the election year produced ^{[5] [3]}.

7. Bottom line and recommended next steps

Available sources do not provide the single nationwide percentage of eligible voters who voted for Harris in one explicit figure ^{[1] [6]}. To compute it precisely, combine an authoritative citizen-eligible population total (CPS or Census tables referenced by the Census press release) with an official, final Harris popular-vote count (AP/secretary-of-state tallies); those tables and tallies are available in the referenced datasets but the specific combined percentage is not stated in the provided reporting ^{[6] [1]}. If you want, I can: (a) pull the official final Harris vote total from the AP or state canvass reports among these sources and (b) use the CPS citizen-eligible population number to perform that calculation — or I can compute a state-by-state version to show geographic variation using Ballotpedia and AP data cited above ^{[4] [1] [6]}. Which would you prefer?