Keep Factually independent
Whether you agree or disagree with our analysis, these conversations matter for democracy. We don't take money from political groups - even a $5 donation helps us keep it that way.
Fact check: Which states had the highest voter turnout for Trump in 2024?
Executive Summary
State-by-state data and reporting after the 2024 election show high overall turnout in several states, but sources disagree on whether those high-turnout states were also the places where Donald Trump received his largest vote shares. Some analyses highlight traditionally high-turnout states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin as consequential for Trump’s win [1] [2], while other sources list different states where Trump outperformed without linking that performance directly to turnout levels [3] [4].
1. Grabbing the Claim — Which states are said to have the highest turnout for Trump?
The collection of analyses advances two distinct claims: one frames overall state turnout in 2024 as unusually high in certain battlegrounds — Michigan is singled out with a 72% turnout figure — and implies that those high turnout rates aided Trump [1]. Another set of reporting lists the states where Trump ‘outperformed’ in 2024 — including New York, New Jersey, Florida and California among others — but explicitly does not tie those named states’ high vote shares to the highest voter turnout rates [3] [4]. The difference between turnout and Trump vote share is central.
2. The turnout-focused evidence: High turnout in key battlegrounds
A voter-rights watchdog reported that Michigan recorded a 72% participation rate in the 2024 general election and identified increased turnout in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, positioning these states as pivotal to the electoral outcome (p1_s3, published 2025-09-25). Those figures are presented as overall turnout percentages among voting-age citizens, and the analysis infers that higher engagement in those states helped shape the presidential result. The source’s emphasis is on turnout magnitude rather than on per-candidate turnout shares.
3. The performance-focused evidence: Where Trump overperformed
A separate listing of the top 10 states where Trump “outperformed” in 2024 names states including New York, New Jersey, Florida, Massachusetts, and California, among others (p2_s3, published 2024-11-19). That report concentrates on relative Republican gains or margins versus prior cycles, not absolute turnout. It underscores that Trump’s stronger-than-expected showings occurred in both red and blue states, but it does not claim those were the states with the highest raw voter participation rates [3].
4. Official results and battleground wins that mattered
Election-result summaries and live tallies confirm Trump’s victories in several battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Nevada — which collectively contributed to his Electoral College majority (p3_s1, [5], [6]; dates range from 2024-11-05 to 2025-08-22). These reports document state-level wins rather than reporting explicit turnout percentages tied to his vote share. The evidence therefore supports that Trump carried critical states, but does not by itself identify which states had the highest Trump-specific turnout.
5. Reconciling turnout and vote-share: an evidentiary gap
The sourced analyses reveal a gap between overall turnout data and Trump-specific turnout metrics. States reported as having the highest participation rates (e.g., Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon) are not the same list as those where Trump most outperformed, and none of the provided pieces pair candidate-specific turnout shares with total turnout figures [1] [4] [3]. This means one cannot, from these sources alone, definitively name the states with the highest voter turnout for Trump — the data reported are complementary but not directly cross-referenced.
6. Dates and reporting context that matter for interpretation
The turnout analysis citing Michigan and other battlegrounds was published in September 2025 [1], while lists of where Trump outperformed date to November 2024 [3] and a turnout ranking piece to May 2025 [4]. The official-result narratives were published between November 2024 and August 2025 [5] [6] [2]. These differing publication dates reflect evolving post-election data compilation and analysis; later sources may incorporate audited or state-updated turnout totals, which affects comparisons between turnout and vote-share claims.
7. What’s omitted and why that matters for a definitive answer
None of the supplied sources provide a state-by-state table that pairs (a) turnout as a percent of voting-age population, (b) total votes cast, and (c) Trump's raw vote count and share, all in the same dataset [1] [4] [3] [2]. Without that cross-tabulation, assertions that particular states had the “highest voter turnout for Trump” remain inferential. Filling this gap requires a single dataset or study that matches turnout denominators with candidate vote totals — an omission flagged across the reporting.
8. Bottom line for the question asked: what can be concluded now?
From the reviewed sources, one can conclude that some high-turnout battlegrounds (Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) were important to Trump’s victory, and separately that Trump outperformed expectations in a mix of states (New York, Florida, California, etc.), but the materials do not provide a definitive ranked list of states by Trump-specific turnout. To answer the original question authoritatively would require a combined state-level dataset linking total turnout to Trump’s vote totals — a dataset not present among the supplied sources [1] [3] [2].