2012 Election Snapshot: Tennessee

Article February 13, 2014 Read time:

Projects: Election Initiatives

2012 Election Snapshots

Over the past several months, Pew collected data about the 2012 presidential election from nearly every state and the District of Columbia. We used the findings to create a snapshot of each jurisdiction, focusing on how many people voted, how long they waited to cast their ballots, how they cast them, and how many ballots were not counted. These snapshots will be released over the coming months, five at a time, and the Election Data Dispatches will take a closer look at the latest snapshots each week.

2012 Election Snapshot—Tennessee

In 2012, 57 percent of Tennessee’s 2,480,182 ballots were cast in person before Election Day. Early voting rates in the most populous counties were even higher than the statewide rate:

In Shelby County, which includes Memphis, 61 percent of votes were cast at early voting sites.
In Davidson County, where Nashville is, 63 percent of ballots were cast early.

These data are similar to the state’s 2008 rates, when 58 percent of ballots were cast early. In 1996, the first time Tennessee allowed early voting during a presidential election, the rate was just 21 percent.