Although more people voted than ever before, the actual voting rate in the 1976 Presidential election was lower than in any Presidential election since 1948. The ratio of official votes cast for President to the voting age population was 54 percent, down from 55 percent in 1972 and a high of 63 percent in 1960.

This report presents findings on the social and demographic characteristics of the civilian noninstitutional population of voting age in the 1976 election from the Current Population Survey (CPS) conducted by the Bureau of the Census. (Preliminary results were published in P-20, No. 304.) Comparisons of reported voter turnout are made with the first CPS survey on voting in 1964 and with the previous Presidential election of 1972.

The low official turnout for 1976 is also reflected in resuits of the CPS. Voter participation in 1976, as reported by the survey, was around 4 percentage points below the 1972 Presidential election and 10 points below the election of 1964.

• Changes in the age distribution of the voting age population have contributed to the decline in voter turnout since the 1964 Presidential election.
• The voting rates of men and women are now approximately equal. Between 1964 and 1976 the reported rate for men dropped from 72 percent to 60 percent, while the rate for women fell from 67 to 59 percent.
• Voting turnout for both Whites and Blacks in 1976 was about 10 percentage points below their respective levels in the 1964 election, whereas the figure for persons of Spanish origin was 6 points below that of 1972, the first year the Bureau of the Census obtained voting data for this group separately.