Honestly, if you spent any time on social media in the days following November 5th, 2024, you probably saw the charts. They were everywhere. Bright red and blue lines showing a massive, gaping hole where millions of Democratic votes used to be. The claim was simple and, frankly, terrifying for a lot of people: "Where did the 15 to 20 million Democratic votes go?"
People were calling them the 2024 election missing votes. On one side of the aisle, folks were using these numbers to "prove" that the 2020 election was a fluke or a fraud. On the other side, some were convinced that something nefarious happened in 2024—that votes were suppressed, deleted, or simply not counted.
But here's the thing. Most of those viral posts were written before the counting was even remotely finished.
The math behind the "missing" millions
It’s easy to get sucked into a conspiracy when the numbers look weird on a Wednesday morning. Early on November 6th, the tallies showed Kamala Harris with roughly 60 million votes. Compare that to Joe Biden’s 81 million in 2020, and yeah, it looks like 20 million people just vanished into thin air.
But elections aren't Twitter feeds. They don't update in real-time.
California alone had millions of ballots sitting in envelopes for weeks. By mid-November, the Associated Press reported Harris had climbed to over 72 million votes. By the time the dust settled in early 2025, the "missing" gap had shrunk significantly. Was it still lower than 2020? Yes. But it wasn't a "disappearance." It was a shift.
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According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 Current Population Survey released in April 2025, voter turnout was about 65.3%. That’s actually the third-highest turnout in the last 34 years. It feels like a "drop" because 2020 was a literal historical anomaly with 66.4% turnout.
Why the numbers didn't match 2020
- The "Double Hater" Effect: A lot of people just weren't into either candidate. In 2020, the energy to remove Trump or keep him was at a fever pitch. In 2024, some of that "must-vote" energy dissipated into apathy.
- Shifting Tides: It wasn't just that people stayed home. Many people who voted for Biden in 2020 literally just changed their minds. Trump actually gained about 3 million more votes in 2024 than he did in 2020.
- The Mail-in Factor: In 2020, we were in the middle of a pandemic. Mail-in voting was the norm. In 2024, that dropped from 43% of the total vote down to about 29%. When voting methods change, the speed of the count changes, which leads to those early, scary-looking gaps in the data.
Were any votes actually "suppressed"?
Now, let's talk about the more serious side of the 2024 election missing votes conversation. There is a difference between "votes that didn't happen" and "votes that were blocked."
Reports from groups like the NAACP and data from the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission do point to some real friction. For instance, roughly 4.7 million voters were purged from rolls leading up to the election. While most of these are routine—people move or die—some advocates argue the timing and methods were overly aggressive.
In Georgia, over 200,000 voter registrations were challenged by private citizens using new state laws. Did this swing the whole election? Likely not, but for the individuals who showed up to vote and found their names gone, those are "missing votes" in a very personal, frustrating sense.
The reality of rejected ballots
Ballotpedia’s final 2024 analysis showed that about 1.2% of absentee ballots were rejected. That’s roughly 584,000 votes. Interestingly, this was actually lower than the rejection rates in 2018 or 2022. The most common reasons were boring stuff:
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- Missing signatures.
- Signatures that didn't match the one on file from ten years ago.
- Arriving after the deadline.
- Missing "inner secrecy envelopes" in states like Pennsylvania.
What most people get wrong about "The Steal"
Whether you're looking at the "Stop the Steal" crowd from 2020 or the "Blue Wall" skeptics of 2024, the central misunderstanding is how decentralized American elections are. There is no central "button" to delete 20 million votes.
Jen Easterly, the director of CISA, was pretty blunt about it. She stated there was no evidence of malicious activity that had a material impact on the integrity of the election infrastructure. Every state has its own system. Most have paper trails—98% of votes in 2024 had a physical paper record. If millions of votes were "missing," the paper wouldn't match the machines, and the audits would have been screaming.
They weren't.
The real "missing" demographic
The real story of the 2024 election missing votes isn't a computer hack. It's a demographic shift.
Pew Research found that Trump's 2020 voters were simply more loyal in 2024. About 89% of them showed up again. Only 85% of Biden's 2020 voters showed up for Harris. That 4% gap represents millions of real people who just stayed on the couch.
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Specifically, young voters (18-24) were the least likely to show up. Less than half of them voted. If you're looking for the "lost" votes, look at the TikTok demographic that stayed home because of the economy or foreign policy frustrations.
How to verify election data yourself
If you're still skeptical—and hey, healthy skepticism is fine—don't look at screenshots on X or Threads. Go to the sources that actually hold the certificates.
- The U.S. Census Bureau: They release the "Voting and Registration in the Election of [Year]" tables. This is the gold standard for seeing who actually showed up.
- The MIT Election Data and Science Lab: They break down the "residual vote"—the gap between people who showed up and people who actually marked a choice for President.
- State Secretaries of State: They publish the "Canvass of Votes." This is the official, legal final count.
The 2024 election missing votes weren't stolen by a shadowy cabal or a glitchy algorithm. They were a mix of slow-counting California ballots, a return to pre-pandemic voting habits, and a significant chunk of the electorate choosing to sit this one out.
Actionable Next Steps:
To better understand how your specific area handled the count, visit your state's Secretary of State website and look for the "2024 General Election Official Canvass." You can see the exact number of ballots cast versus the number of registered voters. If you want to ensure your own vote is never "missing" in the future, use your state's "Track My Ballot" tool (available in most states) to get a text notification the second your vote is officially tabulated.