Click each county on the map below for stats on California's eligible and registered voters, as well as a breakdown of political party affiliation (but keep in mind there's a big difference between registered and "likely" voters). The darker the shade, the higher the percentage of registered voters.
(Source: California Secretary of State, May 2012 data)
President Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed the Voting Rights Act into law in 1965, called voting "the basic right, without which all others are meaningless."
But in California - where nearly 24 million adults are eligible to vote - the number of people who actually take advantage of this right is surprisingly small.
Consider these California voting stats (approximated):
- 24 million: People who are eligible to vote
- 17 million: People registered to vote (about 72% of those who are eligible)
- 6 million: "Likely voters" (those who regularly vote)
- 5.3 million: The number of votes cast in the June 2012 primary election
A Public Policy Institute of California survey also found that California's "likely voters" are not representative of the state's racial and economic diversity. About 65 percent of them are white (even though whites make up only 44 percent of the state's adult population) and only 17 percent Latino (who make up about one-third of the state's population). Likely voters are also generally older, more educated, more affluent, and far more likely to own a home than the average Californian. And more than 80 percent were born in the U.S.