Four years ago, when the nation headed to the polls in the middle of Donald Trump’s divisive term as president, half of eligible voters cast a ballot. Last week, preliminary data shows overall turnout was down a few percentage points. But some states saw an increase in voter participation.
According to preliminary data collected by the U.S. Election Project, three states reached 60 percent turnout in 2022: Minnesota (60.6), Maine (60.9) and Wisconsin (60.2). While none of the three are pure vote-by-mail states, each offers no-excuse absentee voting; both Minnesota and Wisconsin featured competitive races at the top of their ballots.
The top 10 states also included three vote-by-mail states and the only two that use ranked-choice voting for state and federal elections.
The U.S. Election Project estimates overall turnout at 46.9 percent, down from 50 percent four years ago.
“A slightly lower turnout in 2022 relative to 2018 is still quite high relative to recent history (where turnout was low 40s or high 30s) so it may well be this year is just a slight downturn in an overall trend toward greater participation,” said Kevin Johnson, executive director of the Election Reformers Network.
In addition to Maine, RCV is used in Alaska, which debuted its new election system this year. The Last Frontier was sixth in preliminary turnout at 57.0 percent. The three vote-by-mail states with the highest turnout were Colorado, Oregon and Vermont, which both exceeded 55 percent. Oregon also had a competitive race for governor.
Not every state that runs mail-in elections ranked highly in turnout. Hawaii had one of the lowest rates at 41.1 percent. Even Utah, which had a high-profile Senate race, only reached 45.4 percent. Republican incumbent Mike Lee ended up winning reelection by a wide margin, but independent challenger Evan McMullin had drawn a lot of attention to the race.
“At the end of the day, local race intensity matters a lot and can swamp voting methodology,” said Gerry Langeler, director research for the National Vote at Home Institute. “States where there just wasn’t very much intensity, turnout was lower than historical rates for those states, both [vote at home] and not.”
For example, Langeler pointed to Michigan, which is not a full vote-by-mail state but where 40 percent of the votes were cast via mailed-out ballots, and Maine, which (prior to this election) instituted a permanent vote-by-mail list for people 65 and older.
He also noted that Wisconsin saw a huge jump in voting by mail. Increasing its mailed ballot from 168,000 in 2018 to 812,000 in 2022.
Pennsylvania, which featured a pair of high-profile statewide races, had the biggest increase in turnout compared to 2018. The Senate and governor’s races, where Democrats defeated Trump-backed candidates, were among the most covered contests in the country. Turnout was up 3.3 points over 2018.
Ten other states saw a small increase, according to preliminary data, including four that exceeded 2 percentage points: Arkansas (2.3), Arizona (2.2) and Alaska (2.2) and New Hampshire (2.1).
Arizona was home to competitive races for senator and governor, while Alaska had tight races for the Senate and its at-large House seat. New Hampshire also had a competitive Senate contest.
Four states saw a double-digit decrease in turnout compared to 2018: North Dakota (14.5 points), New Jersey (12.0), Tennessee (11.2) and Virginia (10.7.)
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.