“The 2014 congressional election turnout rate of 41.9 percent was the lowest since the U.S. Census Bureau first began asking Americans about voting and citizenship status in 1978. The 2014 voting rate was 7.0 percentage points lower than in 1978 and down from the 45.5 percent that reported voting in the 2010 congressional election. These statistics come from Who Votes? Congressional Elections and the American Electorate: 1978-2014, which uses data collected by the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey. This report provides a detailed historical portrait of voters in congressional elections, and it examines voting patterns by age, race and Hispanic origin and includes a look at early and absentee voting. The voting rates of every age group between 18 and 64 also dropped between 1978 and 2014, while the voting rate in 2014 for those over 65 was not statistically different from 1978. In 2014, the voting rate for the 65-and-older age group was 59.4 per­cent compared with 23.1 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds. “In recent congressional elections, we’ve seen low levels of engagement among young people and the opposite for older Americans,” said Thom File, a Census Bureau sociologist and the report’s author. “These age differences cut across racial and ethnic groups as well. Regardless of whether we’re looking at non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks or Hispanics, voting rates tend to increase significantly with age.” The report also explores early and absentee voting. In the most recent congressional election of 2014, nearly a third (31.2 percent) of all voters reported either voting early, voting by mail or using some other form of voting. This was about a threefold increase from 1996, when only 10.5 percent of voters reported voting by alternative methods.”