Nearly one-third of American voters either have a disability or live in a household with a disabled person. That’s the top-line finding of a study released last week by Rutgers University’s Program for Disability Research. Authored by longtime disability researchers Lisa Schur and Douglas Kruse, the study notes that 40 million Americans with disabilities are eligible to vote in this fall’s elections. That’s about one in six voters overall. Moreover, a whopping 72 million eligible voters—about 30 percent of the entire US electorate—either have a disability or live in a household with at least one disabled member.
A voting block that large is bound to be widely distributed across the political spectrum. “The limited prior evidence indicates that people with disabilities are similar to those without disabilities in patterns of party identification and placement on a conservative-liberal scale,” Schur and Kruse observe. However, “[they] are more likely to favor a greater government role in health care and creating employment opportunities, which are both key issues in the 2024 political environment.”
The authors also note that voters with disabilities vote at lower rates than nondisabled voters, largely because of physical barriers that make polling locations inaccessible to many disabled voters. Yet despite these obstacles, the turnout gap between disabled and nondisabled voters is gradually shrinking (it was 5.7 percent in the most recent presidential election), thanks in part to the proliferation of early-voting and vote-by-mail options.
While it’s impossible to draw precise conclusions about which way the disability voting bloc leans politically, we can use Schur and Kruse’s data to sketch a general profile of this electoral segment. Before we get to those numbers: If you’re looking for resources related to voting procedures, policy issues, or anything else involving the 2024 elections, use the American Association of People With Disabilities’ directory of state-by-state coalitions to find relevant information.
On to Schur and Kruse’s study. According to their analysis:
A high percentage of voters with disabilities have low incomes. About 53 percent of disabled voters have annual household incomes of $50,000 or lower, versus 30 percent of nondisabled voters. Among low-income voters, one in four has a disability—nearly twice the proportion among mid- and high-income voters.
Voters with disabilities skew decidedly older. Just over half of disabled voters are 65 or older—twice as high as the proportion in the overall electorate. Here’s another way to come at it: Among the 98 million voters aged 55 and up, 28 million—almost 30 percent—have a disability. Among the 143 million voters who are age 54 or younger, only 8 percent have a disability.
Voters with disabilities are concentrated in the Southeast. Voters with disabilities constitute more than 20 percent of the entire electorate in eight states: Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. Only one of those states (New Mexico) is considered even slightly competitive in the presidential election, although most have at least some competitive races downballot.
Disabled voters’ representation in the seven Presidential swing states matches that of the overall electorate. In the most closely contested states in the presidential election—Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina—16.7 percent of eligible voters have a disability (about 7.7 million of roughly 46 million voters, all told).
Disabled voters represent the nation’s largest minority voting block. With 40 million voters, people with disabilities outnumber both Black (31.1 million) and Latino (35.7 million) voters. About 10.4 million voters are both disabled and Black or Latino.