In 2012, for example, election night ended with Romney at 57 million votes. When all the votes were in a month later, Romney had 61 million votes.
A flurry of irresponsible too-early opinion pieces about millions ‘staying home’ still clouds the facts of 2012.
I recall reviewing the popular vote figures down through the years. The remarkable thing about the 2012 presidential election is that, setting aside for the sake of argument the Civil War election of 1864 (when the 11 states of the Confederacy did not participate) and the election of 1944 (when the country was in full-scale war mode in WWII), 2012 was the first time in history since popular votes were tabulated where fewer total votes were cast than in the previous election!
So how can you account for that, other than (1) many stayed home or (2) quite a number of votes that were actually cast got rubbed out of the totals due to chicanery?