This statement is not true, the 2020 election had both a higher absolute total turnout and a higher number of absolute votes for the winning candidate.
Regardless, the cleaner way to compare election years is by % VEP or %VAP - otherwise you're effectively comparing population between the years by accident. From this perspective I disagree with GP, 2024 was still a great year for turnout... just not as good as 2020. 2024 sits 2nd in VEP and 7th VAP (out of the last 24 elections).
> more votes than anyone had ever received prior to that.
That fact falls into a whole class of "new records" which sound impressive but are usually meaningless, because it's closer to the default outcome.
In this case, the voting-age population was (yet again) going to increase, so each "new record" in votes cast becomes boringly-normal rather than unusually interesting. The same also happens with certain dollar-amount records, which are not adjusted for inflation or overall economy growth.
A similar phenomenon to https://xkcd.com/1138/ , except it has to do with trends over time rather than geographically.
While it’s true that setting a new record isn’t unusual, in the case of 2020, the turnout was actually very high even taking into account population growth.
