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.
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).