Nonvoters are the biggest (potential) voting bloc in American politics. In midterm, state and local elections, more eligible voters choose not to exercise their franchise than to do so.
Pundits and political sociologists ignore nonvoters. Nobody polls them. Nobody asks them why they don’t vote. Nobody asks them what issues they care about. Nobody asks them what it would take them to get them to vote, or who they would vote for if they did. Whether this lack of interest in nonvoters is due to a lack of imagination or contempt based on the belief that they are lazy and apathetic, the result is that we don’t know much about the political leanings and motivations (or lack thereof) of the majority of our fellow citizens. There are tens of millions of them. They are an untapped resource and, until recently, there has been little attempt to reach out to them.
Democratic Party strategists largely assume there is little point dedicating precious campaign resources to an attempt to lure nonvoters to the polls. From Bill Clinton in 1992 to Kamala Harris in 2024, the party has been primarily focused on trying to appeal to swing voters and moderate Republicans, even though there don’t seem to be very many of them.
Donald Trump’s first win disproved the hypothesis that you can’t get the third or more of eligible citizens who normally sit out presidential elections to come to the polls. Fifteen percent of the people who cast a ballot in November 2016 were first-time voters, up from 9% in 2012. True, Donald Trump’s coalition included people who vote Republican no matter what, as well as traditional conservatives. But the key to his takeover of the GOP was his ability to motivate people who previously weren’t even registered to vote.
The 2016 election also highlighted the political impact of nonvoting. Nonvoters skewed Democratic, accounting for 55% as opposed to 41% for Republicans. Hillary Clinton lost because she wasn’t able to motivate enough of her own party’s supporters.
The cliche of the nonvoter is that they are politically disengaged. If that is true, it falls short of painting the full picture. In 2016, 3.5% of Bernie Sanders primary voters sat out the general election; they were more than enough to cost Clinton the race. But primary voters are far more engaged than general election voters. They didn’t forget to vote for Hillary. They made an active choice to be passive because they disliked both major-party candidates.
Nonvoters were even more powerful this year. An astonishing 6 million Americans who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 considered the choice between Harris and Trump and picked the couch.
She lost by 2.3 million votes.
These 6 million people were registered to vote. We know they know how to vote; they did it four years ago in the middle of a pandemic. And we know they voted Democratic! More states have early voting and mail-in ballots, so it was easier to vote in 2024. Logically, a more appealing Democrat than Harris might have received their support.
A full picture of American public opinion would include numerous thorough studies and surveys of people who sometimes vote and other times sit out elections (this year’s Trump campaign reached out to these “irregular” and “low propensity” voters), those who never vote but are registered to vote, and those who are not registered. But the biggest factor here is obviously the defining characteristic of U.S. electoral politics: the two-party system. Democracies with two-party systems tend to have lower voter turnout than parliamentary democracies where multiple parties representing a wide range of ideological orientations are viable and active participants. The increasing percentage of Americans who self-identify as “independent” means that it is constantly less likely that a voter will agree with one of the two candidates of two polarized parties.
In a two-party system like ours, a voter who doesn’t much care for either candidate has three choices. They can suck it up and choose “the lesser evil,” vote for a third-party candidate who almost certainly doesn’t stand a chance, or sit out the election.
A significant subset of the first category is the negative message voter, who casts a ballot for the challenger against the incumbent in order to indicate their displeasure. With only two parties to choose from, these voters flail back and forth. Since a vote is a vote and doesn’t come attached to a footnote, neither the parties nor the news media ever receives the message. As more voters realize the futility of rage and spite voting, there is a general trend toward not voting at all.
Because they are oblivious to the left-leaning voters they are failing to motivate — and, unlike the Republicans, haven’t made the slightest effort to change that — Democrats have more to worry about in the short term. In the long run, however, the realization that nonvoters are making an active choice not to bother with the political system is a major warning that the whole system may not be viable for much longer.
Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis.
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The dumbest people on the planet are Americans who vote.
Don’t vote. It encourages them.
“An astonishing 6 million Americans who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 considered the choice between Harris and Trump and picked the couch.” Perhaps. Or perhaps those votes were fake and the election really was rigged. Just look at the enormous burst of Democrat votes for Biden in 2020 that came out of nowhere and then just went away. What makes the most logical sense to you?
Nothing is perfect, but I am increasingly of the mind that this is a rigged system and the sane thing is to just not give it the patina of respectability by casting a false-choice vote. I suppose if even just 5 percent of potential voters actually vote the corporate press will still act like this is a mandate, but perhaps at some point even this won’t cut it? Or maybe oligarchic control of the media is becoming so extreme that even if nobody votes, the election will still be covered as the most important thing in history.
The only thing that matters is the elites and the balance between fear and greed. If the elites don’t fear the consequences of crushing the working class into the dirt then that’s what they will do. If the elites worry about revolution or anarchy etc., then they will back off and cut the average person some slack. How do you think the New Deal came about, anyhow?
An important percentage of people voted for Trump or didn’t vote at all because the Dems put forth a very poor candidate in Harris! PERIOD!!
Had the Dems fielded almost anyone else, Trump would be sitting home pondering which jail he was going to be sent to and the MAGA’S would have been arrested again for rioting.
This SHOULD be a lesson for both political parties in the importance of choosing a good candidate but of course, neither will learn from the lesson.
Or maybe people know the whole thing is a joke. So why bother. Besides, if you vote you are giving your approval to mass murder, invasion, and theft. Maybe people want to be able to sleep at night by not giving their approval. But most of all people probably know their vote doesn’t count for anything. I’d guess the people who do vote don’t understand any of this. Trying to think for yourself can be painful if you aren’t used to it.
2000 election (R): fake idiot unelected president remote-controlled from a back room, fraudulent disastrous wars in service of an alien power, financial political and moral bankruptcy, weaponized security policy, horseshit health care system, ruined infrastructure and drained social capital, childish and hysterical public culture, wave after unchecked wave of destructive unwanted and uncalled-for immigrant moochers.
2020 election (D): fake idiot unelected president remote-controlled from a back room, fraudulent disastrous wars in service of an alien power, financial political and moral bankruptcy, weaponized security policy, horseshit health care system, ruined infrastructure and drained social capital, childish and hysterical public culture, wave after wave of unchecked destructive unwanted and uncalled-for immigrant moochers.
So… twenty whole years — what did all that “voting” get you? I mean besides the extra $30 trillion in debt, with which you bought… what, exactly?
Democrats cannot “motivate left-leaning voters” because they are right-wingers by another name. The betrayals of working people engineered by Bill Clinton and Barrack Obama differ only in style rather than substance from those traditionally constructed by the GOP. Both shill for the same oligarchy these days, in our good-cop / bad-cop political fantasy world. The American people are not the simple-minded proto-fascist dolts that insecure overeducated dolts need to think they are. A 2004 Princeton University study concluded “Public opinion has ‘near-zero’ impact on U.S. law.” Congress formulates public policy in what was termed “a vicious cycle of legalized corruption.” See https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba and the report text is available at https://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/idr.pdf
The argument that alleged low voter turnouts signify the end of democracy is facetious. In the first federal election of 1788-89, 43,782 votes were cast for president, out of an American population of nearly four million. Eight years later in the contest between Adams and Jefferson, the total rose to 66,841. In the momentous election of 1860, 4,685,030 votes were cast in a nation now numbering over thirty-three million souls. Compare this to the 152 million votes cast in 2024 in an America now ten times that size and you can see how mistaken it is that we vote less now than we used to in some better, mythic past.
Not mentioned in this article is that there are hundreds of Americans who run for office during the elections but the voters never hear of them since they are ignored by those who control the two main political parties.
So if voters are obliged to vote for candidates preselected by others from the bones of the carcass holding only 2% of those willing to run for office, why would anyone waste their time participating in, and thus legitimizing, this blatant charade?
I voted for Jill Stein, primarily in order to register my disapproval of the genocide. I am disturbed that so few other voters did the same.
The Dems and Repubs are one colluding association – a Uniparty. The election was portrayed as a corrupt, incompetent and immoral ex-courtesan against a moral, successful oligarch by socially constructing what sociologists call a moral panic.
Read how moralism and altruism were manipulated to skew the 2024 vote:
2024 Election: Voters Minds Controlled by Moralism and Altruism
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/12/wayne-lusvardi/2024-election-voters-mind-controlled-by-moralism-and-altruism/
There was another formidable candidate who was blocked from the debates and shadow-banned on the internet by none other than Elon Musk
See: Shiva Ayyadurai, PhD, Shatter the Swarm
LINK
Video Link
People have learned that voting does not matter. As Jimmy Carter observed a few years back we live in an oligarchy. In the near future the US will find itself with a Soviet style systemic collapse. People will stop playing along with the system’s rules. Unlike the old Soviet Union there are no older cultural institutions to bind society. Regions will devolve into race wars. The military will fracture. The game changer, of sorts, will be who can control the nuclear weapons. The really might be that older US weapons like the Minuteman missiles likely don’t work anyway. But if some missiles work, and someone can jigger the codes, it is easy to see the “middle” nuking NY, Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, DC, Miami and maybe a few other spots. The fragmented nation (or competing regions) will be short energy, food, and manufactured goods. It will deteriorate quickly.
This is HILARIOUS!!
Video Link
“Abstain from beans ”
There are wheelbarrows of money to be made as a politician in the USA!
Showing exactly how impotent and lacking in power you are
You non-voting people are so stupid.
Voting DOES matter. SOMEONE is going to get elected and will then control their strings of power. If you choose not to vote, then other people who DO vote will have a better chance to get THEIR favorite choice into office, where that person will listen to them and do THEIR bidding, not yours.
Nonvoters redeemed again.
FAGA-agitator who described them as garbage salty:
Video Link
I am not registered to vote and refuse to vote.
1. Everyone who tells me I should vote is a jerk.
2. I have never seen an election where the candidate I preferred lost by one vote.
Voting is a pleasant facade that masks the reality that voting does not matter. The reality is that campaign donors are the owners of government policy.
Dubya wasn’t very bright but he was on target when he said, “Ya dance with them what brung ya.”
That translates to, “Politicians do the bidding if those who bought them.”
Belief in voting is right up there with belief in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus coming down your chimney late at night on Christmas Eve.
You make the false assumption that you are given any choice. Voting is a tool designed to create the illusion of consent. You voted for this so you consented. The reality is that votes will not change anything about what happens following the election. In state and local elections, votes decide merely who gets paid off. In federal elections, corporate donors control the show. What differentiates the GOP from the Democrats, they are paid by competing corporate donors. Policy disputes are about which corporation will be favored.
With an hereditary monarchy, the regime interest aligned with the public interest because the King needed to create consent from the public every day. Nobles (the equivalent to modern corporations) mattered sort of. The king could put nobles against one another. The king could simply kill nobles. The king however, could not simply kill all the peasants. Someone had to farm, tend the cattle, do the day to day things that kept the King’s regime functioning. In war, someone needed to be the infantry.
Voting today creates the illusion the peasants have consented. The king today sits on the throne because the corporations put the king there. If the king missteps, the king will die. Think JFK, Nixon, to some degree Trump.
OK, so if voting doesn’t matter, if one should stay home on election day, then what exactly is the path to victory?
Stay home, be smug, watch more television and somehow the regime will come crashing down in ruin?
If there is a strategy here, then let us see someone here state it.
Chortle on TUR and similar sites.
No one ever preaches overthrow of the government. So I won’t. I will suggest much can be learned, however, from the collapse of the old Soviet Union and the Clinton administration reaction. Recall in the 1990s the Clinton administration went crazy whenever some minor group in flyover America simply ignored federal authority. One day we will wake up and find that folks simply ignore federal authority. How many citizens do Federal Marshalls plan to shoot? What happens when an AUSA indicts someone, the FBI goes to arrest them, and 45 of the person’s neighbors show up and say no? What happens then the national guard says no? Notice how after years of war in Syria the government of a week just collapsed? Governments need to prove themselves legitimate daily. The US has by design sought to atomize society on a systematic basis since the 1950s because in the 1930s the US could have gone the way of Spain or Nazi Germany or even the Soviet Union.
Today atomization too is failing.
I don’t know. But voting is a proven path to defeat.
While rationales vary, participation is always assent. This website’s archives have millions of words about the topic, thousands of them from me. There are many arguments, pro and con, in and under To Vote or Not to Vote? (RockaBoatus; December 13, 2022). One of my comments there in an exchange with the, as it turned out, disgruntled but lifelong GOP voter author:
There is no “path to victory.” There is just voting, inevitable disillusionment and disappointment, assurances that the next “most important election in our lifetime” will have better results, and then the cycle starts all over again.
It’s interesting that most people do a complete brain dump every four years and keep repeating the same thing over and over, while always expecting different results.
Voters, face it. You’ve been had.
The 6 million number here is incorrect. There were more than 3 million votes which went to independents in this 2024 election. The drop in voting was by 3 million, not 6 million. About 158 million voted in 2020 and 155 million in 2024. Trump gained around 3 million votes in 2024 versus 2020.
From the liberal perspective, she IS a good candidate.
She is not white, she has a vagina, and she has the deep state’s arm up her ass.
What else do you need?
Why are we being directed to a video which does not efficiently address the matter you raised? Who is that missing candidate? I still don’t know who you are talking about for sure. I think it’s Dr. Shiva himself, but why didn’t you just tell us who you had in mind and invite us to watch the video?
There’s a name for what you are doing. It’s called clickbait. Unz Review, like a lot of other websites dealing with political issues and editorial opinion, is a news site. In journalism, you start with the leed. You tell people what you want to tell them in the first sentence ot two. In this case, what you want to tell them is the name of the potential candidate you are thinking of.
Then there’s another issue. What makes this guy different from the South Asian man who was actually on a primary ballot. That was Vivek Ramaswamy. It’s a question. Maybe it has a good strong answer. Answer it.
Look, I don’t try to endorse or advocate a candidate on Unz Review. But the video stands on its own merits or demerits. IMHO it is the best description of the elite structure of government I know of (I have a masters degree in sociology concentrating on power elites). If you were better informed you would know that Shiva was banned from the primaries and was shadow-banned on Twitter through a hidden back door where government can cancel whoever they want which Shiva discovered. This has ripened into a lawsuit of Shiva vs. Galvin as a free speech issue. Ramaswamy is alleged to have bought a bio-tech company, taken a failed vaccine of that company, sugar-coated the scientific research and re-sold the company for a windfall. You are the one that wants to drag political advocacy into the conversation.
You express yourself in relatively abstract terms. I’m not to argue with you over it, but at the same time I’m not going to go down rabbit trails trying to research everything you allude to.
The Wikipedia article for Shiva Ayyadurai is incredibly biased in its descriptions of him, but probably factually accurate. His concerns about election integrity are valid and I share them. I don’t think he was cheated out of any wins when he ran for office though.
Suffice to say, I think all records related to elections need to be preserved. That means paper ballots, ballot enveloped, signed rolls at polling place and electronic records.