Polls show Donald Trump with a lead for eight consecutive months, but there is a big warning sign that suggests his lead may not be as stable as it appears.
That warning sign: His narrow lead is based on gains among voters who don’t pay much attention to politics, who don’t follow traditional news and who don’t vote regularly.
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To some extent, this hasn’t been the case in the New York Times/Siena College polls over the past eight years; disengaged voters are driving the overall poll results and the storyline surrounding the election.
In fact, President Joe Biden has led the last three national Times/Siena polls among those who voted in the 2020 election, although he has trailed among registered voters overall. And looking at the last few years, almost all of Trump’s gains have come from these less committed voters.
It is important to highlight that these uncommitted voters with low participation often come from predominantly Democratic constituencies. Many continue to identify as Democratic-leaning and still support Democratic U.S. Senate candidates, but they are still moving away from Biden in surprising numbers. In the Times/Siena poll, Biden wins only three-quarters of Democratic-leaning voters who did not vote in the 2022 midterm elections, even though almost all voters with a large turnout in the Democratic parties continue to support him.
Trump’s strength among low-turnout, less-engaged voters helps explain much of what’s strange about this election. It illustrates the disconnect between Trump’s lead in the polls and Democratic victories in lower-turnout special elections. And it helps explain Trump’s gains among young, non-white voters, who tend to be among the least engaged. His strength among young voters, in particular, lies almost entirely among those who did not vote in the midterm elections.
While the race has remained stable so far, Trump’s dependence on disengaged voters makes it easy to imagine how it could quickly become more volatile. As voters tune in over the next six months, there’s a possibility that uncommitted but traditionally Democratic voters could return to their usual partisan leanings. Alternatively, many of these dissatisfied voters may end up staying home, which could help Biden.
Biden’s weakness among disengaged voters reframes the challenge facing his campaign. Whether he can win back those voters will depend on why those voters deserted him, but it will also depend on whether the Biden campaign can reach those voters.
Television ads on major networks may not reach the voters Biden needs.
How less engaged voters are different
It’s tempting to believe that less committed voters are the same as demographically similar but highly committed voters, with the caveat that they aren’t paying as much attention. If that were true, Biden could count on uncommitted young black and Hispanic voters to flock to his side as soon as they tune in to the race.
The Times/Siena data suggests it may not be so simple. Less committed and democratically inclined voters have different political opinions and obtain their political information from different sources. Even if Biden’s campaign manages to reach these voters, it is not certain that they will return to the Democratic group.
In swing states, Democratic-leaning irregular voters are much less likely to identify as liberal. They are much less likely to say that abortion and democracy are the most important issues and are much more likely to cite the economy instead. The overwhelming majority of them say the economy is “bad” or “just fair,” even if they are still loyal to Biden, while most voters with high Democratic turnout say the economy is “good” or “excellent.”
An important factor may be media consumption. While Biden receives almost all of his support from voters who consume traditional mainstream media — national newspapers, television networks and the like — the uncommitted are much more likely to report getting their news on social media.
With these different opinions, it may not be so easy for Biden to win back these voters, even if their demographic characteristics and traditional party loyalties still suggest ways for the Biden campaign to do so.
Why researchers have a problem
The unusual importance of low voter turnout also creates major challenges for pollsters, who have long known that voters with low turnout are less likely to respond to political polls. This long-standing pattern takes on new meaning this cycle, as a typical political poll would likely undercount Trump without measures to reach the appropriate percentage of irregular voters. (We make every effort to take this into account in our research.)
On the other hand, it is clear that voters with lower voter turnout are less likely to vote. Although millions of irregular voters will undoubtedly turn out in November this year, no one knows how many of them will end up showing up – let alone which ones exactly will. This, too, is always a challenge for pollsters, but the deep divide between regular and irregular Democrats this cycle means that polls could be unusually sensitive to the final composition of the electorate, with Biden potentially favored if enough of his uncommitted defectors remain at home. .
Who will vote in the end?
If there are two consecutive elections with the same level of turnout, it can be assumed that more or less the same people vote in each election. But surprisingly, that’s not how it works.
There is a lot more unrest in the electorate than most people realize. Even if turnout remains the same, millions of previous voters will stay home and be replaced by millions who stayed home last time.
Historically, around 25% of presidential election voters do not have a validated voting record from previous presidential elections. This is partly due to newly registered voters, who typically vote in upcoming elections (and who may have previously voted in a different state). But it also happens because around 30% to 40% of previous registrants who missed the last election end up showing up and voting in the next one.
There are good reasons to expect fewer voters in 2024 than in recent cycles, given that the 2020 elections were the highest-turnout elections in a century. But if you think that means there won’t be many new voters, you’re already wrong: in fact, 10% of those who were registered but didn’t vote in 2020 already voted, in the relatively low-turnout 2022 midterm elections. The usual hustle and bustle is already in action.
Still, Trump’s large lead among non-voters means that the exact number of new voters could be extremely important or even decisive. And even beyond the proportion of new voters, exactly which the emergence of new voters can also be fundamental. In recent years, Democrats have benefited from what we call a “hidden” turnout advantage — a tendency for Democratic supporters who vote to be more anti-Trump than those who stay home.
With that history in mind, Democrats can hope that higher turnout will draw a disproportionately anti-Trump group of irregular voters to the polls. There were signs of this once again in the recent Times/Siena (and Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena) battleground polls, as Democratic-leaning non-voters who supported Biden were 20 percentage points more likely to say they were “almost certain” or “very likely”. ” to vote than those who preferred Trump.
Of course, it is unlikely that irregular and disengaged voters have already formed solid plans for November. There is plenty of time for them to decide or change their minds about who they can vote for – and whether they will vote or not.
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