538 notes that Trump is doing very well among non-voters in the polls. Biden does very well comparatively speaking among the always voters with a fairly linear gradient of support changes as voting intensity increases.
I am not a political professional. However, I did enough paid GOTV and GOTV data munging work in my twenties to know a few things. Getting the always voters out to vote is easy. There might be a post-card reminder where their precinct hall is. Perhaps a reminder call that there will also be a bake sale set up in the library parking lot on election day and they make incredible blondies. But that is about it. Always voters are predictable and a campaign does not need to do much to get those voters.
Seldom and never voters are the exact opposite story. Some of them are presidential election only voters. They need to be called. They need to be door knocked. They need to be mailed.
Some of them are never voters… and to get one marginal vote out of this cohort takes a tremendous amount of effort. Converting a never voter into a voter for my preferred candidate is expensive and time consuming. It requires a lot of money and a lot of time and one hell of an organization to apply those resources to the right people in the right doses.
Now the question is — which candidate is likely to have the time, resources and organization to convert never voters into voters at a favorable rate?
I know where I’m placing my bets.
Spanky
Interesting insight! Thanks, David.
WaterGirl
I’m not sure we go for the never voters. (Unless they are young pups who have never voted.)
I think the inconsistent voters are the better catch, aren’t they?
WaterGirl
It seems to me that they should have broken out the “only 1 election” people who voted in a presidential election year (2020) from the “only 1 election” people who voted in an off election.
The people who only vote in presidential election years can be counted on to vote again, so I think they aren’t weighted appropriately.
It seems to me that the presidential voters should be weighted pretty strongly, and the “only 1 election” people not from 2020 should not.
Brachiator
Very interesting stuff. I will look at the 538 link later today.
I note that some MAGA cult members claim that before Trump came along, they were “seldom voters.” Now, they are dedicated to the Orange Beast.
And I wonder if there is some issue, like maybe reproductive rights, that might motivate some seldom voters.
Jeffro
I have voted with such regularity since I was 18 that both parties leave me alone, which is quite nice. =)
(well…except for the Biden/Harris fundraising emails, which are easy enough to delete 4-5 times a day)
I’m excited to help some of our less-frequent D-leaners become more-frequent D-voters this year, that’s for sure!
Baud
@Jeffro:
Same. No one bugs me. Dirty little secret for people who do their civic duty.
Mousebumples
Good points!
Related – MAGA turning off the well educated, suburban voters flips many of the always vote people to the Dem side.
And MAGA demonizing early voting/vote by mail is also in our favor.
Campaigns like being able to know who has already early voted so they stop spending resources to get you to the polls!
Kelly
@Baud: Campaigns can track who’s mailed in their Oregon ballots. We send ours back right away. No more calls.
Alce_e _ ardillo
Question- Does converting a ” never voter” into a “one-time voter” make it marginally more likely they will vote in future elections?
Chris T.
@Alce_e _ ardillo:
Yes.
It turns out that voting is kind of habit-forming, apparently.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I became a citizen so that I could vote. That was my biggest reason. So when someone complains that they don’t vote because there are too many hoops to jump through I have little sympathy. Surely it is easier than the path me and so many other naturalized citizens had to take to be able to vote.
RaflW
@LOLGOP-aligned group Earlyworm has a good piece up this week on ‘reverse coattails’. I recommend it, not a long read, but pretty motivating.
Here’s a key tidbit: “A recent Run for Something poll found that ‘61% of young Democrats in battleground states say they are more likely to turn out if there’s also a young, progressive candidate running down-ballot.’ I’d argue one reason voter turnout is so much higher among older people is that we see people like ourselves on the ballot.”
And I think that, among the door knocking and motivating turnout levers, local races are likely to be more effective than the national campaign. Not that Biden-Harris doesn’t or shouldn’t have a GOTV arm. Of course they will and it will do good work.
Maybe I’m nostalgic for Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy, but I’ve always believed in it. Giving people in red states something hopeful to vote for, even if it is largely a ‘fuck you’ to entrenched GOP candidates, is IMO motivating (I also think giving $75 million to try to budge Susan Collins was many, many millions too much. Heck, Gideon had almost $15mil left over when she lost!).
I also believe in Keith Ellison’s strategy when he was a House member (and it’s something Ilhan I think limps along at): His House campaigns always sought to ‘run up the score’ even though his district is incredibly, reliably blue. Because goosing turnout in MN-05 helps win statewide races like Gov. and S.O.S.
Matt McIrvin
It really does feel like the traditional Republican advantage in voter turnout and attachment has turned upside down, particularly as regards Trump.
That means that Trump can do better than expected by actually getting more marginal voters to come out and vote for him. That’s how he won in 2016.
But it also means that we’ve got more of the reliable voters you actually want.
JML
@Chris T.: agreed. there’s a good chance that if you can flip a non-voter into a voter and maintain a decent connection for them that they will become a regular voter.
but yes, the focus within non-voters should be younger voters (and likely will be) because converting them into regular voters has the longest tail, but they’re also the ones to be more constant in their support patterns.
(I was a political professional for a number of years and I can say David is 100% correct: much harder and more expensive to contact, connect, and convert non-voters than it is to turn out regular voters. Turnout will define this election.)
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: I think I’d make exceptions for places like Florida where they suddenly yank voting eligibility away from people who were supposed to have become eligible and then arrest and imprison them for “vote fraud” when they try to vote. That’s a situation in which, for certain populations, it actually becomes personally dangerous to vote.
Ten Bears
What I’m seeing as a Non Party Affiliated voter for as long as we could be Non Party is that the Non Party Affiliates are more committed to re-electing Biden and stopping Trump than the democrats
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Fair enough. I agree with your assessment. I was talking about privileged folks who don’t vote because they are “apolitical”.
Geminid
@Ten Bears: What state do you live in? Polling in most states shows Independent/Non-afiliated voters almost evenly split, with a slight edge to Biden. Democrats seem to be unified behind Biden.
Ramalama
Ex-pat American voter here: I am on the search for other Americans abroad to tell them how easy it is to vote from abroad. Easier than certain states/municipalities in the US that scheme to remove people from the rolls (fraud) or make it very difficult to vote (obscenely long lines, lies about where you can go to vote, yada).
Found an American who’s been living in my area from before the internet. She’s never voted while out of the US. I sent her some links, and now she’s PSYCHED to be able to vote again. Occasionally I’ll find someone on Shite-R / Twitbot having just moved to Paris or Portugal (absolute stranger) and yes, links get sent. There will be links.
I know there are a sizeable number of African-Americans moving abroad to … I want to say Ghana? Other African nations. I’d like to find a way to hit them up to vote as well, unless they’ve renounced their citizenship.
One other thing – I keep wanting to make a tally from Marcy Wheeler’s posts about Jan 6th insurrectionists. She has mentioned from time to time about someone not voting. Would be interesting to see what that number might be. Note to self.
StringOnAStick
Thanks for your efforts to get ex-pats to vote!
I didn’t realize there’s been such out migration of US citizens to Ghana. I’m close friends with someone who did a Peace Corps tour in Ghana in the 1980’s, married a local and now much of her family has immigrated to the US.
I think there was some data about many of the January 6 rioters being nonvoters, but I can’t remember where I saw it. Marcy’s site seems like the correct place to find it though and probably where I read that.
Ramalama
@StringOnAStick: I somehow read a fantastic post about something something Africa from Quartz. Somehow got on Quartz’s list. It was like week after week of really good writing about something I knew very little about. I finally got off from Q but went to Semafor Africa because the writer/writers moved there. So I read about migration problems that Black Americans were causing native born African-nation-something (I think it was Ghana) in Semafor.
It just occurred to me today that someone could reach out to these fleeing Americans and see if they’d want to vote.
I’ll have to see if I can find the post in Semafor that talks about this unique/surprising/not-really-surprising-when-you-think-about-it … challenge.
RaflW
Another tidbit: Saw from SisterDistrict that Dems fare worse on ‘roll-off’ voters than Republicans do. Roll-offs are people who vote the top of the ticket, but at some point down the ballot stop.
Might stop after governor, or lower, but it’s a bigger problem for Dems. SisterDist’s analysis suggests that several state legislatures coulda flipped if more Dem voters were encouraged & equipped to vote their entire ballots.
UncleEbeneezer
@RaflW: Goddamn, that is enraging. I wonder if it was registered Dems or No Party/Independents/NeverTrump-ers.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
I started working our local elections when the pandemic started. Anecdotally, I agree with those stats. Tons of people who have never used our new, modern voting equipment showed up to vote for Trump. We’ve had it for almost ten years. When they don’t turn out, Trump is toast.
David Anderson
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937: There have been 2 opportunities for people who never vote but will vote for Trump to come out. We can likely assume that those who voted for the first time only for Trump in 2016 came out in 2020 (so they are included in the data set as a “1”) and the people who were eligible to vote in 2016 but did not vote but did vote for Trump in 2020 and only 2020 are also coded as a “1”.
The pool of people who have not voted since 2018 and who will be activated by Trump is a far harder to activate pool than those same definition of a pool would have been in 2016 or 2020.
BruceFromOhio
Paul Campos at LGM has written a few times about the Ariana Grande Theory of Politics
Today is no different.
That people who have voted before this election are less likely to vote for TFG is telling.
More here, and here, and here.
RevRick
@Jeffro: I’ve voted regularly since 1970. Foolish me, however, has given way above my apparent financial wherewithal to various Democratic campaigns, and I get hit up by every campaign imaginable. I have even gotten phone calls from John Fetterman, Tim Ryan, and just last week the woman running against Ryan Zinke in Montana (because I’ve given to Jon Tester’s campaign). I answered the phone, “Hello, Montana,” and she laughed and replied, “”Hello, Pennsylvania.” After she made her pitch and I explained that my pockets aren’t that deep, she thanked me for answering her call, and I wished her good luck.