The polls show that Donald Trump has had a lead for eight months in a row, but there is one big flashing warning sign that his lead may not be as stable as it seems.
That warning sign: His slim 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 an extent that has not been the case in the New York Times/Siena College polls over the past eight years, disengaged voters determine overall election outcomes and the election storyline.
President Joe Biden has actually led the last three Times/Siena national polls among those who voted in the 2020 election, even as he trails among registered voters overall. And looking back over the past few years, almost all of Trump’s gains have come from these less engaged voters.
Importantly, these low-turnout, disengaged voters often come from predominantly Democratic constituencies. Many continue to identify as Democratic-leaning and still support Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate, but they are nevertheless pulling away from Biden in surprising numbers. In the Times/Siena polls, Biden is winning just three-quarters of Democratic-leaning voters who did not vote in the 2022 midterm elections, even as nearly all Democratic-leaning high-turnout voters continue to support him.
Trump’s strength among low turnout and less engaged voters explains much of what is strange about this election. It illustrates the discrepancy between Trump’s lead in the polls and Democrats’ victories in lower-turnout special elections. And it helps explain Trump’s gains among young and nonwhite voters, who tend to be among the least engaged. Its strength among young voters in particular is found almost entirely among those who did not vote in the midterm elections.
While the race has been steady so far, Trump’s reliance 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 As voters tune in over the next six months, there’s a chance that withdrawn but traditionally Democratic voters could return to their usual party political preferences. Alternatively, many of these disaffected voters could end up staying home, which could help Biden.
Biden’s weakness among withdrawn voters provides a new picture of the challenge ahead for his campaign. Whether he can win back these voters will depend on why these voters defected from him, but it will also depend on whether the Biden campaign can reach these voters at all.
Television advertising on the major networks may not reach the voters Biden needs.
The less involved voters are different
It’s tempting to believe that less-involved voters are just like demographically similar but highly-involved voters, with the exception that they don’t pay as much attention. If that were true, Biden could count on young, black and Hispanic voters to rally to his side as they tune into the race.
The Times/Siena data shows that this may not be so simple. Less involved Democratic-oriented voters have different political views and get their political information from different sources. Even if the Biden campaign can reach these voters, it is not a given that they will return to the Democratic fold.
In battleground 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, but much more likely to mention the economy. They overwhelmingly say the economy is “bad” or “barely fair” even though they are still loyal to Biden, while a majority of Democratic-leaning high-turnout voters say the economy is “good” or “excellent” ‘ is.
An important factor could be media consumption. While Biden gets almost all of his support from voters who consume traditional mainstream media — national newspapers, television networks and the like — the uninvolved are far more likely to report getting their news from social media.
With these differing views, it may not be so easy for Biden to win back these voters, even if their demographics and traditional party political affiliations still suggest opportunities for the Biden campaign to do so.
Why pollsters have a problem
The unusual importance of low-turnout voters also poses major challenges for pollsters, who have long known that low-turnout voters are less likely to respond to political surveys. This long-standing pattern takes on new significance this cycle, as a typical political survey would likely underestimate Trump without taking steps to reach the right share of irregular voters. (We do our best to take this into account in our polls.)
On the other hand, voters with lower turnout are less likely to vote. While there will undoubtedly be millions of illegal voters turning out in November, no one knows how many of them will ultimately show up — let alone which ones will do just that. Again, this is always a challenge for pollsters, but the deep divide between mainstream and irregular Democrats in this cycle means the polls could be unusually sensitive to the final makeup of the electorate, with Biden potentially favored if enough of his reclusive defectors are at home to stay.
Who will ultimately vote?
If there are two consecutive elections with the same level of turnout, you can assume that more or less the same people vote in each election. But surprisingly, that’s not the way it works.
There is far more turnover 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, approximately 25% of presidential election voters do not have validated voting records in the previous presidential election. This is partly due to newly registered voters, who typically vote in the next election (and who may have previously voted in another state). But it’s also because about 30% to 40% of previous registrants who skipped the last election end up showing up and voting in the next election.
There are good reasons to expect fewer voters in 2024 than in recent cycles, as the 2020 election was the highest-turnout election in a century. But if you think this means there won’t be many new voters, you’re already wrong: in fact, 10% of those who registered but didn’t vote in 2020 have already voted in the 2022 midterm elections with relatively low turnout. . The usual churn is already at work.
Yet Trump’s large lead among non-voters means that the exact number of new voters could be extremely important or even decisive. And even further than the share of new voters, exactly which new voters showing up can also be critical. In recent years, Democrats have benefited from what we’ve called a “hidden” turnout advantage — a tendency among Democrats 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 again in the recent Times/Siena (and Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena) polls, as Democratic-leaning nonvoters who supported Biden were 20 percentage points more likely to say they were “almost certain” or “very likely ” goods. ” to vote than those who preferred Trump.
Of course, it’s unlikely that disengaged, irregular voters have already formed solid plans for November. There’s plenty of time for them to make up their minds or change their minds about who they might vote for — and whether they’ll vote at all.
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