Why Do Millions of Americans Sit Out Presidential Elections?

This year, all signs point to record voter turnout — particularly in battleground states. But even if turnout is high, millions of Americans still won’t vote in 2020. In fact, the vast majority of Americans don’t vote regularly, as we found in a recent survey with Ipsos. And there seem to be a few reasons why:

1. Our electoral system doesn’t make it easy for many people to vote. People who only vote sometimes, or who rarely vote, were more likely than people who regularly vote to report that they or someone in their household experienced barriers like missing the voter registration deadline, not being able to get off work, or being unable to access their polling place. Those barriers could be compounded this year in the states that did not loosen voting requirements or make other efforts to ease the process of voting in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
2. Americans are disillusioned about politics. In the survey, we asked voters who have missed at least one national election why they didn’t cast a ballot that year. Thirty-one percent said that they decided not to vote because they disliked the candidates, and 26 percent said they thought nothing would change as a result of the election. We also asked respondents whether politicians have an impact on their lives. Eighty-four percent of consistent voters said yes, compared to 80 percent of occasional voters and just 68 percent of nonvoters.
3. People tend to vote when they feel a sense of urgency. This is an especially important point for this year — when the vast majority of respondents to our survey say who wins the presidential election really matters. The feeling that voting will make more of a difference than usual this year could spur many people who don’t vote as regularly to go out of their way to cast a ballot.

So if we do see record-setting turnout this year, this chart could help explain why: