All that, and just 43 percent of the voters were motivated enough to cast a ballot -- non-voters won in a landslide. In fact, non-voters almost always win.
Dr. Billy Graham has observed that, "bad politicians are elected by good people who don't vote."
In 2012, despite a photo-finish presidential election, hot button issues at stake, and an estimated $6 billion spent on campaigning, voter turnout dropped from 57 percent of eligible citizens voting in 2008 to an estimated 55 percent in 2012. Only 63 percent of eligible voters are even registered. And a side note: off-year elections statistics are worse: just 36 percent of the voting-eligible population cast ballots in 2014 -- the lowest turnout in 70 years. Since 2002, the average voter participation in off-year elections has hovered at 39 percent.
As a percentage of all eligible voters, Hillary Clinton received 28 percent (65,845,063 votes) compared to Donald Trump's 27 percent (62,980,160 votes). If "Did Not Vote" was a political party, they would have won in a walk: 44 percent of all voters (102,731,399) stayed home. Only eight states and Washington D.C. had high enough voter turn out where one of the candidates on the ballot won more votes than people who did not bother to vote: non-voters swept up the rest of the country.
Curiously, the United States Elections Project research shows that 2,395,271 people did not vote for President even though they cast a ballot.
In 2012, surveys by Northwestern University's Non-Voters in America revealed that in terms of ideology, 15 percent of non-voters are liberal, 27 percent moderate, and 21 percent self-identified as conservative. Using that equation, about 44 million non-voters considered themselves moderates or conservatives in 2012. Liberal Barak Obama scored five million more votes than the middle-of-the-road candidate Mitt Romney.
However, according to a 2014 Pew Research Group study, 45 percent of non-voters identified as Independents, 29 percent identified as Democrats, and 18 percent Republican; 51 percent indicated that they "lean Democrat" and 30 percent "lean Republican." A February Pew survey found that President Trump's disapproval rating was at 63 percent among adults who aren't registered to vote, compared with 54 percent for registered voters.
In the 2016 New Hampshire U.S. Senate contest, the Democrat nominee bested the Republican incumbent by fewer than 1,000 votes (.14 percent), but more than 135,000 voters stayed home. For the first time since 1988, Pennsylvania voted for a Republican presidential candidate despite a Democratic voter registration advantage of nearly a million people. Donald Trump won Pennsylvania by a 0.70 percent margin (44,292 votes), however about ten million (10,000,000) registered voters did not show up on Election Day. Incumbent Republican Senator Pat Toomey eked out a win by just 100,000 votes in the same election.
Note to fancy-pants political consultants: non-voters as a constituency are fertile ground for Democrats and Republicans.
One of the founding tenets of the United States is that the government derives its authority from the consent of the governed. So why the chasm between tens of millions of non-voters and political campaigns? Simple: when voters are presented with impotent and insipid candidates over and over again, they feel disenfranchised, cynical, and apathetic. Non-voters clobber candidates left and right.
According to a December 2016 Pew Research Center report on non-voters, about 26 percent said they "didn't like any of the candidates." However, inspirational candidates with innovative platforms -- think Ross Perot, Ron Paul, and Bernie Sanders -- always excite the electorate. Better candidates mean more voters.
One more factor: according to an ABC News/Washington Post survey, 48 percent of respondents said they would have preferred a third-party candidate to run. An Associated Press/University of Chicago poll revealed that 71 percent of millennials wanted an alternative to the Republican and Democrat nominees. More choices mean more voters.
Michigan State political scientist Corwin Smidt has observed, "We've seen a huge increase in technology and the ability to turn out the vote. In terms of a cost-benefit analysis, the parties and candidates see that it's much easier to turn out people who agree with them than it is to change someone's mind."
Question: are candidates raising the bridge to capture likely prospects among non-voters or trying to lower the river looking for converts?
