Understanding Nonvoters: The Participatory Nonvoter Survey

• In Event: Explaining and Mitigating Voting Behavior Gaps

Abstract

In any given national election in the United States, there are tens of millions of individuals who are eligible to vote, but do not. Yet, recent survey research on nonvoters specifically is extremely limited. Current academic research on political participation rarely seeks to understand nonvoters specifically, and often assumes that nonvoters are simply the opposite of voters. However, existing survey data indicates that at least some nonvoters participate in politics in other ways. In this paper, I present the results of the Participatory Nonvoters Survey, an original survey of nonvoters that seeks to understand nonvoters completely and complexly. In addition to standard demographic and attitudinal questions common on surveys about political participation, this survey also relies on open-ended responses to carefully discern the reasoning behind certain behaviors. Although voting is the most common and most heavily researched form of political participation, it is not a prerequisite for participation in non-voting forms of political activity. Groups such as nonvoters in general, and participatory nonvoters specifically, deserve research methods that take the complexity of their behavior seriously, rather than treating them as aberrations. In addition to the specific queries around nonvoters, this project also speaks to larger questions regarding representation in the United States. It has long been established that voters are not demographically representative of the eligible voting population. Voters tend to be less racially diverse, older, and of higher socioeconomic status, on average. This itself poses challenges to representation and democratic norms. Research such as the project presented in this paper allows us to gain a fuller understanding of an under-studied group, contributing to research about the interactions between different types of political participation, to the field of political science more broadly, and to the practice of politics.

Author

• Sara Kirshbaum, University of Massachusetts Amherst