How Many Registered Voters Didn't Vote In 2016 Election

Here'due south what the Trump and Biden campaigns are doing to attain them in 2020

People make their manner to cast absentee ballots inside the Northwest Activities Center during early voting in Detroit on Oct. fifteen. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

In the last frenzy earlier Ballot Mean solar day, with millions of votes already bandage, both presidential campaigns are bearing down to turn out a primal grouping: people who did non vote in 2016.

There are nearly xx million of them in the half-dozen most of import battleground states, according to a Washington Mail service analysis of demographic and voting data. Getting them to the polls could swing the election.

President Trump won Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania in 2016 by a fraction of a percentage bespeak, and the other three states by only slightly more.

As candidates and their surrogates dash around battlefield states to greet cheering crowds, in that location'southward another contest aimed at finding supporters less likely to show upward.

"This is not a persuasion campaign," Joe Gruters, state GOP chairman in Florida, said. "This is a turnout campaign."

[The early voting numbers and so far, land by land]

Republicans in Florida have gone person by person, identifying and recruiting possible supporters through personal and social media contacts and other inquiry, producing a net proceeds of 200,000 voter registrations in the state. "Nosotros're going after everybody who we recall might be friendly" to President Trump, Gruters said.

Becca Siegel, chief analytics officer for the Biden campaign, said the entrada is targeting infrequent voters more than Democrats did in by election cycles. "Some of the nigh persuadable voters are nonvoters," Siegel said.

Women watch from a window as sometime president Barack Obama makes a stop while candidature in Philadelphia on October. 21. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

Why don't people vote? The answer is a mix of sometimes conflicting reasons, behavior and motivations. While most Americans say voting is a civic responsibility, they practice non always follow through. People who don't see a do good to themselves, don't identify with a candidate or who believe the candidates to be the same may not believe their vote volition brand a difference that's worth their effort, said William Hicks, a political scientific discipline professor at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C. They may be discouraged by negative letters about candidates.

[She'southward 70. She didn't vote in 2012. Or 2016. Or any ballot before. This year?]

Simply their minds can change.

"I've never voted in the election — and I'yard 71 — until this year," said John Casto, of Mesick, Mich., who voted early. "I'll tell y'all what turned me off more than anything. I was in Vietnam '69 and '70, and I came habitation, and I wasn't treated well. That soured me on politics."

Merely the pandemic, he said, got his attention. "The only reason I'chiliad voting this year is considering of Trump. With the covid-19, I don't think he cares near it. I simply want somebody in there who cares a petty almost the people."

The usual top reasons people give for not voting are that they were too busy, sick or disabled, or not interested, according to Census Bureau surveys. A new reason vaulted to the top of the list for the first time in 2016: Didn't similar candidates or bug.

Those reasons may also mask a more fundamental one: They aren't sure how to correctly navigate the complicated process of registration and casting a election. Persuading them requires precise targeting and personal contacts.

[How turnout and swing voters could get Trump or Biden to 270]

In Arizona, clearing chaser Yasser Sanchez has used Spanish radio, billboards, giveaways and events such as car parades to encourage registration and votes for Biden among the state's million potential voters who are Hispanic. They stand for almost a quarter of all eligible voters, but their turnout has lagged more than than xx percentage points behind non-Hispanic Whites.

"The thing near Latinos is that they have to see the visual of people candidature," said Sanchez, who is contained of the Biden campaign. "A unproblematic commercial is not enough … It's not hard to motivate people once you evidence them how like shooting fish in a barrel it is to register to vote."

A sign points the way to an early voting location in Phoenix on Oct. sixteen. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)

Information collection has allowed campaigns to identify which potential voters need what kind of attention. Danielle Alvarez, a regional communications director for Trump Victory, said their analytics can pinpoint individuals "with near-surgical precision. This is not a guessing game for us."

[How politicians target you: 3,000 data points on every voter, including your telephone number]

"Pre-pandemic, nosotros might have tried to target you at an event," Alvarez said. "Mail service-pandemic, we would utilize our tech tools, whether information technology'southward digital targeting or text-message targeting, and run across if you lot answer. And then if you reply, nosotros're going to call you, and then nosotros're going to visit you lot in person, and nosotros're but going to keep talking to y'all and motion y'all down that pipeline to engage and … have action."

The Biden campaign's Siegel said that since nonvoters may non be as immersed in the latest bug, it's important to provide messages about why to support the candidate. "It protects them from defection to Trump or to nonvoting," Siegel said. "People don't need more than information on who Trump is."

A board of election notices and voter registration signage at a drive-thru early voting site in the Urban center Hall parking lot in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, U.Southward., October 23, 2020. REUTERS/Bing Guan (Bing Guan/Reuters)

Who are the new voters the candidates need?

To win a second term, Trump needs a turnout surge amid White voters, especially those without college degrees, to make up for predicted losses elsewhere. His 2016 win was critically boosted by higher turnout than in 2012 past non-college Whites, specially a five per centum point increase in Florida and almost four points in Pennsylvania.

Biden hopes for more Blackness voters, his strongest group of supporters. Four years ago, their turnout barbarous short of Obama-era surges in these six closest battleground states, sealing Clinton'southward 456,000-vote loss in that location in 2016. There are large pools of nonvoters in both groups in the six states, according The Mail service analysis. Although the number of non-higher Whites is shrinking, that demographic even so includes about 9 1000000 who didn't vote concluding time. There are virtually 2 million eligible Blackness voters, and nearly 500,000 sabbatum out the 2016 ballot compared to 2012.

The estimated number of nonvoters cited in this report represents the divergence between estimates of adults eligible to vote and the number of votes cast in the 2016 presidential election. And then new voters, such as those who have reached voting age or moved into the state, besides are included in the number to target in battleground states.

Possibly the most elusive targets are younger potential voters. They're harder to contact because they motility ofttimes, and the 18-to-29-twelvemonth-old grouping is the least likely to vote. This twelvemonth, there are millions eligible to vote for the first time.

[Gen Z, Millennial voters embrace activism and voting, every bit youth turnout surges alee of Election Solar day]

To reach them, the Biden campaign is engaging in online spaces where young people live and talk. Four of Biden's grandchildren have hosted chats with Instagram influencers virtually getting out the vote. Biden has done online conversations with soccer star Megan Rapinoe, role player Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and rapper Cardi B.

Then there'southward the "Biden HQ" isle that the entrada launched in the pop online video game, "Animate being Crossing: New Horizons."

Prisi Hernandez, left, and Laura Hernandez, both with the arrangement Siembra NC, assistance Nery Ocampo, 19, center, to register to vote, as Irvin Bahena, x, stops to watch from his bike in Burlington, N.C., on March 11. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Republicans are targeting libertarian-leaning students on higher campuses, Wisconsin GOP Chairman Andrew Hitt said, as well as immature non-college adults in rural areas at gun shows, tractor pulls, car race tracks and sports events, with a focus on topics such equally gun rights and personal liberty.

"The group that's non on a college campus is a heck of a lot harder to target," Hitt said. " But that'southward where you have to have a very good data program; you have to accept a very good voter identification program … It's identifying the voters, so going back to them to plow them out."

In the vote-rich Philadelphia suburbs where Clinton won four years agone while narrowly losing statewide, the grouping Turn PA Blue is seeking women who voted only occasionally in the past. Women already vote in greater numbers and at a college rate than men, and they favored Clinton across battlegrounds in 2016. Men went for Trump by double-digits.

[With a week left, Trump modifies his pitch to suburban women: He'll become their husbands dorsum to work]

"If y'all told me in 2018 that we were going to be going against Trump relying on telephone banks, I would've laughed in your confront," Jamie Perrapato, Turn PA Blue's executive managing director, said. "Simply they're totally working … People are answering the phone, and they want to talk."

They talk about covid-19, how the virus affects schools, and how to utilise the state'south new voting machines or vote past mail, she said.

The closest of Trump's flips in 2016 was Michigan, where he won by 11,000 votes out of iv.8 million.

Lavora Barnes, who chairs Michigan Democrats, said workers are reaching out to lapsed, beginning-time or potential voters statewide to brand certain people know how to vote and take reward of expanded absentee voting.

Kyle Whitney, center correct, speaks to another staffer later testing a voting scanner and tabulator at a polling station in Marquette, Mich., on Oct. 20. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Mail service)

Democrats have been seeking Michigan's Hispanic and Asian potential voters with virtual charabanc tours. "We build it the way we would have built a coach tour, except there is no jitney," Barnes said. "We bring speakers in to present and talk to folks, and nosotros invite people from diverse communities to bring together us on these calls as though we would take had a rally effectually a omnibus."

Just to the west in Wisconsin, Republicans opened the party'due south first field office in Milwaukee to woo urban nonvoters. The party also created a regular hour-long show on a Blackness radio station and, for the start time, sponsored an NAACP debate.

"You need to meet people where they are," said Hitt, the land GOP head. "Yous demand to be part of the community; you need to be part of experiencing it, and being able to interact with the community in order to sympathize: What issues do they care about?"

[The 50 political states of America]

In Florida, where the last GOP wins for president and U.Southward. Senate and governor were all decided past less than one percent bespeak, both campaigns are targeting the country's 1.seven million nonvoters who are Hispanic

That's specially true in central Florida, where Puerto Ricans are highly concentrated and Spanish language radio ads are in Puerto Rican accents. Both Trump and Biden accept appear recovery initiatives for the island. Trump, both running mates, former president Barack Obama and others take campaigned in Orlando. Both campaigns have mobilized Puerto Ricans on the island who can't vote for president to influence those who tin can, many of whom moved to Florida after 2017′s hurricane damage.

"I retrieve when I can communicate with someone that went to Florida after Hurricane Maria, and I can talk to them about my own experience in Hurricane Maria. I can connect with them on a level that others can't," said Steven Ramos, president of the College Democrats at the University of Puerto Rico. The telephone bank he runs has reached tens of thousands of newly settled Puerto Ricans in the Orlando area. "Sometimes they miss the island, they miss our accent, they miss speaking Castilian, so we can communicate to these voters on a deeply personal level."

Joshua Scacco, a University of S Florida professor who studies include how political campaigns communicate, said key Florida Hispanics besides are being targeted by negative messages. Some invoke socialism and authoritarian rulers in Primal American countries. Scacco said disinformation campaigns via advertisement and Internet messages often promote conspiracy theories and appear designed to discourage Hispanics "who might exist flirting with voting for Biden."

Calvin Williams, 28, a felon who is not eligible to vote in this ballot, talks with Nia Washington while canvassing for the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition to urge people to vote Oct. 28. (Octavio Jones/Reuters)

North Carolina's Catawba County is typical of a battleground community with nonvoters sought past both campaigns. A manufacturing hub that hasn't backed a Democrat for president since Franklin Roosevelt in 1944, the county is habitation to tens of thousands of Whites who didn't vote final time and could add to Trump's base. And the thousands of Blacks who didn't vote before could pad Democratic totals in bigger cities.

To Toni Abernathy, a Hickory, N.C., educator, ambiguity about the candidates and whether their votes mattered led voters to stay home final time. "Oh well, she's going to win," Abernathy said the thinking went, "so there's no reason for me to show up."

[The battleground states that might count election results the slowest]

"I feel like more people are going to turn out and vote this year, considering of the protests," said Abernathy, a Blackness Democrat, who points to meliorate participation than she expected in recent local events to mark Juneteenth and the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as well every bit to protestation the death of George Floyd.

Of form, the same protests that motivate Blackness people can besides aid motivate new voters for Trump from among those who disagree with Black Lives Affair, only equally Trump's rhetoric can inspire opponents too as his base of operations.

Jenna Foster, a student at Hickory's Lenoir-Rhyne University, said young conservatives may turn out fifty-fifty if they don't broadcast their enthusiasm.

"I feel similar people are afraid to express their personal stance if it's non in line with other people," said Foster, who describes herself as "a Republican on a more than liberal campus." She said motivations to vote include protests, riots, social media threads and fifty-fifty encouragement from employers. Foster added: "I think people volition still vote; they won't tell people."

Michael Roper, a Hickory marketing executive who has managed local Republican campaigns, said converting nonvoters means building emotion and passion with bug like law and order to energize voters who didn't "show upwardly for Romney," referring to 2012 candidate Mitt Romney, now a Utah senator and a Trump critic. "Rather than fight for that undecided voter," Roper said, "it's better to fight for your own base of operations."

This year, mail and election security, the coronavirus and intimidation have joined logistics like piece of work schedules and transportation issues equally other reasons people give for not voting. Despite that, overall turnout is widely expected to reach record highs.

[When we'll find out election results: Hither's what we know most swing states, ballot counting and more]

Michael McDonald, a University of Florida professor who heads the U.S. Elections Project, predicts that about 150 1000000 Americans are likely to vote in this full general election, a range that could hit the highest rate of voting since 1908.

The signs include the record turnout for the 2018, the highest for a nonpresidential election since 1912, according to data compiled by McDonald, likewise as this month's tape waves of early voters. Some states have received early ballots that approach or exceed 2016′s total election votes.

But a record turnout would just take to be amend than the threescore.1 percent of the eligible population that voted in 2016.

Nicole, 28, lives in central Florida and didn't want her terminal name used because her nonvoting is a sensitive subject in her family unit. She would seem to exist a potential target for both campaigns: the child of staunch Republicans, the spouse of an immigrant, a young voter in a swing state. She said voting wasn't a priority when she was 18, and as she got older, the avalanche of alien information paralyzed her.

"The amount of work that I feel like I would need to do to make myself an informed voter seems overwhelming at times," she said. "What If I am the one voter who causes it to go 1 style or some other, and I did it on a whim?" Simply this election, amid a pandemic and an upward-and-down economy, seems unusually of import to her. "Decisions by our current candidates tin bear upon my life more significantly than in other years," she said, and she registered for the first time.

She hasn't decided how she will vote — or if she will vote. And then far, she hasn't heard from either campaign.

Data from the Current Population Survey via IPUMS CPS , U.S. Elections project , Federal Ballot Commission, and Cooperative Congressional Election Written report.