Could "irregular" voters be a significant factor in this election cycle because of the massive gap between regular voters who favor Joe Biden and irregular voters who support Donald Trump?
The New York Times election guru Nate Cohn slices and dices the "more engaged" voters from the "less engaged" voters and discovers that "more engaged" voters support Biden despite being dissatisfied with the direction of the country while "less engaged" voters favor Donald Trump by a wide enough margin to give Trump the overall lead.
The Times' David Leonhardt writes that irregular voters have different concerns than more engaged voters. Irregular voters tend to skip primaries and midterm elections but often show up for the quadrennial presidential elections.
"Irregular voters are less likely to focus on hot-button issues that motivate committed Democrats and Republicans, like abortion, immigration and democracy," writes Leonhardt. "The disengaged voters do not necessarily like Mr. Trump, the polling shows. But they’re motivated by pocketbook issues, more desiring of fundamental changes to the political system, and far less concerned about democracy as an issue in the election," adds Cohn.
What's more, those irregular voters also give Trump an unprecedented advantage. Cohn writes, "[I]t appears that Donald J. Trump, not President Biden, would stand to gain if everyone in the country turned out and voted."
"Turnout always favors the Democrats" is no longer a truism in politics — at least for this election cycle. This is, as they say, "yuge."
This unusual turnout dynamic is one of the central forces shaping the 2024 campaign. It helps explain why recent polls and election results seem so divergent, and why Mr. Trump has gained among young and nonwhite voters, who are less likely to vote than older white voters. It creates a challenge for the campaigns, who are finding that time-tested strategies for mobilizing irregular voters may not work quite the same way as they did in the past.
In the 2008 and 2012 elections, Democratic victory appeared to hinge on the turnout of young, non-white voters excited by the first black president. It didn't help Republicans that they put up two non-descript, colorless (personality-wise) candidates who failed to excite the base of the Republican Party.
That script has the potential of flipping this election cycle. Trump is poaching the youth vote and the minority vote, and he continues to increase his share of the working-class white vote. He has baffled the Biden campaign to the point that the Democrats are reduced to silly racial attacks on the former president that are not working.
In fact, the 2024 vote is shaping up to be a repeat of the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections, which saw the Democrats buried by their inability to turn out young and non-white voters.
In Pennsylvania, where Democrats enacted automatic voter registration last year, new registrants have affiliated with Republicans over Democrats by six percentage points. Before automatic registration was enacted, Mr. Trump sent an all-caps message on social media decrying the law.
Demographics are not the explanation for Mr. Trump’s strength among infrequent voters. Although these voters are less likely to hold a college degree, they’re still disproportionately young and nonwhite. They would be expected to be Democratic-leaning if they had the same preferences as demographically similar voters who turn out more regularly in elections. Instead, infrequent voters of every demographic group seem less likely to support Mr. Biden in the early polls.
The irregular voter is also far more concerned about Biden's age than regular voters. That may prove critical on election day. And irregular voters don't care as much about abortion, even if they are younger and lean Democratic. That, too, is a warning sign for Biden and the Democrats.
Related: Even Hispanic Voters Have Had Enough of Illegal Immigration
Both sides appear to have underestimated the potential impact of the irregular voter. The way I see it, the Democrats are in full denial over this critical problem because many of these irregular voters would ordinarily vote for Biden.
Instead, they are backing Trump. Unless something changes for Biden, an earthquake is about to hit the president's campaign on election day, and politics as we know it may have changed significantly.
