Why do your friends not vote?

[Little Raven]

For all of the political rancor and hyper-partisanship on display today, a surprisingly large number of Americans remain apolitical. Even Trump vs Biden, an election painted in downright apocalyptic tones by both sides, only managed to bring ~60% of Americans to the polls.

I assume that anyone still posting in a forum called R&P after THIS many years is themselves an avid voter, but math suggests that virtually all of us should have friends that don't share this habit. So...why don't they?

I currently have three friends that I know of that vote either rarely or not at all. 2 of them are significantly younger than I am - I know them through gaming. One of them struggles with crippling social anxiety and basically won't go outside unless absolutely forced to - voting is not nearly high enough on the hierarchy of needs to move him out of his room. The other is just young and only started voting in 2020. (Trump, I suspect, but then she lives in North Dakota, so what do you expect?) She is unsure if she will continue the practice, given the collective insanity of the country. The last one is much closer to my age, and is surprisingly politically aware. He also believes that there is no real difference between the parties - both of them are owned entirely by the elites, and neither of them will ever do anything that will actually benefit him, so why bother voting? He sees it as a waste of time at best and possibly some sort of signal that he somehow approves of our electoral farce at worse. (Why yes! He would have voted for Bernie, why do you ask?)

So what do your non-voting friends say?

[Jaymann]

My guess it's like a hot stove. Any time you focus on anything political you come away depressed and disgusted. So people just intentionally stay away.

[Freyland]

I don't think my estranged wife is depressed by any particular kitchen appliances, but she is simply apathetic.

[Kraken]

math suggests that virtually all of us should have friends

Curse you, math. My very few friends all vote, and they all do it right. Which is to say left.

The only exception I can think of is my nephew who thought that the choice in 2020 was between a pedophile and a Nazi. I think he ultimately went third-party, whatever that was.

[gbasden]

math suggests that virtually all of us should have friends

Curse you, math. My very few friends all vote, and they all do it right. Which is to say left.

I also don't have any friends that don't vote, to the best of my knowledge. Most of my friends are reasonably politically engaged.

[Drazzil]

I don't have friends.

[LordMortis]

I have few people left that I talk to. To my knowledge they all vote.

[YellowKing]

I've got a very small sample size of people I know who don't typically vote in presidential elections (no clue their habits at the state and local level), but the excuse I always got was "my vote doesn't matter anyway so why bother?"

The one guy I know who didn't vote in 2016 for that reason REALLY changed his tune after four years of Trump and made sure to early vote in 2020. I doubt he'll ever go back to not voting again.

[Holman]

My friends are all obsessed with politics and my work colleagues are all academics and teachers, and I feel pretty sure they all vote.

Every election cycle there are stories about the demographics of non-voters: they tend to be younger, poorer, and/or less white. The categories also include many people who move frequently, meaning that (even if they're not disaffected from politics), they face more bureaucratic hurdles in keeping themselves registered.

[ImLawBoy]

When I was studying poli sci back in the day when it wasn't uncommon to have a black and white TV in your dorm room, it was considered common knowledge that voter participation went down the better a society was doing. This is why voting turnout tended to be higher in poorer, less stable countries than in wealthier, more established countries. It occurs to me now, though, that the view was always overall voter turnout without reviewing who was actually doing the voting within the "first world" countries. I suspect that those were benefiting more from the wealth and stability tended to vote at higher rates than those who were struggling.

[Blackhawk]

I don't have a lot of friends, but the ones I do have all vote. I can tell you why I didn't vote until I was in my 30s. It's simple: Politics are a morass. They're confusing, they make no sense, and almost everything is misleading. There are two sets of facts. The first is the way things are supposed to work and are expected to work, the way people think they work. The second is the way they actually do work, which bears no resemblance to the first. Reconciling the two is impossible. Everybody stares at the debates, at the speeches. And yet everybody knows that what's said is irrelevant. The statements, even if not outright deceptions, are generally either blatant advertising or idealistic thoughts that won't ever come to fruition when they encounter the realities. Going into it - talk about a learning curve! And for a literal thinker who doesn't grasp human behavior to begin with (i.e. - me), it's like beating your head against a wall.

And even once you realize that, actually following what's really going on isn't a matter of keeping up on the news, it's a full-time field of study.

tl;dr - politics make no damned sense, and an almost insurmountable barrier if you're starting from the outside.

So why did I start voting? Because as the partisanship grew, and as the Republican position grew more and more toward intolerance, I recognized that the cost of non-involvement was too high, despite the fact that my votes have never counted for anything (Indiana.) So I do my best to keep up, although I'm well aware that politically, I'm still mostly clueless and hopelessly naive.

[Holman]

I'm sure someone has done this study, but I'm just hypothesizing: is (as I would expect) political engagement higher among people who watch or read some version of the News?

If that's so, the question becomes, Why do some people watch the News while others don't?

To some degree, News is a luxury for people with time to spare. If your life is heavily-burdened enough that you only have time for a little media consumption, News might get squeezed out. When that happens, newsy narratives might come to be less important to you, and politics is the newsiest narrative.

This would help explain the effectiveness of right-wing media. They've done everything they can to make their version of News as entertaining/exciting/dramatic as possible, all of it aimed at motivating political action on election day. Mainstream media, meanwhile, offers dull (or confusing) both-sidesism, while left-leaning media is more wonky than dramatic.

[stessier]

"Watch news"??? Just how old are you???

[El Guapo]

As far as I know all my friends vote.

That said, there is a certain illogic on an individual level to voting. You essentially know in advance that your vote is not going to change any outcomes. You gain nothing other than general civic pride from voting. So what's the point of taking time out of your day to vote? In some ways it's surprising that the vote suppression tactic of creating long lines isn't even more effective than it is.

[Holman]

As far as I know all my friends vote.

That said, there is a certain illogic on an individual level to voting. You essentially know in advance that your vote is not going to change any outcomes. You gain nothing other than general civic pride from voting. So what's the point of taking time out of your day to vote? In some ways it's surprising that the vote suppression tactic of creating long lines isn't even more effective than it is.

This might be one reason (some) voter suppression tactics backfire.

If you're an African-American voter in Georgia, your individual vote no longer feels like an insignificant drop in an abstract ocean. Now it's a hard-won right that your sonofabitch Governor and his cronies are trying to take away from you personally, and you'll stand in line with your neighbors for six hours to cast it.

[Dogstar]

Reasons that have been provided in the past:

1) Nothing really changes.
2) Refuse to reward crap politicians.
3) Hate politics and don't want to be associated with it.
4) Depressed by politics so avoid everything to do with it.
5) Their vote doesn't matter.

[Jeff V]

All of my friends are college educated and vote. I assume people who don't are rather like my sister (high school educated or less) and don't have the wherewithal to process political concepts. I don't know that my sister doesn't vote -- my dad did a pretty good job impressing on the importance of voting, although I could see her lapsing because it's not convenient. But she is not getting vaccinated (despite working for a company providing them) so I figure her brain has rotted to the size of a moldy peanut.

[Madmarcus]

I know how many of them would vote but I don't have any real knowledge that they did the deed. A few posted the I voted sticker on Facebook but otherwise shrug.