Poll: Obama wins if likely nonvoters show up
President Obama has a big lead among US citizens who are eligible to vote but say they are unlikely to go to the polls in November.
Yes, we know this sounds like a piece from the satirical website 鈥�The Onion," or a bit from the show of comedian Stephen Colbert: 鈥淥bama Leads Among Couch Potatoes." But it鈥檚 true. A just-released poll from Suffolk University finds that Mr. Obama leads presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney among likely nonvoters by a margin of 43 to 14 percent.
In fact, the party of people who plan to not participate in the political process is so un-enamored of Mr. Romney that an unspecified third-party candidate outperforms him in the Suffolk survey. Twenty-three percent of nonvoters say they鈥檇 pull a lever for a third-party standard-bearer. Except they won鈥檛 be doing that, because they have to work that day, or they don鈥檛 have child care, or their polling place is too distant, or their aunt will be in town and they haven鈥檛 seen her in years. Or they can鈥檛 be bothered, frankly, because what does it matter? One vote won鈥檛 change anything.
The reason most often cited for not voting among Suffolk鈥檚 respondents was 鈥渢oo busy." Twenty-six percent of those surveyed said they didn鈥檛 have time to participate in America鈥檚 quadrennial choice of national leader. Coming in second at 12 percent was 鈥渧ote doesn鈥檛 count/matter."
OK, maybe it鈥檚 a bit cheap to treat this matter lightly. But in the larger democratic scheme of things, nonvoting matters quite a bit.
In particular, it鈥檚 a big issue from the point of view of Democrats and the Obama administration. According to Suffolk鈥檚 results, Obama would cruise to an easy reelection if nonvoters changed their minds and showed up in November.
These results are in line with past surveys, too. In general, the party of 鈥渘ot voting鈥� leans Democrat. Its members are younger, less educated, and more financially stressed than the voting-age population as a whole, according to a 2010 Pew Research Center analysis.
That鈥檚 why Democrats are generally (though not always) more eager than Republicans to pass early-voting laws and other measures meant to expand the voting electorate. It's also why higher overall turnout tends to favor Democratic over Republican candidates.
And the Stay At Home Party is huge. According to , 61.6 percent of the eligible voting population of the US cast ballots for president in 2008. That means about 38 percent of people in the US who could have voted did not do so. In raw numbers that鈥檚 82 million nonvoters.
