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The Run-Up · The New York Times

What About the People Who Don’t Vote?

·47 min·3 clips
Non-voters are equally split among Democrats, Republicans, and independents, defying political stereotypes.
1. The Run-Up host Ested Herndon examines who America's 100 million non-voters actually are, ahead of the 2024 presidential election. 2. Herndon reports for the New York Times politics desk and structures the episode around a Knight Foundation non-voter research project and three direct phone interviews with people who sat out 2020. 3. The episode's central question is whether non-voters represent an untapped electoral pool or a structurally disengaged population that campaigns cannot realistically reach. 4. A cold-open phone interview with Kevin, 38, from Delaware, establishes the tone: he voted for Obama in 2008, says Biden 'needs to sit down,' and says he would write in Snoop Dogg over either major-party candidate. 5. Kevin refuses to vote for Trump because of reports about police accountability and refuses to vote for Biden because 'he felt like he sneezed away from the ICU,' illustrating a voter alienated by both candidates' specific perceived failings. 6. Anthony Williams, who directed the Knight Foundation's pre-2020 non-voter project, explains that the foundation surveyed 12,000 non-voters defined as people who had voted in no more than one of the six most recent major elections. 7. Williams's central finding is that non-voters are not a monolithic bloc: they split roughly one-third Democrat, one-third Republican, and one-third independent—not the Democratic reserve that campaigns often assume. 8. The six non-voter subgroups Williams identifies are: established progressives, traditional conservatives, and modern moderates (the 'plugged in' cluster); and indifferent average, unattached apolitical, and underemployed unsures (the 'disconnected' cluster). 9. The 'underemployed unsures' subgroup has the lowest education, lowest homeownership, lowest marriage rate, least full-time employment, and lowest household income of any group, and is overwhelmingly composed of single female heads of household. 10. Williams warns that 'the squeaky wheel gets the grease' in electoral politics—non-voters who disengage on the grounds that government doesn't work for them create a self-fulfilling prophecy in which policy continues to ignore them. 11. A 1,000-person oversample of respondents aged 18–24 showed that civic disengagement among young non-voters is 'even more dramatic' than among non-voters generally, and Williams expresses doubt that normal life-stage triggers like homeownership will bring this cohort back. 12. Williams identifies 'modern moderates'—plugged-in non-voters who don't lean strongly toward either party—as the subgroup most likely to be decisive in the 2024 election and most worth targeting by campaigns. 13. James Simonson, 59, of Indianapolis, voted for Trump in 2016 to 'shake up Washington,' says 'there's no way I can vote for that guy again—he's crazy,' and is considering voting Biden in 2024 as the more predictable option. 14. Simonson says he abstained in 2020 partly because Indiana is reliably Republican and 'it's just pointless to think a Democrat can win,' illustrating how structural electoral geography suppresses participation. 15. Kristen Love, 39, of the San Luis Valley, Colorado, describes herself as 'nonpolitical' and says she voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 but sat out 2020; she says she might vote in 2024 only to vote against Trump or if a minority woman tops the ticket. 16. Arlene, an Afro-Puerto Rican arts worker in New York, had told Herndon in December 2023 that she was considering sitting out 2024 for the first time due to the Biden administration's Gaza policy. 17. In a follow-up call, Arlene says Trump's cinching of the Republican nomination has made the threat of his return 'more tangible' and that she is now closer to voting for Biden—but she says 'I hate to be a part of that statistic' because the administration correctly predicted she would return. 18. The episode is entirely reported, mixing studio narration with recorded phone calls; the style is close-listening journalism rather than debate or punditry. 19. People interested in the sociology of electoral abstention, campaign strategy, or the 2024 election's demographic dynamics will find the Knight Foundation data particularly useful. 20. Listeners looking for horse-race polling analysis or conventional candidate-focused election coverage will find this episode more sociological than predictive.

As heard by us

A sharp look at nonvoters that treats turnout as a trust problem, not just a campaign problem.

The Run-Up turns from the usual hunt for persuadable voters to the harder question of people who may stay home altogether. The episode gets its footing in the odd, funny business of trying to reach someone outside the political habit, then uses that encounter to ask whether…

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You want a sober take on voting that skips the slogans.

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