I’ve spent over 40 years studying the issue of non-voters and get-out-the-vote efforts.
My early research showed that getting more people to vote on election day was nearly impossible; if you got them to vote it had no effect on the election. Later research has substantiated that finding.
There are differential voting patterns. Berkeley has a very high proportion of the eligible population registered and voting, while Stockton is low on both.
I have never found any characteristics of voters...
I have never found any characteristics of voters that differ from
non-voters, except that non-voters will lie when asked if they are
registered to vote. Otherwise, there is no difference in any
demographic or political orientation. Most non-voters feel their vote
doesn’t matter, or won’t change the outcome of an election. Most
voters agree with them, but believe in some moral reason for voting.
An article by Gerard Alexander reviewing a book on non-voters confirms all my research and adds some interesting recent data.
There were about 15% more voters in 2004 than in 2000 -- 15 million
people. It was a much more heated election, with war as a major issue.
Over $350 million was spent getting out this vote ($230 per voter, most
spent by Democrats). Most non-voters turned out to vote the same way
the voters in their areas voted, which is why George Bush and the
Republicans won: they got out more voters in their battleground
districts in the battleground states.
In some battleground states the new voters that came out split evenly between Kerry and Bush: Ohio, Minnesota and Wisconsin (traditionally Democratic states). In some states,such as Virginia and Pennsylvania, Bush won large amounts of the new voters. Bush won fifty percent more of the new voters in Florida, 100 percent more new voters in Missouri, and 300% more of the new voters in West Virginia.
The Democrats had better beware of the misinformation that Lefty professors teach in colleges all over America: that non-voters are Lefty at heart. The academic intelligentsia isn't.