In any given election, between 35-60% of eligible American voters don't vote. There are many reasons people don't vote, including feeling that their vote doesn't matter or that the process of voting is complicated and time consuming. Voting in the US is actually pretty challenging.
There are consistent patterns in who votes and doesn't. Voters tend to have higher income, more education, more likely to be white, and not likely to be young. Non-voters tend to have lower incomes, be younger, have less education, more likely to be non-white, and feel less connected to a political party. Non-voters are more likely to distrust the electoral system, more likely to feel they do not have enough information to vote, and increasingly less interested in politics. These differences are meaningful because non-voters often have different policy preferences than regular voters. For instance, voters in national elections are more likely to be Republican and to oppose redistributive social policies than non-voters.
As professors, we had 2 goals in making this website: