No Confidence.
By Jerry Seib.
Jerry Seib served as The Wall Street Journal’s Executive Washington Editor and wrote the weekly “Capital Journal” column for 29 years. He is the author of ‘We Should Have Seen It Coming” a book about the transformation of the Republican Party and American politics. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Dole Institute of Politics. Happily for us, he is also a contributor to Political News Items. — John Ellis
By Jerry Seib:
Democrats could conceive of a variety of strategies to improve their chances in this year’s midterm elections, or in the general election coming in 2028, but the most potent strategy might be the simplest of all: a voter registration drive.
That thought emerges from a look inside a fascinating new Wall Street Journal poll, which makes it possible to contrast the views of Americans who are registered to vote and those who aren’t. In a nutshell, the unregistered are remarkably more downbeat in their views of President Trump and the Republican party overall than are their voting counterparts.
For example: When people who are registered to vote were asked which party they support in this year’s elections, 48% said the Democrats, 40% Republicans. That’s a comfortable but not overwhelming eight-point advantage for the Democrats. But among those who aren’t registered to vote, the gap is yawning. Among non-registered Americans, 60% said they prefer the Democrats, and just 19% the Republicans. That’s an enormous 41-point advantage for the Democrats.
Other data points are just as striking. A whopping 81% of those not registered to vote say they disapprove of the job President Trump is doing, compared to 57% among registered voters. Just 13% of these non-voters say they consider themselves Republicans, compared to 32% among registered voters.
Those who aren’t registered to vote have an almost shockingly downbeat view of the country’s path; 84% say the country is headed in the wrong direction.
This appears to represent a turnaround from the state of affairs in 2024, when some post-election analyses suggested that President Trump would have won by an even wider margin if more Americans had registered to vote and shown up at the polls. Now, it seems that if Democrats could just get more folks registered, and corral some of their dissatisfaction into action at the polls, the job of ousting the Republicans who now are in charge of both houses of Congress would be easier.
Indeed, one Democratic activist says such numbers show why Republicans want to make it harder for Americans to register to vote, which Democrats assert is the goal of the SAVE Act, the voting reform legislation President Trump is pushing congressional Republicans to pass.
Still, as in most matters in today’s politics, things aren’t as simple as they might seem. There are some significant reasons these non-voters aren’t registered and showing up at the polls: They are markedly downbeat, even cynical, about the political system, and activating them to participate in a process they mistrust is a tall order.
“It’s pessimism and maybe more than that,” says Adam Geller, a Republican pollster who conducts the Wall Street Journal poll along with Democrat John Anzalone. “They have virtually no confidence in the political and economic system.”
These non-voters have the power to produce “close to a revolution” if they got engaged, says Anzalone. But their belief that the system is broken stands in the way: “Everyone’s let them down, so they think that even if they did participate nothing would change.”
Indeed, fully 85% of them agree with the statement: “The economic and political systems in this country are stacked against people like me.” Among registered voters, that figure is 73%. The unregistered are more likely than registered voters to say their economic situation has gotten worse in the last year.
The population of non-registered voters skews younger and Latino, two demographic groups notoriously difficult to get engaged in politics. They sit lower on the education scale—46% of them have only a high school diploma or less, compared to just 16% among registered voters—meaning many fall into another category of Americans who are traditionally more difficult to get registered.
And while they look as if they are sympathetic to the Democrats now, and call themselves more liberal than does the population overall, they also have a wider streak of independence than do Americans generally. That means they are less likely to get firmly attached to either party over time. They are, in short, a tough crowd to capture, for the Democrats or anybody else.