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Home » Elections » Better Civics: The Real Truth About Voter Apathy

Do Something

We have to take this into our own hands and deliver clear information to our friends, family, and neighbors.

Here are some ways to start: 

• Talk about voting and government every chance you get. In line at the grocery store, to your neighbor when you’re taking out your trash, whenever you have the rare opportunity to “run into” someone these days.
• Organize a video chat with your friends and family specifically to discuss making voting plans. 
• Get people engaged by giving them information about what each of our elected officials actually do; how to get in touch with them about an issue; their salaries ; and why they need contributions. 
• Try apps like Turnout Nation and Vote With Me to connect with your existing networks and provide the right tools and resources to convince them to vote. 

For more ideas, check out our guide to getting out the vote this fall.

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about voting this fall

How campaigns are fighting "voter apathy"

Better Civics: The Real Truth About Voter Apathy

It’s not that people don’t care, the founders of a new civic engagement nonprofit contend. it’s that our electoral system continuously puts up barriers to voting. here’s what we all can do about it.

BY Jen Devor and Megan R. Smith

Sep. 22, 2020

Despite the election season rush to win over undecided voters in swing states like Pennsylvania, the truth is that the most influential block of people in our last presidential election was neither Democrat nor Republican. It was the non-voter. 

Politicians, activists, the media tell us these people didn’t vote because of voter apathy. They have been gaslighting us about this for decades. It’s not real. 

It’s a term that ignores 200-plus years of voter suppression, and that blames individuals rather than  institutions, politicians and an electoral process that makes it hard and—for some—seemingly meaningless to vote.  

As we head into what has become an increasingly loud and noisy election season, we have to ask, “who are they talking to/about?” Messages range from, “vote like your life depends on it,” “this is the most important election of our lifetime,” to “settle” for one candidate over another to the laughable “any competent person for 2020.”

There is little institutional effort to reach out to people who are deemed unlikely to vote, or even understand what impediments and roadblocks are in their way. 

Why should we vote? What difference will it make? 

Voting is complicated by design. Understanding the difference between a state representative and a state senator is confusing, especially when it’s never been taught to you. Knowing how the president’s orders can and will directly affect your day-to-day is often overlooked—even in the middle of a global pandemic and economic crisis, amongst other things.

Understanding how to vote has also become overwhelming, again by design, even though technically, it’s now easier than ever. It requires many trusts, faith in new machines, confidence in the postal system and assurance that votes will count. 

According to the Knight Foundation’s 100 Million Project , many non-voters suffer from a lack of faith in the electoral system. They have serious doubts about the impact of their own votes: 38 percent of non-voters are not confident that elections represent the people’s will. We don’t blame them. 

We also know that voter suppression is wrongfully swept under the term voter apathy. Voter I.D. restrictions, inflexible work and school schedules that prevent citizens from having time to vote, lack of civics education in schools, the sudden closing (or changing) of polling places, and understaffed and under-trained election boards all contribute to making it hard for some —particularly Black and brown citizens—to be heard in the polls.

Voting is also discouraging if the race isn’t competitive. We see that a lot in Philly. This year alone, over 50 percent of local candidates ran unopposed. It’s hard to believe that your vote matters when in some races, it actually doesn’t . 

These are all reasons why the work doesn’t end on Election Day . The day after is when it really begins.

As is probably the case with many of you, we both live in a high-information bubble. It’s not a bad bubble: We are politically active, know our rights and representatives, are civically engaged—heck, we are writing for and reading a niche publication specifically about these things. But so many people still don’t feel the same sense of connectedness that we do—and it’s not their fault. 

So what can we do?

Rather than browbeat them at election time every year, we need to encourage people to be engaged politically and civically year-round. The more people are involved in their neighborhoods and their blocks , the more interaction they will have with their elected officials, and the more those officials will pay attention to them. 

These interactions clarify what policies and issues are most important to them to make an informed decision when the time to vote comes around again. Here’s an example: Short dumping in back allies is a significant issue in my neighborhood, like many others in the city. Neighbors were taking it upon themselves to remove trash and weeds—a physically demanding job that would have to be repeated every time a mattress would magically reappear. 

Once it was explained to neighbors that our state representative could receive funding to not only clear out people’s back allies, but also hire people from the neighborhood to do it, something clicked.

The issue of our political representation became personal, and local, not distant and in the capitol. Voters were now interested in resources on how to find out which candidates had this as part of their platform, and if the incumbent had put this program to good use. 

This all started with a useful conversation, as opposed to just yelling at them to simply “VOTE.” Studies reveal that conversations like this can have a huge impact on turnout. A new study from Columbia shows an increase in voter turnout results based on leveraging personal networks.

This led to the creation of Turnout Nation and apps like Vote With Me that connect people with their existing networks and provide the right tools and resources to convince them to vote. It combines canvassing tactics with a personal touch that prove to be effective. Turnout Nation reports a 13.2-percent turnout increase—the largest get-out-the-vote effect measured in two decades, just by talking to people you know. 

What all of this tells us is that we can’t rely on elected officials and government institutions to do this work for us. We have to take this into our own hands and deliver clear information to our friends, family and neighbors.

Talk about voting and government every chance you get: in line at the grocery store, to your neighbor when you’re taking out your trash, whenever you have the rare opportunity to “run into” someone these days. Organize a video chat with your friends and family specifically to discuss making voting plans. 

Here is information that Better Civics has found it useful to share with our networks:

• The job descriptions of each political office, what the roles are responsible for.
• Each elected official’s salaries; remember we are hiring someone to do a job when we vote for them, and we pay their wages.
• How each office affects day-to-day life in your community. 
• How to contact elected officials and what to say when you need help, depending on the situation. Email templates and phone scripts are beneficial for this. 
• What candidates need money for. Without knowing how the money will be spent, people who have never donated to a candidate before are hesitant to give. And we’ve seen small dollars go a long way in recent elections so this is important. 

For once, we have to admit the politicos yelling at voters sorta get it right. This is “the most important election of our lifetime,” and we may need to “settle” for one candidate over another because we need “any competent person for 2020.” 

But after that? Let’s get down to the real work of making sure all citizens are informed, engaged and ready to take part in our political process not out of desperation, but because it takes all of us, all year, to ensure democracy is thriving—from our neighborhoods to our capitol.

It’s election season in Philadelphia. Are you all set to vote? 

• Check your voter registration in PA
• Register to vote in PA
• Find your polling place and other post-registration facts
• Request a mail-in ballots for the 2020 election
• Check out who’s running and what are the ballot questions

Jen Devor and Megan Smith are co-founders of Better Civics, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to revolutionizing civic engagement and voter participation.

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• Published: 06 June 2017

The rise of political apathy in two charts

• Simon Oxenham  

Nature ( 2017 ) Cite this article

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In turbulent times, voting should seem even more important — but in Europe, turnouts are lower than ever.

In a year of pivotal elections across Europe — in the Netherlands , France , the United Kingdom and Germany — voters are being urged to turn up to the ballot box . Yet long-term data suggest that political apathy has risen steadily in Europe’s citizens, says Simon Hix, a political scientist at the London School of Economics.

Voter turnout across Europe is at its lowest point since suffrage rights were extended to the broader population, says Hix — a trend he illustrated this year in a series of charts that show how voting patterns have changed across the continent for the past 100 years. From the Second World War to the early 1980s, around 80–85% of the electorate turned out to vote. But since then, participation in national elections has fallen steadily to just under 65% (see 'The rise of Europe's non-voters').

Falling turnouts have been discussed at length, but Hix says that his plots — which he tweeted in February , but are part of a continuing research project — are the first to chart how voting patterns of Europeans changed over such a long time period.

Cohort effect

Hix and his colleague Giacomo Benedetto, a politics researcher at Royal Holloway, University of London, collated voting data from national election records from 31 European countries back to 1918, when many more people gained voting rights in Europe after the First World War.

To find out how political leanings had changed, the researchers allocated parties voted for to seven main ‘families’ ranging from ‘radical left’ to ‘radical right’; they also counted how many eligible voters abstained.

To the researchers’ surprise, they found that from around 1990, non-voters made up the single biggest block — in stark contrast to the past. “We expected that non-voters would increase as a proportion of all voters since the early 1990s, as we knew that turnout was low in the new democracies in central and Eastern Europe,” says Hix. What they didn't expect is that when combined with the votes in Western Europe, non-voters would constitute the single largest block by the early 2000s. The rise of political apathy could be considered the strongest political trend of the latter part of the twentieth century, he suggests.

Evidence from election studies — official surveys conducted just after national polls take place — in many advanced democracies since 1945 suggests that voting rates have fallen in young people, but remain high in the generation born in the years after the Second World War.

“Previous generations valued democracy more, they fought wars and women argued to get the vote,” says Hix. Younger generations take all this for granted and have become cynical, he says. He worries that society may be effectively returning itself to a state akin to pre-emancipation, when the vote was reserved for landed gentry.

Democracy paradox

Non-voting is on the rise across Europe and other advanced democracies, and usually has to do with protest, disillusionment and feelings of distance from democracy and elites, says Daniele Caramani, who studies comparative politics at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

But the rise is most dramatic in Eastern Europe . That is a paradox because many countries there became democracies only after the fall of Communism in the early 1990s, says Caramani. “Only 20 years ago, these countries were under Communist dictatorships. They fought hard for the right to vote, then as soon as they had democracy they started abstaining,” he says. “It’s like if you come from a famine and all of a sudden you have enough food and you throw it in the garbage.” Caramani suggests that the trend could be down to disillusionment with the old elites who were able to maintain their grip on power even after the fall of Communism.

But an increase in abstention doesn’t necessarily mean people are less interested in politics. “Traditional forms of participation are in decline, but new ways such as on social media are picking up and may be resulting in a replacement effect,” he says.

In the United Kingdom — which holds its next general election on 8 June — the generational voting divide is particularly stark. The 1990s saw a huge decline in youth turnout there and the country “now leads the world with its gap in voter turnout between older generations and young people”, says Abhinay Muthoo, an economist at the University of Warwick, UK. The difference in voting rates between UK people aged over 55 and those under 35 is about 35 percentage points — triple the average for countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, according to preliminary work by Muthoo .

One argument described by Muthoo suggests that the trend goes back to the mid-1980s, when a lot of people who traditionally voted one way or another stopped voting altogether because of disillusionment with the politics of the time, among other reasons. When these people stopped engaging, it’s possible that their children didn’t go out to vote either.

“People who get socialized into voting at an early age keep this habit,” says Caramini. “It might be that people who are socialized now in a time of distrust of political parties may never vote when they get older, it’s a generational effect that is well confirmed by research.”

Far-right future?

Hix’s further work also neatly illustrates a trend that has dominated political commentary over the past year: the rise of far-right movements. In Europe, the data show that this has been fuelled largely by voters in Eastern Europe. The proportion of votes for far-right parties in Europe now matches the levels of the early 1930s, he says.

This could prove to be a growing issue, says Caramani. Alongside non-voters, far-right parties are the only faction that shows sustained signs of growth.

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Political Apathy: Fighting, Forms of Political Apathy

Fighting the political apathy Political apathy, a prevalent phenomenon in contemporary society, encapsulates the passive and disengaged attitude or, in some cases, outright refusal of citizens to actively participate in the multifaceted realm of their state’s political affairs. This widespread phenomenon manifests itself through a conspicuous absence of enthusiasm, curiosity, and eagerness when it comes […]

Fighting the political apathy

Political apathy, a prevalent phenomenon in contemporary society, encapsulates the passive and disengaged attitude or, in some cases, outright refusal of citizens to actively participate in the multifaceted realm of their state’s political affairs. This widespread phenomenon manifests itself through a conspicuous absence of enthusiasm, curiosity, and eagerness when it comes to engaging in various civic activities, with voting often serving as a striking example of this disinterest.

Table of Contents

At its core, political apathy signifies a disconnect between individuals and the governance structures that impact their lives daily. It is a disheartening state of indifference, where citizens may perceive politics as remote, unrelatable, or riddled with insurmountable complexities. This detachment often stems from feelings of powerlessness, frustration, or disillusionment with the political system, leading individuals to disavow their role in shaping the destiny of their nation.

Political apathy not only encompasses the reluctance to cast one’s vote in elections but extends to a broader spectrum of civic responsibilities, including attending town hall meetings, volunteering for community initiatives, and staying informed about current events. It is marked by a sense of resignation, where citizens may choose to distance themselves from the very processes designed to safeguard their rights and aspirations.

This disengagement can have far-reaching consequences, as it weakens the foundation of democracy, stifles public discourse, and allows a small minority to wield disproportionate influence in policymaking. The apathetic silence of a significant portion of the population can inadvertently amplify the voices of those who do engage, potentially skewing the direction of public policies and legislation in favor of a select few.

Overcoming political apathy necessitates a multifaceted approach that involves education, outreach, and a concerted effort to restore faith in the democratic system. Encouraging citizens to actively participate, fostering dialogue, and addressing systemic issues that contribute to disengagement are all essential steps in revitalizing civic engagement. In a world where political decisions have profound implications for the well-being of individuals and society as a whole, combating political apathy is crucial to ensuring that the collective voice of the people remains a driving force in shaping a just and equitable future.

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Forms of Political Apathy

Political apathy manifests in various forms, reflecting a disengagement from the political process and a lack of enthusiasm for civic participation. These forms include:

1. Abstention from Voting during Elections: Apathy often materializes in the form of low voter turnout during elections. Citizens may choose not to exercise their right to vote, feeling that their individual voice won’t make a significant difference in the outcome.

2. Unwillingness to Align with a Political Party: Some individuals resist affiliating with any political party due to disillusionment with the entire political system. They may view parties as self-serving entities rather than representatives of their interests.

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3. Refusal to Enroll for Voting in Electoral Processes: Political apathy can also be expressed through the deliberate decision not to register for voting. This act of non-enrollment reflects a lack of interest in participating in the democratic process altogether.

4. Reluctance to Combat Electoral Irregularities: In cases where electoral fraud or irregularities are evident, apathetic individuals might choose to remain passive rather than actively engage in efforts to rectify the situation. They may see it as a futile endeavor.

5. Nonattendance of Public Protests or Demonstrations: Apathy extends to public protests and demonstrations, where some individuals opt to stay on the sidelines rather than joining collective actions aimed at addressing social or political issues.

6. Avoidance of Political Rallies and Campaigns: Apathetic citizens may avoid attending political rallies and campaign events, viewing them as repetitive or insincere. They may believe that politicians’ promises and speeches have little impact on their lives.

These forms of political apathy collectively contribute to a disengaged and disinterested electorate, which can have significant implications for the health and vitality of a democratic society. Addressing political apathy requires efforts to rekindle citizens’ faith in the political process, emphasize the importance of civic participation, and create a more responsive and accountable political system.

Causes of Political Apathy

There exist several rationales for citizens refraining from involvement in political matters:

• Electoral Violence: Many elections in Nigeria are characterized by pervasive violence, resulting in casualties and injuries. This atmosphere has deterred numerous individuals from actively participating in politics.
• Election Manipulation: A significant portion of the populace believes their votes are rendered inconsequential due to the manipulation of election data and outcomes. Consequently, they distance themselves.
• Unkept Political Promises: Political entities and government representatives frequently make commitments that remain unfulfilled once they attain power. This failure has contributed to people’s aversion to political engagement.
• Electoral Insecurity: The safety of their lives during voting is often uncertain, causing numerous potential voters to stay home.
• Governance Shortcomings: The government’s overall attitude towards the masses has demotivated many from engaging in political affairs. Public servants thrive in prosperity while those who elected them endure profound destitution.
• Hostile Partisan Competition: Different political factions regard each other as adversaries, driven by self-serving interests for political dominance. They may resort to extreme measures, including eliminating rivals, to secure electoral victory, further dissuading responsible individuals from participating in politics.
• Limited Education: A considerable proportion of the populace lacks political education, lacking the essential competencies and sufficient understanding required for meaningful political engagement.

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72. The Two Faces of Political Apathy

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Some Determinants of Political Apathy

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MORRIS ROSENBERG, Some Determinants of Political Apathy, Public Opinion Quarterly , Volume 18, Issue 4, WINTER 1954, Pages 349–366, https://doi.org/10.1086/266528

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The widespread political apathy in America has caused much concern among politicians and social scientists. In the study on which this article is based, the author found social restraints, feelings of futility, and the absence of spurs to action all tended to inhibit participation In the democratic process.

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Political apathy

Last updated 22 Mar 2021

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Political apathy is best described when a citizen is indifferent in their attitude to political activities, such as electing politicians, having opinions, and their civic responsibility. A more simplified term for political apathy would be that someone ‘cannot be bothered’ to participate in their country’s political system.

Political apathy can stem from a lack of understanding of politics and government that could make it difficult for that person to see any value in voting or from seeing the benefits and costs of the government policies being put forward. The individual might then see it as irrational to try to gain the knowledge as there would supposedly be no benefit to them. Bear in mind though that it is possible for a person to be fully educated and understand politics yet still be wilfully apathetic towards it.

Measuring political apathy is difficult, although it can be seen in the amount of the citizens’ knowledge, activity and political involvement.

The reason political apathy is an issue is because it is believed that a nation’s development and for its laws to function to their fullest, there needs to be as high a level of political awareness as possible. This political awareness leads to the ruled and the rulers serving as a check on one another.

It is useful to distinguish here between ‘apathy’ and ‘abstention’, with the latter being a deliberate decision not to vote, or take part in the political process, as a way of sending a message to politicians.

• Disillusion and apathy

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Voter apathy in British elections: causes and remedies

The turnout for the 2001 General election in Britain was the lowest ever after full adult suffrage. This essay presents the theoretical explanations of voter apathy and then reviews the literature on the causes behind the increasing voter abstention in General elections in Britain. Finally, the measures which have been proposed in order to increase voter participation are presented and critically assessed.

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In a democracy, voting is seen as the most significant way to participate in politics. Voter apathy is the common phenomena of people choosing not to participate in elections, and it is a serious threat to democratic countries around the world.How this will assure the future political, economic, and social development of the society in which they live is the question that is asked while voting or engaging in politics in general. The causes of voter apathy are complex, involving a number of concerns such as, among others, disenchantment with the political system, a sense of ineffectiveness, and a gulf between the public and its representatives. Voter disengagement is also influenced by the use of negative campaign strategies, political polarization, and complicated electoral processes.Voter indifference has equally serious consequences since it undermines the democratic process by lowering voter turnout, limiting the representativeness of elected officials, and undermining the legitimacy of government.Political education and civic engagement programs can thus play a crucial role in educating citizens about the electoral process, political concerns, and the importance of their participation in order to ensure sustainable democracy through voting/elections. Voter trust can be increased through raising the quality of political discourse and promoting serious policy debates. In addition, electoral system changes like proportional representation or ranked-choice voting can broaden the scope of the voting process and boost participation. Transparency in political spending and campaign financing can also aid in regaining public confidence in the political process.

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Sarah Birch

Gerald Ezirim

There is increasing global realization that credible elections constitute a major factor in democracy, democratization and good governance. Elections in democracies play the vital role of ensuring representation of popular will and, subsequently, help to secure the legitimacy of the political system. It is worrisome, therefore, that there is at the same time global evidence of political apathy, the lack of psychological involvement in public affairs, emotional detachment from civic obligations, and abstention from political activity. Understandably, therefore, there is ongoing concern to understand the sources and character of political abstention. Voter apathy, a subset of political apathy, has thus emerged as a major problem in mature and emerging democracies, settled and volatile societies, large and thriving economies, as well as small and troubled ones, among youth, women and other marginalized groups as much as among mainstream dominant interests. Several factors that affect voter apathy have been highlighted in relevant literature. Some of these include broad psychological factors and collective memory of historical and contemporary events. Others are patterns of trust, feelings of efficacy, political engagement and disengagement at individual, group and regional levels. While there is empirical evidence that the global trend has been toward a decline in voter turnout, there is lack of grounded and sustained scholarly attention to voter apathy in the context of voter turnout in Nigeria despite the challenges plaguing that country’s electoral system.

Anurag Gangal

David Coletto

British Journal of Political Science

David Denver

olawale ariyo , Adebayo Folorunso

The study interrogates the forces behind political apathy in Nigeria with several factors identified to have been responsible for it, these include illiteracy, ignorance, a violent political environment and insecurities. A qualitative method was adopted to describe the exigencies of citizens" alienated behaviour in the political and electoral process. The study premised that the higher the quality of people participating in politics, the greater the dividends of democracy enjoying by the citizenry. It also inferred that, political apathy if unchecked in the country will breed political loneliness and create irresponsible and unresponsive government thereby denying citizens the benefits of democratic governance. It recommended the need for electoral reform to accommodate the digitalisation of the voting system and diaspora voting to allow the marginalised group of the population and pave way for free, fair and credible elections.

Mark Franklin

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Political apathy and how to reignite political engagement

Civic engagement in the political process and electoral participation are major indicators of a prospering democracy. However, when citizens are disappointed or frustrated by a pattern of government inaction or corruption, people can feel as if there is little benefit to dedicating their valuable time and resources to political action with limited results. This is when people can suffer from political apathy, or the lack of political engagement.

What is political apathy?

Political apathy can be due to a variety of reasons, including limiting political participation directly through discriminatory policies or indirectly through slow, inefficient or non-representative bureaucracies. Both direct and indirect methods result in individuals or communities feeling politically disengaged since they believe little will change with their action.

Why do people experience political apathy?

Indirect political apathy through slow, inefficient or non-representative bureaucracies was highlighted in a recent study based out of Nigeria, where researchers surveyed and analysed voter attitudes on political apathy. They discovered four main factors which lead to voter apathy in Nigeria:

• Incompetence of the body which ran the electoral process
• Unemployment
• The political environment
• Electoral violence

Survey respondents voiced their concerns for the impartiality and independence of the body which ran the electoral process, alleging electoral fraud and election rigging, which consequently discouraged  public participation in the voting process at all.

As the childhood of Moses Tai, the ADC founder explains, political apathy results to low expectations by

Unemployment and the dissatisfaction of the electorate with the job opportunities available to them stems from a larger disapproval of those in authority. Plus, a dangerous and toxic political environment often results in violence which can scare citizens from participating in political action.

However, governance and politics and therefore political apathy occur every year, all year long, not just during election years. Afrobarometer   conducted a series of public opinion polls on democracy and governance in Africa in 2013-2014; they found that 32 percent of respondents said they never discuss politics, while only 20 percent of respondents say they frequently discuss politics.

Perhaps the disillusionment of citizens is unsurprising; in Kenya many of the public services people rely upon fail to serve the needs of the people, leading private companies to come in to fill the service gaps.

While the number of primary public schools grew 40 percent from 2001 to 2011, reports that private primary schools increased by 1000 percent in that same time period. With many essential services being privatised, community members can feel like they have even less of a stake in politics, and suffer from more political apathy since the government does not provide necessary services.

What are the consequences of political apathy?

The consequences of political apathy on communities are wide ranging. Those in positions of power have who face little accountability for their actions or have a low risk of being voted out of office maintain their authority, while citizens rarely see their lives improve.

Authorities with little accountability are more likely to misuse public resources and reinforce discriminatory policies. This eventually reduces citizen’s ability to participate.

For example, the marginalised indigenous Wayuu people have faced a famine which has killed hundreds of children due to the mismanagement of public funds from authorities in La Guajira, Columbia. According to former senator and former governor of La Guajira, Jorge Ballesteros, corruption and misallocation of government resources had greatly contributed to the famine, and only 30 percent of all La Guajira government resources reached the communities. The lack of political willingness of government authorities to help the marginalised indigenous community is a form of political discrimination, and leads to a lack of political engagement of the Indigenous Wayuu people.

In order to spark genuine political action, political and social reforms must take place, including the electoral body, electoral process, and political parties who must work together with citizen support to create safe and approachable environments for all citizens to participate. Citizens deserve to be empowered to make decisions for their communities to improve their lives. They also must see a benefit to participating in governance and see positive impacts of dedicating time and resources in becoming politically engaged.

Get involved , be part of something big and help empower communities in Africa, either through donating or volunteering. Your participation will go a long way to supporting people in need.

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Guest Essay

The Gender Gap Is Now a Gender Gulf

By Thomas B. Edsall

Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.

Regardless of who wins the presidential election, the coalitions supporting President Biden and Donald Trump on Nov. 5, 2024, will be significantly different from those on Nov. 3, 2020.

On May 22, Split Ticket , a self-described “group of political and election enthusiasts” who created a “website for their mapping, modeling and political forecasting,” published “ Cross Tabs at a Crossroads : Six Months Out.”

Split Ticket aggregated “subgroup data from the cross tabs of 12 reputable national 2024 general election polls” and compared them with 2020 election results compiled by Pew, Catalist and A.P.

Combining data from multiple surveys allowed Split Ticket to analyze large sample sizes and reduce margins of error for key demographic groups.

The Split Ticket report identified the groups in which Trump and Biden are gaining or losing ground.

In Biden’s case, the analysis shows the president falling behind his 2020 margins among Black voters (down 23 percentage points); urban voters (down 15 points); independents, including so-called partisan leaners (down 14); Latinos (down 13); moderates (down 13); and voters ages 18 to 29 (down 12).

“These losses,” the report noted, “reflect withheld support for Biden, as Trump has gained less than what Biden has lost to voters declaring for undecided/other. In other words, they’re unhappy with Biden, but have not realigned with Trump.”

Biden did not fully make up for his losses with gains in other groups: Republicans (plus 3 percentage points); rural voters (plus 3); voters 65 and over (plus 2); voters 50 to 64 (plus 1) and white, non-college voters (plus 1).

Even though April was one of Trump’s worst months in terms of Black support, the study found that

among Black voters, in aggregate Trump is outperforming his 2020 margin by a whopping 23 points. Relative to 2020, Biden has lost more support (–16 points) than Trump has gained (+7 points), with the remaining 9 percent moving to undecided/other. If Trump matches his April polling vote share (15 percent) among Black voters, it would be nearly double what he received in 2020, and would be the strongest performance by a Republican presidential nominee in nearly 50 years.

Among Latino voters, according to Split Ticket,

Trump is outperforming his 2020 margin by 13 points. Once again, compared to 2020, Biden has lost more support (–9 points) than Trump has gained (+3 points). If Trump ends up winning 40 percent of Latino voters, it would match the highest performance by a Republican presidential candidate in the last 50+ years, George W. Bush in 2004.

White voters were far less volatile, according to Split Ticket:

Biden has dropped by 4 points, and Trump has dropped by 3 points, with the balance moving to undecided/other. Among white college grads, Biden’s vote share has dropped by five points since 2020, while Trump’s has dropped by 1.5 points. Among white non-college grads, Biden’s vote share has dropped by three points since 2020, while Trump’s has dropped by four points.

Much of the focus this year has been on young male voters, who are one of the critical wild cards of 2024.

“Young men have repeatedly been found in recent years to be apathetic toward voting , with young women in recent election cycles constantly turning out to vote at higher rates than young men,” Elaine Kamarck and Jordan Muchnick , both of the Brookings Institution, wrote in a recent essay, “ The Growing Gender Gap Among Young People .”

Kamarck and Muchnick noted the conflicting possibilities: “There are more women than men in the country; they make up a larger portion of the electorate; they are more motivated to vote, and vote blue.”

But, they added, the disaffection of young men has potentially significant implications:

We may be in the opening stages of a social backlash to the progressive social movements of the past decades. When significant societal change occurs, some may feel left behind or cheated. Right now, young men fall into that camp.

They added, “If the aim is to build a fairer equitable future where all feel they have a role and are respected, the polling of Gen Z appears to show we are moving in the opposite direction.”

Two years ago, the Survey Center on American Life , a project of the American Enterprise Institute, conducted a poll, the results of which provide insight into the defection of young men of all races and ethnicities from the Democratic Party.

The survey, Politics, Sex and Sexuality : The Growing Gender Divide in American Life, asked 2007 adults 18 and over a series of questions about masculinity and femininity. Men were asked to define themselves as “very masculine,” “somewhat masculine” or “not too or not at all masculine.”

Among Republican men, a majority, 54 percent, described themselves as “very masculine,” 39 percent as “somewhat masculine” and 7 percent as “not too or not at all masculine.”

Among Democratic men, 33 percent said they were “very masculine,” 53 percent “somewhat masculine” and 12 percent “not too or not at all masculine.”

The authors of an analysis of the survey, Daniel A. Cox , Beatrice Lee and Dana Popky , all of the American Enterprise Institute, found that in the case of women and self-defined femininity, there was only a modest partisan division: “Women across the political spectrum are roughly as likely to identify as feminine. Roughly four in 10 Democratic women (42 percent) and Republican women (39 percent) say they are traditionally feminine.”

In other words, self-defined femininity does not differentiate Republican and Democratic women, but self-defined masculinity reflects a key partisan division among men.

Where do two crucial Democratic constituencies, Black and Hispanic men, fit in? It turns out that in terms of self-defined masculinity, they are far closer to Republican men than to Democratic men, according to Cox, Lee and Popky: “A majority of Black men (55 percent) and Hispanic men (52 percent) say they are very manly or masculine.” On this measure, there is statistically virtually no difference between Republican men, Hispanic men and Black men.

In a June 2023 essay, Cox asks in the headline, “ Are Young Men Becoming Conservative? ” He points out that the trends among young men are less easily explained than the trends among young women.

Young men, Cox wrote, “have not had the same type of formative experiences as young women.” Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ended the constitutional right to abortion,

was a political accelerant for young women. The #MeToo movement and Donald Trump’s election were seminal political events in the lives of many young women. These experiences continue to shape the outlook of young women who increasingly perceive society as hostile to women and believe that the experiences of other women in the U.S. are connected to what happens in their own lives.

There were, in Cox’s view, no “comparable experiences for young men.”

Without formative political experiences, Cox argued,

what emerges is a type of political apathy. Young men are less engaged on key political issues. For young women, three issues are uniquely salient: climate change, gun policy and abortion. Young men express far less interest in these issues. Young men seem to care more about economic issues — inflation is high on their list of priorities — but they appear less invested in culture war topics or issues that do not affect them directly. Despite being generally supportive of abortion rights, it is hardly a priority for young men. In a poll we released late last year, young men were approximately 30 points less likely than young women to say abortion was a critical concern (32 percent versus 61 percent, respectively).

All of this led Cox to ask:

Are young men adversaries or allies when it comes to issues such as gender equality? Young men appear to be quiescent when it comes to ceding the historic advantages men have enjoyed in American society. Whether this is due to the fact they believe these changes are just and fair or simply inevitable is unclear.

At the same time, “nearly half of young men believe that American society has become ‘too soft and feminine.’”

The growing gender divide between young men and women in the United States is part of a decade-long international trend, according to a survey of 300,000 men and women in 20 mostly advanced nations.

In “ Polarization Extends Into Gender via Young Adults Who Lose Hope ,” Glocalities , a marketing firm based in the Netherlands, found that

young women have significantly strengthened their embrace of liberal and anti-patriarchal values over the last decade while young men increasingly are lagging behind in this trend. In 2014 older men (aged 55 to 65) were the most conservative and younger men (18 to 24) were significantly more liberal; almost 10 years later, young men have become even less liberal than older men.

Both here and abroad, Glocalities reported:

Feelings of hopelessness, societal disillusionment and rebelling against cosmopolitan values partly explain the rise of radical right anti-establishment parties. Now young men are stagnating in their progress toward liberal values. The radical right in many countries increasingly resonates with disillusioned conservative segments among them, who do not feel that establishment parties are serving their interests. This trend has already impacted elections in Poland, Portugal, Germany, Netherlands and South Korea. If policy priorities and electoral strategies remain unchanged, this trend will likely impact the European elections in June, the U.S. presidential elections in November and more to come.

While feelings of hopelessness are common among young people of both sexes, the sense of despair is pushing males and females in opposing directions. Glocalities’ survey determined that there is a growing “anti-authoritarian trend among young women” who

are more worried about sexual harassment, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect and mental health problems. These worries explain the increasing anti-patriarchal trend among young women and, for example also the rise of the #MeToo movement since it went viral in 2017. Young women demand better prospects in combination with social justice and equality at home, in the workplace and beyond. Globally, young women are likely the most liberal group in human history.

Young men, in contrast, are “more focused on competition, bravery and honor” and “are more patriarchal in their orientations overall when compared with women and even when compared with older men.” The radical right “increasingly resonates with conservative segments among young men.”

One section of the Glocalities study focused on the United States. The study measured trends from 2014 to 2023 among age cohorts of men and women on two scales — one on hope versus despair, the other on control and patriarchy versus freedom and autonomy.

The despair-versus-hope dimension was based on questions “about feeling let down by society and feelings of pessimism and disillusionment about the future.” The control-versus-freedom dimension was “based on a set of strongly differentiating values regarding support for patriarchy versus support for emancipative values including gender role flexibility, gay marriage and unmarried couples cohabitating.”

The survey found that over the past decade, men over the age of 55 became happier and their values moved from controlling and patriarchal toward freedom and autonomy. Men ages 34 to 54 basically stayed in place. Men 18 to 34 moved decisively toward despair and modestly toward patriarchal values (and away from emancipatory values).

Women of all ages became stronger in their belief in freedom and autonomy. Young women, however, stood out, moving almost as much as young men from hope to despair.

I asked Martijn Lampert , the research director of Glocalities, to elaborate on developments over the past 10 years in the United States, including the influence of the #MeToo movement. He replied in an email, “The #MeToo movement globally was a strong driver for young women to become more liberal and emancipated, but we do not consider the #MeToo movement specifically as a driver for young men to shift to the right.”

Instead, in the case of young men,

we interpret the stagnating progress of men on the control-freedom axis to be caused by factors that affect their ambitions first and foremost. Given that their values focus a lot on success, status, recognition et cetera, the current situation does not facilitate this ambition. Because of this they not only become more pessimistic (as we see happening in the United States even more than in Europe), but also become more susceptible to populist forces and a “politics of bravery.’’

Young men, Lampert continued, “are not necessarily conservative in a traditional sense (and in the United States, young men are still more freedom oriented than older men) but are more geared toward ambition, bravery, honor, innovation, loyalty, success, wealth and luxury.”

While young men, in Lampert’s view, are not “a prime target for Trump or the MAGA movement, because Trump positions himself as culturally conservative while young men are still more emancipated and liberal, there certainly are young men who resonate with Trump’s bravery, ambition and his emphasis on success, honor and loyalty.”

What does the future hold?

“Based on the research outcomes, we expect the conflict between emancipatory/feminist values and patriarchal beliefs among young men and women to become more intense.”

Melissa Deckman , the chief executive of P.R.R.I. and author of the forthcoming book “ The Politics of Generation Z : How the Youngest Voters Will Shape Our Democracy,” described by email what she found in her research: First and foremost, “Gen Z women are unique from older generations of women in that they are more engaged in politics than their male counterparts.”

But, Deckman added, “while Gen Z women are fiercely feminist and progressive, Gen Z men are more ideologically diverse. P.R.R.I.’s study on Gen Z shows a gender gap, certainly, on ideology, but Gen Z men are still slightly more likely to self-identify as liberal than conservative.”

Deckman provided The Times with P.R.R.I. poll data showing that among young voters ages 18 to 25, women identify themselves as decisively Democratic (41 percent, compared with 18 percent Republican) and firmly liberal (47 percent, compared with 24 conservative).

Men ages 18 to 25 are Democratic by a much smaller margin (30 percent, compared with 24 percent) and much less liberal (38 percent, compared with 31 percent).

More ominous for Democrats are P.R.R.I.’s data on 13-to-17-year-olds, who will soon become eligible to vote.

Self-described partisanship among girls ages 13 to 17 was 31 percent Democratic to 20 percent Republican, an 11-point Democratic advantage, compared with a 23-point Democratic advantage among women 18 to 25.

Among boys ages 13 to 17, 24 percent said they were Democrats, and 23 percent said they were Republican, a one-point Democratic advantage, compared with the eight-point Democratic edge among men 18 to 25.

In their 2020 paper “ Precarious Manhood Predicts Support for Aggressive Policies and Politicians ,” Sarah H. DiMuccio , a consultant with the Danish firm Mannaz , and Eric D. Knowles , a professor of psychology at N.Y.U., suggested another set of reasons for Trump’s appeal to some men:

Perhaps more than any politician in recent history, Donald Trump has rooted his political persona in traditional notions of masculinity. As a candidate and as president, Trump presents himself as dominant, unyielding and virile. From threatening foreign nations with attack to alluding favorably to the size of his penis and testosterone levels, the president’s behavior suggests a desire to place his manhood beyond reproach.

In this light, DiMuccio and Knowles wrote,

we argue that support for harsh political policies, Trump and the present-day Grand Old Party reflects (in part) the psychology of precarious manhood. On this account, some men harbor doubts about their masculinity, which they, in turn, seek to reaffirm through voting behavior and policy preferences that can be characterized as “politically aggressive.”

The authors cited research showing that

laypeople tend to associate the Republican Party with masculinity and the Democratic Party with femininity. Moreover, a content analysis of primary debates in 2012 and 2016 found that Republican candidates utilized more aggressive discourse against their intraparty opponents than did Democrats — with Donald Trump proving to be the most rhetorically aggressive candidate in the history of American presidential debates.

To test their argument, DiMuccio and Knowles conducted a detailed geographic analysis of internet searches for subjects they determined signal anxiety over masculinity or precarious masculinity. The searches included hair loss, steroids, Viagra and more salacious subjects.

They then correlated the data with presidential voting in 2008, 2012 and 2016. In the case of the two earlier contests, Obama-McCain and Obama-Romney, there was no strong linkage between presidential voting and the level of precarious masculinity internet searches.

In the 2016 contest between Trump and Hillary Clinton, however, DiMuccio and Knowles found that “Trump received a higher share of votes in media markets where precarious masculinity-related searches were particularly popular and that this relationship held after adjusting for a range of search-based and demographic covariates.”

Why did the linkage between presidential voting and precarious masculinity emerge with Trump but not in the previous elections?

The authors’ answer:

Trump and the Republican Party he leads appear more consistently aggressive than high-profile G.O.P. politicians of the recent past — including Mitt Romney and John McCain.

“While the recent ideological evolution of the Republican Party may not have occurred without Trump,” the authors went on to say, it is “likely that these changes will far outlast Trump as a political force. Thus, we believe the link between precarious masculinity and Republican voting will generalize to future elections.”

Biden’s struggles with young men, however, have far deeper roots than precarious masculinity.

In 1949 the chemist Carl Djerassi and his co-workers synthesized norethisterone , a potent available progestin that eventually led to the emergence of oral contraceptives . For his obituary, The Guardian used the headline “ How the Inventor of the Pill Changed the World for Women .”

With the backing of two liberal Supreme Court decisions — Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965, overturning a state law prohibiting the sale of contraceptives, and Roe v. Wade in 1973, legalizing abortion nationwide — the birth control pill set in motion the slow but steady emancipation of women and the erosion of men’s dominance in politics and in society writ large.

In this context, the struggle over the 2024 election is the latest chapter in a long saga.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here's our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

An earlier version of this article misstated details of an analysis comparing previous and recent support for President Biden. The previous data is from 2020, not 2000, and the differences in support are in percentage points, not percentages. The article also misstated the title of a paper by Sarah H. DiMuccio and Eric D. Knowles. It is “Precarious Manhood Predicts Support for Aggressive Policies and Politicians,” not “Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.”

How we handle corrections

Thomas B. Edsall has been a contributor to the Times Opinion section since 2011. His column on strategic and demographic trends in American politics appears every Wednesday. He previously covered politics for The Washington Post. @ edsall

Argument: Americans Don’t Want a Wartime President

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Americans Don’t Want a Wartime President

If biden can avoid the temptation to be a warrior defending allies abroad, he might have a better chance at winning his battles at home..

• United States

U.S. President Joe Biden  pitches  his bid for reelection as a defense of American democracy itself. It’s a shrewd strategy as his opponent displays an awkward affection for autocrats. However, with a speech in France this week commemorating the anniversary of D-Day and “the importance of defending freedom and democracy,” his team might be signaling a strategy of portraying Biden as a bulwark of democracy not just at home, but also across the globe—especially while wars in Ukraine and the Middle East likely  grind  on through election day. An Institute for Global Affairs survey that my colleagues and I published this week strongly suggests this could be a strategic mistake.

During the State of the Union address in March, Biden warned that U.S. democracy is more “under assault” than it has been at any time since the Civil War. This reality should be rousing enough on its own. But he diluted the message by swiftly tying it to attacks on democracy overseas by referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, turning a powerful political proposition into a less salient one for American voters.

The Biden administration’s rhetoric has upped the ante. In its telling, the war in Ukraine is not simply a regional conflict with very particular historical origins but part of an existential global battle between democracy and autocracy. This ideological framing has flustered some on Biden’s own national security staff, who see Ukraine’s fight as a straightforward defense of its sovereignty and independence rather than a noble struggle against autocracy on behalf of the free world.

When I mentioned that Secretary of State Antony Blinken must know that this framing distorts the essential dynamics of the conflict, one senior White House staffer confided, on the condition of anonymity, that it was coming directly from the Oval Office.

Why might Biden wage an international crusade for democracy when preserving it at home seems pressing enough? In the 20 years since combat veteran John Kerry lost a presidential election to draft evader George W. Bush, chastened Democrats have made a concerted effort to reassert themselves as the tough-on-defense party. I witnessed this conversion up close shortly after working on Kerry’s campaign. From the ashes of the 2004 defeat sprang organizations dedicated to strengthening Democratic national security bona fides. But decades of Democratic hawks and neoconservative Republicans trying to out-flex each other left the American public war-weary amid a dismal record of unsuccessful and counterproductive conflicts.

While many U.S. voters certainly want a strong national defense and have always been quick to support measures to defeat direct threats, such as the Soviet Union or al Qaeda, Americans have never been eager for their country to act as the sword and shield of democracy globally. In April, when my colleagues and I at the Institute for Global Affairs asked voting-age Americans about the goals that the United States should prioritize in Ukraine, only about half as many wanted to deter autocracies from invading democracies as those who wanted to avoid risking a confrontation between nuclear-armed powers. Likewise, twice as many respondents wanted Washington to prioritize avoiding escalation into a wider regional war compared to those who wanted to prioritize restoring Ukraine’s pre-invasion borders.

At a moment when Ukrainian morale and momentum is sagging and Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly seeks a cease-fire and the resumption of peace talks, we found broad support in the United States for NATO countries urging a negotiated settlement. Lest this be dismissed as mere U.S. provincialism or apathy for foreign affairs, it’s worth noting that we also surveyed residents of NATO’s three largest economies besides the United States: Germany, the United Kingdom, and France. A majority of respondents from these European publics also wanted to push for a negotiated settlement.

There are some significant differences between the rationales of U.S. and European respondents—for example, more Americans worry about Ukraine losing leverage, while more Europeans think the West doesn’t have the industrial capacity to protect itself and Ukraine. But the notion that the war is Ukraine’s fight, so we should abstain from trying to influence it—a recurring talking point of the Biden administration—won agreement from fewer than 1 in 5 people on either side of the Atlantic.

Biden could persuasively make the case that another Donald Trump presidency would threaten the United States’ long-standing alliances. Indeed, Trump bizarrely encouraged Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies who shirk on their spending commitments.

But caution is warranted here too. A sizable majority of respondents in the United States—and in the three NATO member countries that we surveyed—said they want Europe to be primarily responsible for its own defense. In fact, nearly three times as many Europeans said they seek a neutral relationship with the United States as respondents who wanted Washington to be primarily responsible for Europe’s defense. The high-minded paeans to a United States indispensable to European security might have resonated throughout most of Biden’s political career, particularly during the Cold War, but they fall flat today.

Nor does the war in Gaza present many openings for Biden to present himself as a champion of democracy and an international order based on liberal norms. Israel’s conduct in its war against Hamas has led the International Court of Justice to warn against genocidal acts and order a halt to its military operation in Rafah “immediately.”

Our poll found that 42 percent of Americans thought that Israel should agree to a lasting cease-fire, significantly more than the 28 percent who said that the West must support Israel’s defense. Meanwhile, a new poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in March and April found that even roughly three-quarters of Israelis wanted the United States to play a major diplomatic role in ending their war, and more think that Biden excessively favors them than think that he excessively favors the Palestinians.

Biden is certainly right to be worried about the state of democracy around the world. Authoritarians persist in their pursuit of odious ends. Democratic backsliding and populist backlash against globalization afflict many countries besides his own. But Americans simply don’t show much enthusiasm for a warrior-president focused on defending democracy in Ukraine, Israel, or likely any other distant country. If Biden can avoid the temptation to be one, he’ll be better able to neutralize the main threat to democracy in the United States: the one who joins him on the ballot in November.

Mark Hannah is a senior fellow at the Institute for Global Affairs and host of its foreign-policy podcast,  None of the Above . He teaches media studies at New York University. Twitter:  @ProfessorHannah

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Is Biden’s Gaza Policy Alienating Black Voters?

Washington’s handling of the Israel-Palestine conflict appears to be hurting the president’s credibility among African Americans.

Is Biden Blowing It in Gaza and Ukraine?

Washington seems to keep moving the goalposts—but it isn’t bringing stability in either conflict, or electoral benefits at home.

Biden’s Catch-22 in Ukraine

Washington’s backing for Kyiv and avoidance of risk are increasingly at odds.

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A New Cold War Needs Its Own Rules

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Bulgaria holds another snap election to end political instability

SOFIA - Bulgarian voters head to the polling stations on Sunday for the sixth snap parliamentary election in three years, but analysts see little chance of it producing a stable coalition that can put an end to a prolonged period of political instability.

Bulgaria, the poorest member of the European Union and one of its most corrupt states, has been plagued by revolving-door governments since anti-graft protests in 2020 helped topple a coalition led by the centre-right GERB party.

President Rumen Radev has had to appoint five caretaker governments since 2020 to steer the Black Sea nation as successive, inconclusive elections have thrown up unstable coalitions that have swiftly collapsed in acrimony.

Bulgaria sorely needs a period of stable, well-functioning government to accelerate the flow of EU funds into its creaking infrastructure and to nudge it towards joining the euro and fully participating in Europe's open-border Schengen area.

Plans to join the eurozone have already been pushed back twice because of missed inflation targets.

Bulgaria and its northern neighbour Romania removed passport checks on March 31 for people departing for or arriving from the Schengen area - including most other EU member states - by air and sea but road and rail travellers still face checks.

Apathy is one of the main challenges in Sunday's election, when Bulgarian voters will also be choosing their representatives for the European Parliament.

Many Bulgarians, deeply distrustful of a political class they have come to see as corrupt and inept, do not believe their votes will make any difference.

"I have decided firmly not to vote... I voted for a long time, but with so many alliances, I just don't want to take part any more in such a circus," said 71-year-old photographer Ivan Dobromirov.

Sunday's election was triggered by the collapse in March of a coalition comprising GERB, which had held power for much of the previous 15 years, and the relatively new, reformist We Continue the Change (PP) party.

The two parties, both strongly pro-EU but divided by personal rivalries and distrust, said in March they could not form a new government without another election.

A poll released on Thursday by the Sofia-based Alpha Research pollster showed GERB leading with 25.1% and PP on 15.4%. The ultranationalist pro-Russian Revival party was seen getting 15.2% and the Movement for Rights and Freedom, which mainly represents Bulgaria's large ethnic Turkish minority, on 14.8%.

In a tight race, smaller parties - which include the once-mighty Bulgarian Socialist Party and an alliance of agrarian and conservative parties called Blue Bulgaria - could influence the composition of the next government.

Mario Bikarski, a senior Eastern and Central Europe Analyst at risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft, said another snap parliamentary election in the autumn was probable.

"Even if a government is formed, it will likely struggle to serve a full term given ... disagreements between the various political forces," he said. REUTERS

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