NOT A REPUBLICAN:

The non-voters are younger, according to a 2014 Pew study. They are also less educated and have lower incomes. On the whole, there are fewer Protestants and more Catholics among non-voters than among voters, as well as fewer whites. Non-voters and voters might have roughly the same view of the Democrats, but you wouldn't expect them to have the same view of much else.

In 2013, the political scientists Jan Leighley, of American University, and Jonathan Nagler, of New York University, published the results of a study that compared, among other things, the political views of voters and non-voters, dating back to 1972. On most social issues (abortion, L.G.B.T. rights), there was no measurable difference between them. Non-voters were more inclined toward isolationism. (Leighley and Nagler thought this might be because non-voters knew more soldiers than voters, and were more reluctant to see them sent into conflict.) The difference on economic matters was much more dramatic. Non-voters, Leighley and Nagler found, favored much more progressive economic policies than voters did. They preferred higher taxes, and more spending on schools and health care, by margins that hovered around fifteen per cent. "The voters may be representative of the electorate on some issues," Leighley and Nagler wrote, "but they are not representative of the electorate on issues that go to the core of the role of government in modern democracies." That non-voters had the same partisan preferences as voters only seemed to strengthen the finding--they wanted more redistribution regardless of whether they were Democrats or Republicans.

As unpredictable as this Presidential campaign has been, its two most successful outsider candidates, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, have in this sense followed established patterns: they have run campaigns that seemed perfectly matched to the preferences of people who do not normally vote. 

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