ATLANTA — A new study sheds light on what could be a very important segment of the electorate, particularly in an increasingly contested state like Georgia: People who don't vote.
Examining what it describes as the 100 million Americans who don't participate in elections, the Knight Foundation conducted a survey of 12,000 chronic non-voters.
Of those, about 800 were in Georgia, one of the states highlighted by the survey as a battleground for 2020. Their attitudes could provide a critical window into the Peach State's political headwinds.
One of the most striking insights revealed in data provided to 11Alive by the Knight Foundation was how non-voting Georgians see the actual act of voting itself.
Among battleground states that include Florida, Arizona, Pennsylvania and others, non-voting Georgians see voting as "very difficult" the most, and "very easy" the least - by a healthy margin. Just 41% of people polled in Georgia found it very easy. Only one other state polled below 49%, Michigan at 45%.
In the survey, more Georgians than in any other battleground state also saw voting as very difficult (5%) and as somewhat difficult (13%).
Those results come from a Peach State electorate that has both seen a significant purge of the rolls by the secretary of state's office and witnessed accusations of voter suppression in the hotly contested 2018 race for governor.
Evette Alexander, the director of learning and impact strategy at the Knight Foundation. cautioned to 11Alive that the survey did not specifically query a reason for why non-voters felt it was easy or not to vote, so a direct link between recent political events in Georgia and those attitudes cannot be fully established.
She did say the group had conducted focus groups in a number of cities, among them Atlanta, and that here they heard in particular that people had trouble finding time away work to vote.
"Again this is stacking on many issues, but in addition to other things that make them feel left out, they also feel like it's hard to get time off work," she said.
In particular, this might have profound implications for Democrats. One of the other interesting findings out the survey was that in Georgia, among people who don't vote, 34% said they would (if they did) vote for the Democratic nominee in 2020, as opposed to 29% for President Trump.
In most of the other states, it's either even or the opposite (except in Virginia, where there was a massive 43-7% edge for Democrats over the president among non-voters).
Among other findings, the survey revealed that non-voting Georgians prioritize racism and immigration. They cited immigration as the top issue overall, at 18%, while racism and race relations came in at 12% - about double most of the other swing states.
There's reason for optimism this segment could be politically activated this year, however: Among the battleground states, Georgia had the highest proportion (24%) that said they were only "fairly certain," as opposed to "absolutely certain" they wouldn't vote in November.
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