There are differing views on how Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's indictment and conviction of Donald Trump for falsifying business records will affect the election, with a consensus among participants in this debate that the conviction is unlikely to affect their vote.
Like most people, their views of the former president are already firmly set. Among the small minority of Americans who say they are following the trial very closely (16% of the public, according to a Yahoo! News/YouGov poll), there is discussion about the even smaller minority who might be persuaded to change how or whether they vote.
The fierce debate over the Alito family's flag display should be viewed in the same light. In February, nearly two years after Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade, a poll found that two-thirds of Americans don't know enough about Justice Alito to form an opinion about him. When asked to volunteer the name of a justice, most can't name any justice. In another poll in 2022, just under a quarter of those surveyed said “Clarence Thomas,” with Thomas being the best known of them all.
The difference between voters who are most interested in elections and those who decide the election's outcome isn't a gap. It's a chasm, and it's widening. From 1990 to 2016, the General Social Survey found that the percentage of Americans who are little or not interested in politics and the percentage of Americans who are very interested steadily increased. The percentage of people who are moderately interested in politics decreased.
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The most politically engaged voters are wealthier, whiter and more qualified than disengaged voters, and they also tend to hold more extreme or more ideologically consistent views.
In the past, apathetic voters, also known as “low propensity voters,” who voted infrequently, tended to be Democratic supporters. That's why Democratic politicians had a strong interest in increasing voter turnout. But today, these apathetic voters are strong supporters of Trump. They're helping to propel him to the top. The Democratic Party's strong support among politically conscious voters is also the reason for its recent dominance in special elections where fewer voters turn out.
The need to persuade disengaged voters shapes presidential campaigns in many ways. Take the metronomic message discipline that many candidates employ. Reporters and political buffs hate hearing the same lines every time, but repetition is necessary to resonate with these voters. Regular newspaper readers already know that President Biden supports legalizing abortion and Trump ended Roe. But 17% of registered voters believe Biden is more responsible for the demise of abortion, and another 13% are unsure which candidate is responsible. Biden's repeated appeals to this point are also intended to educate this demographic, which represents almost a third of the electorate.
The contrast between the politically-interested and the disinterested is a big factor in determining the overall trend of our politics. The politically-interested population contains two groups with very strong views. These groups dislike each other's views, and more and more, they simply dislike each other. To win a close election, you need to get a lot of votes from people who have a very different psychology than you and are less interested in politics.
Our political voice comes from the efforts of passionate supporters to rouse the apathetic — in other words, a lot of shouting.
