- Whether someone is employed plays a part in how likely they are to vote in 2020, according to a series of polls conducted by Insider in conjunction with SurveyMonkey between August and October.
- People who listed themselves as unemployed and not looking for work are 14% more likely than the average respondent to opt out of voting.
- For Americans unemployed and seeking work, 24% said they aren’t going to vote, making them 12% more likely to not turn out.
- As unemployment remains high during the pandemic — hovering at around 7.9%, and even higher in some states like New York and Hawaii — this dynamic will be one to watch heading into Election Day.
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Employment status is a determinant of how likely someone is to vote, according to a series of polls conducted by Insider in conjunction with SurveyMonkey between August and October.
This data is based on an aggregation of eight polls with a total of 8,975 respondents conducted on SurveyMonkey Audience from August through early October. Respondents were asked if they were registered to vote and then subsequently if they intended to vote in the 2020 election, as well as a number of other demographic questions. Overall, 12% of respondents indicated they probably or definitely would not vote in the 2020 election.
Factors like education level and age are often the topline items when voter turnout is discussed, with Americans 65 and older constituting the most reliable voting block, and those between 18 and 24 being the least likely on average to turn out.
However, with unemployment remaining high during the pandemic — hovering at around 8%, and even higher in some states like New York and Hawaii — whether someone has a job is correlated with how likely they are to vote in 2020.
- 26% of respondents who listed themselves as not employed and not looking for work said they have no plans to vote, making that group 14 percentage points more likely than overall respondents to not vote.
- For those who are unemployed but seeking work — which more closely fits who gets counted as unemployed in the nationwide labor statistics figure — 24% said they aren’t going to vote, making them 12 percentage points more likely to say that compared to the average respondent.
- On average, retirees were more likely to vote than other age groups, and those in the workforce were about on par with what might be expected from the overall respondent poll.
- Americans unable to work because of a disability were 5 percentage points more likely to say they won’t vote.
This signals that elected officials deciding on unemployment assistance could be the least accountable to the people those decisions affect the most.
The voting by employment data also shows how disillusionment can lead to de facto disenfranchisement.
Gallup has maintained a series of surveys on Americans' confidence in institutions, with significant declines hitting a variety of sectors since the early 2000s.
For the group most likely to not vote based on employment — those currently unemployed and not seeking work — a pervading sense of dropping out of society on multiple levels comes through the data.
The employment paradigm with voter turnout also runs up against one of the prevailing arguments for making Election Day a national holiday, which would allow working people to vote without being financially impacted.
SurveyMonkey Audience polls from a national sample balanced by census data of age and gender. Respondents are incentivized to complete surveys through charitable contributions. Generally speaking, digital polling tends to skew toward people with access to the internet. SurveyMonkey Audience doesn't try to weight its sample based on race or income.
More on non-voters:
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Insider poll: More than 20% of Asian Americans say they do not plan on voting in the 2020 election
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