Marginal voters are much more likely to vote Democratic, and to stay at home on off-year elections

In this year’s midterm elections only 36.4 percent of eligible voters turned out to cast a ballot. But are those who do not vote in such elections different from those that do? Anthony Fowler finds that marginal voters (those that would only vote because of a specific outside factor compared to those that vote who would vote regardless), tend to be significantly more Democratic than regular voters. He writes that this gap, combined with the fall in voter turnout during non-presidential year elections, may help to explain some of the Republican Party’s electoral success this year.