LEE CARTER: 2026 election could all come down to just one type of voter

For decades, political consultants have been hunting the elusive swing voter.

You know her. She's sitting in a Pennsylvania diner, staring into her coffee, agonizing over whether to vote Republican or Democrat. Pollsters call her. Reporters interview her. Campaigns spend millions trying to win her over.

But maybe we've been looking for the wrong person.

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What if the most important swing voter in America isn't deciding between Republicans and Democrats? What if they're deciding between voting and staying home?

Voters wait in line to cast ballots at Scranton High School in Scranton, Pa., on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP/Matt Rourke)

As a pollster, I've spent my career studying why Americans change their minds. But the numbers suggest we should be paying a lot more attention to Americans changing their habits.

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Consider 2024.

According to Pew Research, 12% of voters had skipped both the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 midterms, despite being eligible to vote.

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President Donald Trump won that group by 14 points.

Meanwhile, the people who voted in all three elections split almost evenly: Trump 50%, Harris 48%.

And of all Americans eligible to vote in those three elections, just 41% actually voted in all three.

We're spending fortunes trying to convince people to switch parties while millions can't be counted on to show up in the first place.

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In 2022, Republicans won the House popular vote. But among people who voted in both 2020 and 2022, just 6% switched parties or voted for a third-party candidate in either election.

As a pollster, I've spent my career studying why Americans change their minds. But the numbers suggest we should be paying a lot more attention to Americans changing their habits.

What changed? Turnout.

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Seventy-one percent of Trump's 2020 voters returned in 2022. Only 67% of President Joe Biden's did. Republicans didn't need millions of Democrats to change their minds. They benefited because more of their own voters showed up.

Now consider the strange arithmetic of 2026.

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Republicans have made enormous gains in voter registration since 2018. Their registration margin relative to Democrats has improved by eight percentage points in North Carolina, seven in Pennsylvania, five in Nevada and four in Arizona.

These aren't polls. They're actual voter-registration records.

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But Democrats have something Republicans currently lack: greater reported enthusiasm. A new Pew survey finds 63% of Democratic House candidate supporters say they're extremely motivated to vote. Among Republican supporters, just 46% say the same.

So, Republicans have strengthened their registration position. Democrats sound much more eager to vote. And neither party should be celebrating just yet.

In 2022, America had its highest midterm voter-registration rate in decades. Yet fewer eligible Americans actually voted than in 2018.

Apparently, filling out the paperwork is easier than finding your way to the polling place.

Which is why, with less than three weeks until Election Day, I'd be paying less attention to another two-point movement in the polls and more attention to who's actually voting.

Are the people who skipped the last midterms coming back? Are the voters Trump brought out in 2024 showing up without his name on the ballot? Will Democrats' enthusiasm translate into votes? And are those newly registered Republicans actually voting?

Republicans have made enormous gains in voter registration since 2018. Their registration margin relative to Democrats has improved by eight percentage points in North Carolina, seven in Pennsylvania, five in Nevada and four in Arizona.

These are questions neither party can afford to ignore.

Of course, persuasion still matters. People change their minds. I've made a career studying how and why.

But we've spent decades treating elections like a tug-of-war, with Republicans and Democrats fighting over a handful of voters standing in the middle.

Sometimes the outcome changes because people switch sides. Sometimes it changes because one side shows up and the other doesn't.

The swing voter hasn't disappeared. We've just been defining the swing too narrowly. The old swing voter was deciding who deserved their vote. The new swing voter doesn't necessarily switch sides. Sometimes, they switch off.

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And the most important undecided voter in America may have already decided exactly whom they'd vote for.