I knew that many people don’t vote. I should have asked why | Rafael Behr

Like politicians and pollsters, I wasn’t curious about the alienated and the apathetic – until Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn brought them back to the ballot box

The clue was in the question. “What about the nonvoters?” Since elections are settled by the people who show up, the impact of those who don’t is likely to be small. There’s a reason they’re called nonvoters. It isn’t easy to disentangle the motives of people whose only known common trait is reluctance to express a preference. Pollsters find them as hard to fathom as politicians do – and politicians have vested interests in interpreting silence as consent.

Related: You can log off, sure. But you can’t stop the outrage economy | Rafael Behr

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from The Guardian http://ift.tt/2CJlUAK