We hear(d) a lot about Trump/Republican and Harris/Democratic voters during the election cycle, but in our latest Political Trendwatch we dove into Americans who decided not to cast a ballot in last year’s general election. Were they ever planning on voting? Who did they support, even if they didn’t check the box on the ballot? We aim to answer some of these questions, and this week’s COTW looks at the former question of support

Here are the key takeaways from this week’s chart:

• 📈Non-Voters Were Potentially More Open to Harris Compared to Biden: The trendline starts around the moment that Joe Biden dropped out of the race. At that moment in time, Harris was barely a blip for eventual non-voters. With Kennedy and Biden gone, the vote allocation average began to change in Harris’s favor. Among non-voters, her average increased from July until Election Day, almost without stopping.
• 📆Non-Voters Were More Likely to Support Harris Over Trump in the Last Few Weeks: These trendlines make for a fascinating chart, and one that has to be slightly depressing to the Harris campaign. Trump’s allocation did rise slightly, but Harris ended with a 10-point lead. Not everyone is going to vote (we aren’t Australia), but Harris certainly could have used some increased turnout, at least based on these numbers.
• 🐻RFK, Jr. Dropping Out Had an Effect: Around the time Biden dropped out, non-voters’ allegiance was either tied to Trump or, more likely, to a 3rd party candidate. We can speculate that the candidate would have been Robert Kennedy, Jr., but he was also about to exit the race. The 3rd party allocation dropped rapidly in July and then leveled out below 20 percent.