In countries with compulsory votingas in Australia and many Latin American countries, the system generally ensures that an overwhelming majority of voters vote in election after election.
In the United States, it’s a completely different story. Two-thirds of eligible voters voted in the 2020 presidential election – the highest rate since 1900. Turnout in presidential elections before 2020 tended to get high between 50% and 65%.
Often, it is the voters who choose to stay home, sitting on their couch, who decide the outcome of an election.
Under the United States’ unusual presidential electoral system, the candidate who wins the most votes nationally does not necessarily win the election. Twice in the last 25 years, Democrats have won the popular vote in the presidential race and continue to do so. lost the elections. This includes that of Donald Trump earn against Hillary Clinton in 2016.
As such, victory hinges on getting more voters off the couch in key battleground states, where the deciding Electoral College votes are up for grabs. In these states, it doesn’t matter what percentage of people show up to vote or what percentage a candidate wins, it’s the winner takes all.
A voter who does not vote therefore makes an active choice: he takes away a vote from the candidate he would probably have chosen, and thus gives a significant advantage to the person for whom he would not have voted.
The “couch” is actually where Americans go to vote against their personal interests.

Eric Gay/AP
Who is most encouraged to vote?
As this year’s presidential election between Trump and Kamala Harris approaches, we ask a simple question: Which “couch” will decide one of the most important elections in living memory?
Recent searches demonstrates that partisanship is an important factor in voter choice in presidential elections.
The fact that the United States is deeply divided is not news to most, but current survey data shows how evenly divided it is along partisan lines. With about 30% of Americans identifying as Republicans and 30% as Democrats, there is virtually no difference in the total number of voters who support each major party.
The remaining 40% of Americans identify as “independent,” meaning they are not loyal to any of the major political parties. Nearly seven decades of research into the American voter shows, however, that the independents are strongly “skinny» towards one party or the other, with about half leaning Republican and half leaning Democratic.
A survey of citizens’ dissatisfaction with their party’s candidate can help determine which group is most encouraged to vote.
According to the most recent Gallup Poll Data9% of Republicans currently have an unfavorable opinion of Trump. In contrast, only 5% of Democrats have an unfavorable opinion of Harris.
Partisan voters who are dissatisfied with their party’s candidate have a strong incentive to “stay on the couch” and abstain from voting. They don’t really want to vote for “the other team”, but they also don’t support their own team anymore.
For example, suburban Republican women, veterans, and mainstream Republicans have begun to abandon Trump because of his positions on reproductive rights and national security, as well as his temperament. The Trump campaign clearly knows this. At a rally in New York a few days ago, he told attendees: “get your fat ass off the couch» to vote for him.
If these disaffected Republican and Republican-leaning voters stay home on November 5, Harris could well have a decisive advantage over Trump.

Shawn Thew/EPA
When the couch wins, America loses
In 2016, Trump defied polling and traditional voter turnout trends by convincing some disaffected working-class Democrats to stay on the couch, vote for an ineligible third-party candidate, or, in some cases, vote for him.
Could this happen again? Or will the Democrats be able to reverse this phenomenon by obtaining Exhausted Republicans suffering from Trump fatigue to stay home, while motivating everyone from Taylor Swift fans to “never Trumpers” to veterans of foreign wars to vote.
Recent trends suggest that overall turnout will be relatively highin line with the last three American federal elections.
Democrats have traditionally benefited from higher voter turnout, but it’s not as clear whether that will still be the case in 2024. Recent searches shows that higher turnout rates appear to have favored the Republican Party since 2016.
Yet both parties still have significant numbers of people who don’t vote. According to the Pew Research Center46% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents did not vote in the last three elections (2018, 2020 and 2022), compared to 41% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.
Again, who sits on the couch counts. Inevitably, many of those who stay home will get precisely what they don’t want. When the couch wins, America loses.