Data: Polarization is real. Turnout matters.

There are lots of people "in the middle." but they don't vote.  

The political opportunity is in the turnout.  The winning margin is getting the people who agree with you to bother voting.

This post shows data from a slightly red township in slightly purple New Hampshire. Take a minute and look at it.  I will summarize it afterwards.

This New Hampshire township is modestly red overall.  Canvassers attempted to talk with everyone and assay their political leanings and then others looked at the actual turnout level for those people.

The left column is a ranking of political beliefs of canvassed voters who responded to the canvasser's short survey, going from 1 to 9.   Number 1 is for very Republican/Fox, and number 9 is for very progressive-liberal.   Intermediate numbers are for people who answered the questions with mixed views on issues, with rank 4 and 5 and 6 in the middle.

The columns left to right are about turnout in the past 4 elections, marking whether people have voted in 0 of the 4, 1 of the 4 elections up to people who vote in 4 of the 4 elections.  

Rep to Dem       0 of 4       1 of 4       2 of 4       3 of 4       4 of 4       Total People

1 (very Rep.)           529               1,337          1,621          2,050           4,711           10,248

2  (Rep.)                  763                  944             665            508              681              3,561

3                              123                  153             147            156              263                 842

4                            2,434                 968             411            242              292              4,347

5                            3,479              1,361             572            344              298              6,054

6                            1,326                685              399            248              245              2,913

7                               191                136              149            140              231                847

8 (Dem.)                   712                757              645            380              610             3,104

9 (Very Dem.)          562               1,037          1,326         1,519          3,747              8,191 

Total People         10,655              7,804           6,181        5,822         11,311           41,773   

Here is what we see.       

1.  Partisans usually vote. These New Hampshire voters who are strongly partisan, numbers 1 on the right and number 9 on the left are likely to vote.   

2.  Drop off. There is a strong drop-off in voting frequency if people are not strongly and purely partisan.  Notice that people who are "only" a 2 and "only" 8 drop off significantly in voting frequency.  They skip elections.  

3. Non-voters.  Look at the left column, with big numbers in the middle of the 0 for 4 voters, i.e. people who don't vote. People without strong views don't vote.  Barely 10% of them vote in 3/4 or all 4 of the last 4 elections.  Candidates need to get into their heads that a great many people are un-involved, and that the non-voting registered voters are almost as many as the people who vote all the time.  Adding the registered voters who don't vote and who vote only once out of 4 elections totaled over 18,000 voters, 45% of the electorate. 

4. Partisans sometimes skip. Look at the columns 1 and 9.  These are voters who are with a side.  Presumably they would vote Republican or Democratic if they voted, but less than half of them vote every election and only about 60% of them vote 3 out of 4 times.  This means that the real swing in an election is from getting the people who would almost certainly vote for you if they voted to bother going to the polls to vote.  The votes necessary to win a close election are there, in the irregularly voting partisans.

5. Don't bother with non-voters. Candidate who work at moving middle of the road voters from so-so to ones side politically probably do some good but they need to recognize that 90% of the people they are talking to have the habit of not voting.  At the door--to get the candidate to leave--they might say they now agree, but getting them to vote is a low probability matter, based on recent behavior.

6. Low hanging fruit. Candidates who are talking to their partisans who sometimes--but not always--vote are looking at what is probably the low hanging fruit. The people who have voted only 1, 2, or 3 times in the last 4 elections are far greater in number than the winning margin--if the candidate can get them to turn out this election.  The candidate does not need to change their minds. He or she only needs to motivate them to drive to the polls to vote.