Voter Motivation Quotes

We've got 50 percent voter turnout for presidential elections. That's appalling. We can do so much better.

Remember, many Republicans didn't vote for Mitt Romney. He didn't inspire people.

Some of the most hard-working, generous people I've met in my whole life didn't really want to vote for him but did. My calling is to step onto the other side and humanise and portray the struggles of many Trump voters.

I think that Gov. Huckabee is one of us. I know that a lot of the other candidates try to talk like evangelicals, but he's actually one of us. He believes like we do on all the issues, which energizes me as a voter.

A lot of people are driven by an interest by one particular issue or a small number of specific issues rather than a candidate or a party or something broader.

I think all nonpresidential elections are won or lost by motivating your own voters.

If we want people to vote, we need to make it a larger part of their self-image.

Predicting voter turnout is not hard, it’s impossible.

I've been pushing for the longest time that you get the votes easier and with more enthusiasm when people feel like you're addressing their concerns.

Experience shows us that most people's votes are based on their biases, not on objective reality. Elections are a collective gut reaction. That any good comes of it at all is the miracle of democracy.

The key question for many voters is: How much is the candidate offering for my vote?

Do we elect a man because of what he stands for, because of where he stands on the issues, because how he makes the nation feel?

To be clear, no one is saying there weren't any legitimate economic grievances in Trumpland, nor is anyone claiming that the economy played no role whatsoever. The point, however, is that it wasn't the major motivating factor for most Trump voters - or, at least, that's what we learn when we bother to study those voters. Race trumped economics.

There's no suggestion of why people might have voted for [Donald] Trump.

I am a political recidivist. An incorrigible, repeat voter. A career lever-pusher. My electoral rap sheet is as long as your arm. Over the course of three decades, I have voted for presidents and school board members. I have voted in high hopes and high dudgeon. I have voted in favor of candidates and merely against their opponents. I have voted for propositions written with such complexity that I needed Noam Chomsky to deconstruct their meaning. I have been a single-issue voter and a marginal voter. I have even voted for people who ran unopposed. Hold an election and I'll be there.

The media has contempt for people that voted for Trump. They have no desire to understand who they are. They already think they know. They have no desire to drill down and find out why people would reject the woman they loved, Hillary Clinton.

Politicians should inspire you to vote, they should appeal to people.

In terms of winning the election, it's all about turnout and how we connect with the voter as to what it means in their lives to turn out to vote, to win the House, the Senate, statehouses, state governorships and the rest.

I have been talking to a lot of people who don't normally vote Democratic - independents and Republicans. They have been voting for Democrats because they think it's important to change the direction America is going.

And that's my message to voters, this isn't about Barack, it's not about person on that ballot -- its about you. And for most of the people we are talking to [blacks], a Democratic ticket is the clear ticket that we should be voting on, regardless of who said what or did this -- that shouldn't even come into the equation.

A good many people voted for [Barack] Obama, and I'm not only talking about the black vote. A lot of people voted for Obama because of our history of racial discrimination in this country.

You know, I've had so many conversations over the last several months with people who have come up to me and said that they're going to go vote for the first time because they want to vote against Donald Trump because he's scaring them.

One lesson is that if you want to predict voter turnout, you should ask whether at least one candidate is attracting high levels of enthusiasm - not whether the stakes are high, or even perceived to be high. That fits the historical pattern.

During my time as a political strategist, one of the most vexing problems was figuring out why so many people vote against their perceived interests.

I think Hillary Clinton's been's depressing democratic turnout.