No Stupid Questions

From my own impression as a member of a small political party in my own country who joined not out of tribalism but simply because they seemed to mostly want the same things as I do, party members live in a bubble of people who are heavilly into politics and understand the importance of politics, whilst the leadership specifically in addition to this are also mostly surrounded by generally unquestioningly hero worship from the common party members plus they tend to have quite limited life experience outside the party as they've joined it as young adults (maybe when they were at university and involved in student movements) and it and its internal environment have always been a large part of their lives.

Those people usually see the supporters of their political adversaries in the same way as fans of a sports club see fans of other clubs, and don't really "get" the point of view of people who don't vote at all.

Why do polticalitcians cling to the idea that these voters can't be reached?

They don't. At least not the politicians who tend to do well. Reaching people who had never voted in any previous election was the central strategy to both Obama's and Trump's campaigns, and those were the two most successful electoral politicians in national American politics of the past 2 decades.

I’ll tell you why I didn’t used to vote. I worked too many hours and was emotionally exhausted all of the time. I didn’t have hobbies or interests or energy to do anything else. My personal life was a complete mess. I didn’t have friends or relationships either. I ate poorly and didn’t exercise. All I literally did was work. I suspect a lot of people were in my shoes.

They do. That's why voter suppression is such a big factor in every election.

You're asking why the politicians don't reach out to the 34%. Meanwhile for the past 10 years politicians have been ranting about dead people voting. A statistic that is blatently false, and has NEVER shown any significant amount of votes coming from dead people. They did find some confusion when old people voted early by mail, but died before election day. But those numbers were a rounding error at best.

So maybe these politicians are thinking "Well we can't reach the non-voters because they're dead!"

And then they go on fox news and argue about frogs being gay, or whatever bullshit to distract from actual issues.

Polticalitcians?

Reaching means addressing their issues. Addressing one person issues will probably conflict with other person issues. Wich mean that a choose have to be made on to who represent.

Some people are easier to address than other. Some people are more exigent to their representatives than others. Making it not wort it trying to address them.

It's important to mention that just by "mentioning" people in your campaign those people are not going to vote you. You need to do specific politics that solve the problems they may have. Which is not easy and most of the times it opposes what other people want you to do.

Most non-voters don't hold significantly different beliefs than the voting population. In non-competitive states, it means motivating them to vote is unlikely to tip the scales. Why bother tipping the results from 60% to 55% by spending millions on it? Better to allocate those funds to a 53% to 48% potential flip.

In battleground states they do try to reach these people.

maybe they just consider those people successfully suppressed

less people voting helps conservatives, thats why they use disenfranchisement, voter suppression and gerrymandering in the states, plus the all the propaganda "your vote doesnt matter" is drilled into peoples heads.

voter suppression is designed to discourage voting as well.

There is actually some evidence that musk was unfortunately successful at reaching some of these people. There was a lot of talk about "strange" ballots that only voted for Trump and nothing else, usually called "bullet ballots." Well apparently part of musks outreach plan was getting to low propensity voters and telling them "don't worry if it's confusing, don't worry about knowing the candidates, the only thing we need is a vote for Trump and he'll fix everything."

It seems like it worked out for them... :(

Because one party doesn't want them to vote and voter supression campaigns have become extremely powerful. And it goes beyond the beurocratic tactics like voter IDs. Apathy, cynicism, and distrust are also part of the right-wing propaganda. Opposition parties fight an uphill battle to engage more voters.

Because that would require a lot of work, and 99.99% of politicians are in it for the power and money. Not to actually help their constituents.

Because every time is someone's first time, and due to voter registration being necessary a zillion years before the actual vote, no one specifies that and runs "VOTE ON NOV N^TH^ " ads a week before the election day.

As others have said, this seems like an ill-formed question. Do you have reason to believe that politicians "cling to the idea that these voters can't be reached"?

Being as they don't vote, they are technically not voters.

I have sympathy for non-voters in the US. Not so much out of principle but because of how it is done. Voting takes place on a Tuesday. That's because in ye olden days you had to allow people to attend church on Sunday before making the trip on horseback to participate in the election. That's a cute tradition but clashes with the way the economy works today. People are very dependent on their low-wage jobs that they can be fired from easily. If you're working two of those jobs to make ends meet, you may not have the "luxury" to skip work to go and vote on a normal weekday. That luxury often includes having to fill in a booklet of stuff that's on the ballot. You're not just voting on a president, a senator, or a congressperson. You may be asked your option on a plebiscite, a judge, a sheriff, a school board, etc. It is overinflated in my view and explains long slow moving lines at ballot stations that you don't often see elsewhere. And that's after a possibly Kafkaesque registration process to be eligible in the first place or to get mail-ins in some states. It is almost designed to keep people away. Maybe you're taking these structural problems as something "politicians cling to."

Make election day a public holiday that forces businesses who are open anyway to allow all their employees to go and vote.

Because that group likely thinks both options are terrible and think it's a pointless waste of time

Ultimately proven correct