The number of registered voters in the United States who will choose not to cast ballots in the mid-term elections is more than twice that of people who will vote for Democratic and Republican candidates combined, Suffolk University political pollster David Paleologos told the AIM Executive Forum this morning.

The director of Suffolk’s Political Research Center estimates that 77 million Americans will vote in November, but that 160 million registered voters will stay home. Paleologos challenged the 280 business leaders in the audience to take a leadership role in urging employees to participate in the political process.

“You have people working for you who are not registered to vote. You have people working for you who are registered but who will not vote,” he said.

Paleologos, who typically interviews only probable voters for his political surveys, conducted an unusual poll in April of people not registered to vote or registered voters who have not voted. These non-voters showed the same preference patterns as their voting neighbors in terms of candidates and the country’s direction but cited a multitude of reasons for sitting out elections.

Their reasons ranged from a feeling that their votes would not make a difference to apathy to lack of trust in the candidates on the ballot. More than 78 percent of the non-voters believe the nation needs more than the two current two major political parties to represent the political views of the American people.

Paleologos predicts that if the current trend continues, the 2036 presidential election will mark the first race for the White House in which the total votes cast for Democrats and Republicans will be less than the people who don’t vote.

“This will be the number one topic in 2020,” he told the audience. “The numbers don’t lie.”

The swelling ranks of non-voters represent an opportunity for both Republicans and Democrats as they battle for control of the US House of Representatives and perhaps even the Senate in November. Unregistered voters preferred President Trump against a generic Democratic nominee in the Suffolk survey, but registered non-voters strongly favor the Democrat against the incumbent president.

More than 80 percent of non-voters say they would consider casting ballots if they knew their votes could swing a close election in either direction.

Paleologos’ polling of people who do vote indicates potential trouble for Republicans in Congress. Fifty percent of Americans in a generic poll favor Democrats versus 39 percent Republicans in the mid-terms, while 58 percent say they want to elect a Congress that “stands up” to President Trump.

Those results remain consistent in statewide polls in key jurisdictions such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada, Maine, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

At the same time, Paleologos stressed that voters by a slim margin do not appear inclined to impeach the president. Forty-seven percent of voters oppose impeachment, even following the guilty pleas of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, while 44 percent favor impeachment and 9 percent are undecided.