Report: More than 105 million registered voters chose not to vote for president

BERKELEY, Calif. (KTVU) - For all the smoke, flames and fury of the Presidential campaign, the alleged monumental effort to get out the vote fizzled, leaving very few to make such a major decision.  

One person, one vote – the sacred right that soldiers have died for, produced an abysmal turnout this week. Professor Henry Brady is Dean of UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy and a renowned international expert on elections.

"Somehow, politics is not engaging people as much as you with it would given the stakes," says Professor Brady.

According to the non-partisan U.S. Elections Project, 231.5 million Americans were eligible to vote. 126 million chose to vote for President. More than 105 million chose not to.

That's why President-elect Trump only got 59.8 million votes and Secretary Clinton slightly more with 60.1 million; each with only roughly 25% of the total potential number of voters.

"People don't...they're not really convinced that politics makes a difference in their lives, many of them," says Brady.

Brady says, nationally, that's particularly true for young people, poor people and Latinos who the political process, the so-called person-to-person ground game, often bypasses. 

"Campaigns know that they're hard to get out, so they don't focus on them. So, they don't get the phone calls.  They don't get the people knocking at their doors to turn them out," says Brady.

California was worse. The Golden State has 25.3 million eligible voters, but, only about 9 million voted for President, just 35%. That means 16.3 million, 65% did not.

"Probably the biggest reason for that everybody knows that California doesn't matter in the election because we're not a swing state." says the professor.