How do marginal voters differ from regular voters? This article develops a
method for comparing the partisan preferences of regular voters to those
marginal voters whose turnout decisions are influenced by exogenous factors
and applies it to two sources of variation in turnout in the United
States—weather and election timing. In both cases, marginal voters are over
20 percentage points more supportive of the Democratic Party than regular
voters—a significant divide. The findings suggest that the expansion or
contraction of the electorate can have important consequences. Moreover, the
findings suggest that election results do not always reflect the preferences
of the citizenry, because the marginal citizens who may stay home have
systematically different preferences than those who participate. Finally,
the methods developed in the article may enable future researchers to
compare regular and marginal voters on many different dimensions and in many
different electoral settings.