And if you can't read it, here's the text:

Last week, I published a report - the "Political Disconnect" - based on interviews with 144 low-income & working-class people, across racial groups, who don't usually vote. They are the experts on why, and today I want to share their words. Almost all of the people we spoke with see politics as something by, for, and about rich people (and often also white people & men). That makes for a vicious cycle - they stay home, so politicians don't try to reach them, so they don't see why they should vote.

Politicians, people who work in politics, and other people who like to talk about electoral politics all day (hi all!) are in fact overwhelmingly college-educated & high-income, and disproportionately white; they're often not connecting with low-income & working-class people.

The people we spoke with were not ignorant, and they weren't apathetic. For lots of very good reasons, many poor & working-class people we interviewed don't believe politicians understand or care about their concerns or their communities, or that they are interested in learning.

Note - many opinion polls and most campaign polls exclude people who are not registered or unlikely to vote, and in general nonvoters are less likely to respond to most polls & surveys, so in a very real sense people who aren't voting have their views discounted/ignored. And they also didn't believe that politicians or electoral politics were likely to make real changes in their lives; many told us they did not important differences between the parties. (That's not how I see it; but this is about what our respondents said.) And so, for a lot of low-income and working-class people we spoke with, voting seemed pointless at best. Very few of them told us that voting would be difficult or that they didn't have the time; they just didn't think it was meaningful.

It doesn't have to be this way - many of the low-income and working-class people we spoke with also told us they could be mobilized to vote, if they felt like politicians cared, if they felt listened to, if they were invited in. That will take work - but it's possible. We have recommendations for people with decision-making power - funders, campaign & PAC & party staff, politicians, civic groups.

Democracy needs everyone - especially right now - and that requires connecting with those who have given up on it.