My mom thinks spying is great and my dad thinks the first amendment should have limitations so you can have laws requiring you to be sensitive to particular ethnic groups. They vote every single time. My wife and I disagree with both positions, but we never vote. Neither of those issues really bothers us enough to want to take time off work on a weekday, and we don't think there is a point when the boomers have politics locked up for another few election cycles anyway.

My own mom also doesn't see spying as something that negatively affects her/our cohort, but she probably won't vote because she thinks it protects her from jury summonses. None of my family live in a swing state, and so I'll skip an election unless I care about some of the local candidates. My wife and I have started to take more of an interest in politics recently though and it even looks like my state could flip in 2018 or 2020, maybe even in 2016, but doubtful.

I provided the Pew result because my anecdotal evidence is nearly as suspect as the one given in the post (the only difference is that I actually live in the US now). Do you think there is something wrong with the survey?

>Do you think there is something wrong with the survey?

I'm not going to criticize a Pew survey, much, but, I do think that the set of survey participants may be distinct from the people who vote. I also think that when people are answering a survey there is very little emotion involved as opposed to when they are voting; where people are barraged with messages fully intended to stimulate emotional responses. Those are a couple of things that might explain a difference. I'd also note that it has a relatively small sample size (475). So, I don't think the survey is the last word on the matter.