Every two years the same conventional wisdom gets its time in the sun: Older, white men vote. Young, urban, minorities don’t—well, sometimes they do, but almost certainly not in midterm elections. And that’s why the Democratic Party is screwed in off years.

But in our new cover story, we dug deeper. Who are the different types of voters, really? What do they believe?

Partnering with Clarity Campaign Labs, The New Republic surveyed over three thousand voters to record not just self-described ideology but deeper attitudes about Obamacare, income inequality, marriage equality, the prospect of seeing another Clinton (or Bush) in the White House, and a host of other issues. Poll participants were then matched back to detailed voter files maintained by Clarity’s sister firm, TargetSmart Communications, which verified vote histories and provided detailed demographic data on each group.

The result was a portrait of the American electorate that doesn’t just confirm that people who cast ballots every two years (“Reflex” voters, we’ve dubbed them) tend to be older, and more conservative, but by how much. (Answer: 15 years, 17 percentage points.) Most significantly, our survey also revealed specific challenges for Democrats in their efforts to turn out sympathetic irregular voters (“Unreliables”) this November, a push focused on key Senate states.

Among Unreliables, President Barack Obama is underwater, with a 52 percent unfavorability rating; nearly 3 in 4 of those voters say the country is on the wrong track. And despite average partisanship scores that indicate they lean Democrat, more Unreliables actually said they’d vote for a Republican in 2014 (37 percent) than said they intended to vote for a Democrat (30 percent). That comes on top of the 52 percent of Reflex voters who said they plan to vote GOP. Across our sample, 81 percent of those favorable to the Tea Party are Reflex voters who vote every two years.