It''s well known that the interaction with people in everyday life not only influences citizens’ party preferences but also their willingness to particpate in elections. Yet, it is unclear how this influence is mediated. Thus, the paper examines political discussions as a mechanism of this influence using rolling cross-sectional data from the recent German Longitudinal Election Study. As a main result we find especially the frequency of discussions with non-voters and their political expertise having a strong impact on the probability of abstaining from voting. Additionally, indecisiveness and vague signals from the interpersonal communication environment stand out as further demobilizing factors. Because of the social logic of political participation that our findings underline we conclude that even a rather tiny group of politicized non-voters is able to initialize avalanching demobilization processses on the micro-level which in the end can contribute to decreasing turnout on the aggregate-level.
