The messaging of both the 24 Biden/Harris and the 24 Harris/Waltz campaign was an incoherent disaster. I an extremely engaged Democratic partisan, and even I barely heard a clearly articulated message other than "Vote for us because we aren't Donald Trump." Harris backtracked her Medicare for All vow from the 2020 primary without really laying out any new plan. There was some kind of concept of a plan about inflation price increase caps without much detail on how it would be implemented.
As a swing state voter, I was always going to (and did) vote for the Dem nominee in 2024, but running as a status quo candidate at a time when most people hated the status quo was always going to fail. And yes, if you look at the stock market instability and blatant corruption and gangs of unaccountable masked ICE agents disappearing people from the country without a trial, then obviously the status quo would have been better than this, but it was never a winning message.
Agree to all of the above, and I would add an even bigger challenge is not lack of an articulated plan, it's the lost trust that Democrats will actually execute their plan. Biden ran on all sorts of promises and delivered on essentially none of them -- codifying abortion rights, legalizing THC, reforming student loans, rising the minimum wage, etc etc. Day one of Trump sitting at a desk with an enormous stack of executive orders to sign was a powerful message.
I am not sure that’s actually incoherent, presuming you’re locked into Biden/Harris. Given inflation and the perceptions of the border, if the election turns out to be about, “Look at how great my policies are,” they’re going to look at the actual results and say, “Sorry, you suck, I’m voting for that guy instead.” Their only hope was to say, “Hey, at least we are better than _him_” and hope for the best.
Now, would it have been better to run someone from the outside who could plausibly run against some well-chosen Biden/Harris policies? Of course. But for the candidates we had, the strategy probably made sense.
Tangential to this subject matter, but pertinent to the 2026 and 2028 campaigns …. Just finished Original Sin, the book about the Biden “cover up.” Not much new info for people who were already following that disaster, but the most striking thing about the book is how essentially all of the Dem senators/reps/cabinet members that speak to the authors are anonymous. In other words, they are now open to criticizing Biden - “I couldn’t believe how bad he looked” - but they are STILL unwilling to do so on the record. Wtf?
Keep on stonewalling, Dems. Refuse to acknowledge your mistakes. Refuse to reflect and correct. See how far that gets you.
Plus isn't this the real scandal? Mike Johnson says that Biden was convinced that he hadn't actually paused LNG exports. Instead he believed he had approved a study on the effects of LNG. It sure looks like somebody put a piece of paper in front of Biden and told him "Sign this" while lying to him about what he was signing.
Absolutely. That’s the part of the story that hasn’t come out yet: what he was manipulated into signing, and who was manipulating him. I don’t mean to suggest that he didn’t have ANY autonomy over his decisions, but after the reading the book I find it hard to believe he had full autonomy, every time. I mean - for questions re Hunter, his staff had a cue card ready to show him that told him to say “I love my son.”
read above, this is nonsense - even if Johnson said it, either his statement, or someone's interpretation of this interaction is taken out of context, because there was no pause an the record exports of LNG, only on new approvals. Additionally, ANY president may sign a bunch of things on strong advice of his cabinet without knowing all the details - this happens all the time, and if you have a quality cabinet that you trust its a non-problem.
Biden DID NOT pause LNG exports, he paused new approvals. Record volumes of LNG was exported in BOTH 2023 and 2024. And, there was tremendous concern that ramping up even more LNG exports would have raised domestic prices, adding to the already troublesome inflation. For me, there is no "real" scandal, just a stubborn old man not wanting to relinguish power, and unable to understand that it would have been better for the country. Concerning performance, except for a very small number of critical decisions (which can of course be very important), the government runs itself to a large degree, if a president lets it.
Except that is not what Johnson reported. He said he came away from the meeting with "fear and loathing" because Biden claimed that he had only approved a "study" on the effects of LNG. The link to the interview is right there.
Is Johnson lying? That would be a major news story. I'd Johnson telling the truth? That would be an even bigger news story. And yet the press seems strangely indifferent to the affair.
Absolutely fair - I’m sure the President himself does not scour every document that comes his way. But if you haven’t read the book, I suggest you do so, bc cabinet members are quoted in the book as saying their meetings with him were rare, and heavily scripted when they did occur - and not very productive as a result. And to my point above, every cabinet member who is quoted is not named (ie, they’re referred to as Cabinet Member 1, Cabinet Member 2 etc) ….. so if the issue were simply that Biden was a stubborn old man, why not say that on the record?
Before 2008, Obama criticized the Iraq war. But he didn't just go after Bush and the republicans, he was highly critical of democrats who voted for the war. Taking this position did more than any other to win the nomination and the presidency.
1) thanks for sharing the data. That's rare and valuable
2) this is impossible to prove with regards to Obama, but I'd still be that taking a position against one's party helps the other side see a candidate as "somebody I'd consider."
3) the financial crisis overwhelmed everything, so no surprise that it was a dominant issue. I'm not sure Obama's edge on the point was primarily due to specific positions versus him seeming competent and McCain seeming not up to the moment. I suspect that, without the crisis, Obama's Iraq War stance would have made a significant impact vs. McCain. But, given that the financial crisis started in early 2007, there isn't enough quality to support or refute that.
But here’s the thing I don’t get anymore: WHY are the Dems being so deferential? I can understand (but not excuse) last year, when Biden was still in power, but … now? I get that he has prostate cancer, which is awful, but is that really why no one is owning up to their comments? Or are they afraid that admitting/addressing their misjudgment would be worse than continuing to stay mum and ride the But, Trump train?
What do they get by coming out and saying it in public?
Seriously, what do they gain, besides some pissed off associates and angry democratic voters on both sides of the argument?
Staying quiet actually buys them more support, since it's keeping the dirty laundry inside the house instead of spreading it on the lawn.
The Original Sin isn't going to change anything, and long term may end up being a boon to the democrats, because it was news that was published as a book too late to matter and with questionable motivation.
The Media crowd has gotten too used to doing this. Books and books on Trump after he's elected or left office, not enough strong voices and exposes during the actual run up to the election. Media trust would go up immensely if they actually said this up front and Trump tried to arrest a few of them.
Meanwhile, the arguments saying about how bad Biden was are mostly coming from the Republicans, who have a president who had to ask his aides to explain what he was signing in the middle of the signing. Amongst other things.
Biden will be gone by 2028, probably dead, but Trump's own diminishing faculties and questionable orders signed will still be around.
At that point, the Dems who said something could use that as leverage to say they are the better party... but none of them said it *at the time* which is when it mattered. Speaking up afterwards just gives the conservatives someone to point to and say 'they did it too!' And suddenly the Democrats are having to justify their statements.
So again, what do they gain coming forward?
And if you try to tell me Moral Highground,
I'm going to motion in the direction of the White House and laugh.
The Moral Highground clearly isn't marketable anymore. No one cares.
And finally, having read the book, I'm not convinced that Tipper's got anything more than a sensationalist fluff piece. People tried to cover up and hide dementia in a beloved family member, while other people talked themselves into everything being fine.
I work in healthcare, with a particular interest in patient safety, and studies consistently show that what makes patients MORE likely to sue their physicians after a medical error is when the physicians stonewall and don't own up to the error. It's not the mistake that's irredeemable, but the cowardice and obfuscation. Frustration and rage at not being heard are part of human nature.
Irrespective of Biden's decline and the coincident cover-up, the Dems' losing a presidential race to an unpopular 78-year-old convicted felon seems like a pretty large political fuck-up to me. It absolutely did not have to happen. And it wouldn't have happened without serious systemic dysfunction in the party. You may think differently, but I don't see how they turn this around without publicly acknowledging the dysfunction and taking steps to remediate it. Bc as far as the public knows, the same idiots are still running the show. Why trust them next time?
So yeah maybe by 2026 this whole sorry episode blows over, and maybe the Dems' strategy continues to be "but, Trump" - but so far Trump's been in office for four months, and has done some pretty unpopular things - yet his approval rating is still 8 points higher than the Democrats'.
I'm in security and analytics. Biden was over 8 points more popular than Republicans at this point in the cycle, which is why I tend not to take polling too seriously directly after an election cycle when wounds are still fresh and you have silent losers / loud victors.
As far as 'you don't see how they turn this around' part, I remember thinking back in 2009 that the republicans were never going to recover until they put up an honest and principled Reaganesque candidate, and they cleaned house of their corruption. I thought that was the only way... and then I watched all the principled politicians thrown out.
Now, to address the major misunderstanding that you have that most people make about me when they try to pidgeonhole me into 'Democrat' or 'Republican' and 'You obviously think differently...' arguments:
I believe both parties are run by complete morons running on dreams and wishes with no concept of how systems work, protected by a meritocracy that worked so well that it let these fools get away with this for too ducking long.
Sorry, did I say two parties. I mean All Parties. The greens and the Libertarians are no better, and having actually been a treasurer in the Libertarian party I can say that with a degree of direct experience.
I spent over 20 years attempting to make the argument that *this time* they'll go with our local homegrown candidate who is sane and a better choice, and who they can trust because it's not like it's a secret what we stand for. The Democrats and Republicans HAVE to come to us, this isn't even a race that matters, it'll be a easy win and... nope, they elected an idiot again.
Why? Because it's more like a team sports event to them.
Realizing that was the most freeing moment in my life,
because suddenly smart people making dumb choices made sense.
Let me take you into my mind for a second (bear with me, mixing some metaphors in here.):
Trump is a star player that fills the seats, but his fans aren't really loyal to 'the team' and now he's holding up the entire franchise. He's also a heel, which means that it can turn real sour real quick.
The Democrats have a solid team at it's core, and good fundamentals, but it's so worried about 'everyone having their turn' and sucking up to the owners and no one hurting old Joe's feelings by telling him he's too old to be on the court. People are mad because they didn't tell Joe to get off the court until it was too late and the new Team Captain was unpracticed going into the final game.
The final game was a Republican win 55 to 50 after many dropped balls by the Democrats. Analysts say that this was embarrassing for both teams, but the Republican fans have torn down the baskets and thrown them into the river anyway.
Offseason is here, and the Republicans have been caught by the Paparatzi snorting nose candy and Trump is looking like he's starting to go the way of Joe. In fact, rumors are leaking that they have him on Double Doses of Adderall to keep him awake during the Exhibition matches.
Meanwhile, on Team Blue, training is ongoing despite some infighting as the team argues to remove some of the old standard bearers. Some are calling the events of last year a scandal. Media analysts are saying they can't recover, even as their farm system prospects are overperforming their statistical averages. The Republicans continue to point to Trump's performance in exhibition games as signs that they will win this year. There has been no attempts by Republican leadership to reign in the drug use and illegality due the current hometown hero status.
With all that, who do you give the edge next season? Republicans or Democrats?
I appreciate your perspective as someone with hands-on experience. And I concede that current polling and future results don't always correlate - if they did we'd have a President DeSantis right now.
With respect to the team prospects for next season (2026, hypothetically), I give the edge to the Dems BUT that's largely bc midterms are low turnout affairs and - back to the Nate's original essay point - as of now that favors Ds.
As far as farm prospects go ... Wisconsin Supreme Court, all that - I get it. But those too are largely low-turnout high information voters - and they're more pissed off than the Rs - so I'm not sure how much that extrapolates to feelings about the party as a whole.
To your point about 2009, and thinking a Reagan-esque candidate was the answer, only to have Trump turn the whole thing upside-down and sideways ... my outside the box solution is that a new entity rises from the ashes, one that meshes non-MAGA Rs and non-AOC Ds - in other words, the bulk of the electorate - and let the poisoned Democratic Party brand become the nominal third party. (Remember, there were Whigs too, once.) Look at Dan Osborn's run in NE - he pointedly refused the Democratic endorsement. If NE were a purple state, he wins.
Patient safety can be evaluated with statistics and honest post mortems (of the process and specific cases when things go bad enough).
And of course "being more likely to sue" is not actually a serious metric for quality of health care outcome. It is of course a financial concern, but a screw up for a patient who doesn't sue is more important than proper treatment with a bad outcome for a patient who does sue.
You overestimate what "the public knows",and the likely repercussions of choosing to duck and cover.
But I didn't suggest anything about the quality of the health care outcome. I'm using the analogy only to make the point that people are pissed off when their legitimate concerns are disregarded.
To me it seems apparent that the Dems would be better off publicly addressing and fixing their systemic dysfunction (groupthink, silencing dissent, etc). But can I say with certainty that it will still matter in 2026, or whenever? Maybe ducking and covering and riding it out IS the better, or at least neutral, path - I'm just having a hard time envisioning that, based on my own feelings and reactions I've heard talking with other voters. One guy I spoke with - who detests Trump - was like, "I think the Dems are done, just done." Again, that's one guy - but variations on that theme - as evidenced in the polling - shows it's a pretty widely-held sentiment.
So for those who don't know Catalist has a huge (by political standards) dataset of voter information. They are a big deal in political circles. When they release their numbers all of the political analysts/commenters/writers are going to put something out. Silver is no exception.
That said I recommend that readers here go look up some of the coverage in other media outlets because Silver skipped some of the most interesting stuff. (I also recommend checking out the interviews with David Shor of Blue Rose from a few months back because Catalist's data set seems to be backing up what Shor reported).
1. Black and Hispanic voters swung to the Republicans. Especially black and Hispanic young male voters.
2. Younger voters swung to the Republicans. Especially black and Hispanic young male voters, but also Asian young male voters.
3. Whites basically didn't change their vote at all from 2020 to 2024. Trump's win was driven by minority defections.
People have been talking about the gender and education gaps in voter preference for years now. 2024 just reinforced that: what we saw was young, blue collar black and Hispanic men starting to vote like blue collar whites. Race was not as important as socioeconomic class this time out.
If you're a Democrat I would seriously consider whether accusing Trump of being a member of the KKK really makes sense. It's not resonating with younger minorities, especially in comparison to economic and cultural arguments.
I got ridiculed by friends and commenters when I suggested in late 2023 that the Democrats draft Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger as their ticket, feeling that Trump was an existential crisis, but that also there needed to be honorable people to disagree with in the Republican Party. Maybe in some states it would be more pragmatic to find reasonable Republicans rather than have magical thinking that the Democratic brand of local governance will stop being viewed with scorn.
I think part of the problem is in thinking that Cheney or Kinzinger would be viable alternatives to the DNC status quo. Instead why not go with Fetterman who seems much more genuine and real?
Maybe part of the Dem defeat is enough voters did not like being lied to about Biden's condition, having an unpopular candidate rammed down our throats(no primary), a candidate who seemed weak, robotic, unreal ??? A candidate that lacked courage and didn't do live press conferences to a friendly press. Who gave the same talking points over & over again( I come from a middle class family). Not to mentioned the main ally of Dems the Mainstream press is being tuned and more & more people get their news outside of Liberal mainstream press.
There seems to be endless speculation and little good data on why Trump won.
I would start with the basics although everyone argues. The Democrats ran a woman presidential candidate against Trump twice. Twice Trump won. The Democrats should pay for some random sampling where you measure people's pupils or whatever the gold standard is of detecting bias and question them about why they did not vote for Kamala. Was it because she was a woman? Try to get some real data on the issue and similar issues. Maybe America just is not willing to elect a woman president. Try to get some data before making new playbooks.
There were a lot of sources of bias for Kamala, not just that she is a woman. She's also black, she's a Democrat with far-left positions, she's apparently impossible to work for and all her people quit quickly, and she can't speak plain. It's hardly just that she's a woman!
Her positions were not far left. We have actual progressives in SF, and Harris wasn't one of them.
Unfortunately, like all Democratic candidates she needed to court the left fringe during the 2020 primary, and never really had a solid window to "tack toward the center".
Bottom line in plain English is that Harris ran a shitty campaign (not all her fault by any means) relative to the millions of folks she was trying to persuade to vote for her...
The flipside to the trending increase in voter turnout over time is that it may be related to increasingly populist candidates and party shifts - which can be troubling in its own right. More specifically, a shift from fewer well-informed voters to more but ill-informed voters isn't necessarily a positive trend.
I have to wonder if perhaps Americans only vote when they're angry. A return to good governance may return the country to a time when Americans could ignore politics because they could trust that the country was in good hands.
However, Nate's essay actually hints at the opposite: people often don't vote at all when they're angry. I'm a political junkie, but I didn't vote in either Obama elections ---- I was offended at Sarah Palin being chosen to represent all women, presumably because she had a big front and was brainless, and after that it was a choice between Obama and the Mormon. No, just --- no. Hey, they want me to play Democracy, let them run acceptable candidates. Not voting is opting out of whatever mess is going on. Not my circus, not my monkeys.
Trump/MAGA converted the most philosophically incompatible/undesirable members of the Democratic coalition. They also probably snagged a lot more kids rebelling against school system shenanigans than ever before (thanks COVID). Trolls appeal to these types. There’s your margin.
A wonderful answer would be for the blue team to cleave off the more educated, secular, socially moderate and free-market red-teamers, but that would require a philosophical shift AT LEAST on par with MAGAism. Classical liberal economic ideas have no place here.
Received a notice a few days ago that my subscription would renew at the end of the month and had decided to allow that to occur. I like the numbers based analysis you are capable of. I was very much enjoying the deep dive in this article on movements in the electorate. Then you told me that you are one of these intellectually infantile, morally bankrupt, tantrum throwing twits who apparently, despite University degrees with their names on them, don't understand how a two party system works. This wasn't an election for prom King. Grow up. If you want more say in your vote, then agitate (in real terms, by physically lobbying your representation) for ranked choice ballots, or even a parliamentary system. What is unacceptable from a supposedly intelligent, grown-ass man, is a "protest vote" in an election where one of the candidates is a transparent criminal, and I would argue a transparent traitor (convince us all you believe he had those secret documents for any reason other than to monetize them). You are just so upset at the choice available you'd happily risk a warping of democracy under a budding autocrat such that you may never get your choice again? This is not a line of reasoning I'd expect to see in a reasonably intelligent 8 year old. You will not get another dollar from me. The difference between you and I, is that if denying you my money had even a tenth of a percentage point's chance of putting the orange clown in office, then you'd still have my subscription, as personally galling as it would be to give you my money. That is the behavior of a thinking adult, as opposed to a tantrum throwing child masquerading as one.
This wasn't a snap decision. I was debating my subscription, but had decided I liked the numbers work and would try to ignore most of the punditry. I've been increasingly annoyed with the punditry. Particularly your sad "I told you so" mirroring that hack Jake Tapper on Biden's health. I saw a clip of Biden interviewed recently. He was cogent. I've yet to hear a cogent word from the orange clown in over a decade of this insanity. Do I think Biden was an "acceptable" candidate? No. Was he running against an acceptable candidate? You purport to say no. And your choice, was to abrogate your responsibility as a citizen to choose the least worse option. But by all means, pander to your subscribers in the "man"no-sphere by arguing Trump and his minions are just that. I no longer trust you have adult judgment, and thus I no longer trust your work enough to pay for it. Don't worry, I doubt this is your own personal Musk moment. I suspect there are plenty out there willing to keep lapping up what you're peddling.
Excellent analysis. I think that the drop off voters were critical in having Harris lose the swing states by a few percentage points when polling suggested that the race was 50/50. The democrat voters seem to be becoming more like the republicans of about 20 years ago, more affluent and more likely to vote in those low turnout elections like special elections and primaries.
Actually I totally agree, he barely got the popular vote. And I could sense that states that Biden carried in 2020 like Georgia and Arizona were going to very tough for Harris to win. But I was shocked when literally all of the swing states he carried in 2020 : WI, MI, PA, NV, most of which were rated as toss ups were won by Trump but just by a few percentage points. And all have Democratic Senators or Governors so they are not red states. I guess Nate was right about nominating Shapiro, he is clearly much more talented than Walz and I'd love to see him run in 2028. I'm pretty sure that PA at least would have gone to Harris if it was a Harris/Shapiro ticket!
I am starting to think that it may be hard in US politics for a woman to land a top tier VP sidekick.
The idea that Shapiro's opening requirement was "co-presidency" was disqualifying on many levels. He is extremely unlikely to get my vote in any primary.
'Shapiro struck some as overly ambitious, with “a lot of questions” about what the role of the VP would be.'
and
'the bigger hurdle for Shapiro was his face-to-face meeting with Harris, where he posed “very specific” questions about the role of a vice president, including what decisions he would be included in making'
There were other places that had similar material. A search for 'josh shapiro "co-president" VP' turns up that phrase quite a bit.
Probably. The Dems can collect data on that by running a tranny next time: a person calling himself a woman who is really sort of a male. If the problem is that people won't vote for an actual woman to win, that candidate would presumably do better than Harris, anyway.
There seems to be a logical lapse in this analysis.
I take the claim that, "Turnout didn’t cost Kamala Harris the election," to mean that Harris would still have lost if more people had voted. I think that requires data on people who didn't vote, not on people who did vote.
The assumption in this analysis seems to be that if new voters went 13.4 million for Trump to 12.6 million for Harris, that if there had been more new voters, they would have gone for Trump in the same proportion. But it seems equally plausible to me that the fact Trump attracted more new voters means the remaining eligible voters (people who didn't vote either in 2020 or 2024) were depleted of Trump supporters and would have gone mostly for Harris if they had voted.
I could make a similar point about voters who voted in 2020 but not in 2024. If more of them voted for Biden in 2020 than for Trump, perhaps their ranks were depleted of Democrats and the remainder would have favored Trump.
This issue is partially addressed in the last section, "There’s no bright line between turnout and persuasion," but not sufficiently to my mind. If turnout is all about persuasion--that is if non-voters are all due to not having a strong preference between the candidates--then the numbers presented mean the opposite of what is claimed in the article. At the other extreme, if turnout has no correlation with persuasion--that is if non-voters have the same distribution of preference strength as voters--then the analysis in the article stands. Since the truth is almost certainly somewhere in between, and we have no data on how the 2024 non-voters would have voted, I don't think we know much at all.
A subtler point is there are multiple counterfactuals to increase turnout, that likely would lead to different conclusions. If weather had been better on Election Day, turnout would likely have increased. Assuming weather was better everywhere--or at least equally in blue and red areas--would Harris have done better or worse? That answer is probably different from the counterfactual with easier registration and ballot-casting rules, and also from a counterfactual with less stringent signature-matching and other controls, and also from a counterfactual in which some event favoring neither candidate increased public interest in the election.
This is very helpful, but it suffers from the same problem in the opposite direction. It covers all eligible citizens who didn't vote in 2024, not just the ones likely to have voted had turnout been larger.
The issue is we care about the marginal voters--the ones close to the edge of voting or not voting. These are the people who determine if higher turnout favors the Republican or the Democrat. We have data on all the people who voted in 2024 in various categories (Trump 2020 voters, Biden 2020 voters, non-voters in 2020), but we only care about the ones who almost didn't vote. You have information on everyone who didn't vote, but we only care about the ones who almost voted.
Possibly we could made some guesses about marginal voters by comparing these groups, figuring that the marginal voters are likely halfway in between the average among all voters and the average among all non-voters. That an heroic assumption, but at least it attempts to address the question.
I think it might hard to get past the 1st Amendment and the laws that push voting authority on the states. Making non-voting a Federal offense seems just a little bit extreme.
That said, I think they should take steps to encourage it more.
Make election day a national holiday and move it day to Wed to discourage people taking Monday off to create a 4 day weekend.
Perhaps tie some Federal money to voting participation to stop places from limiting voting facilities in targeted neighborhoods.
The fact that 4% of voters in November had more than an hour wait is prima facie proof of intentional vote suppression.
I think there are a lot of assumptions being made here. Take this passage, for example:
Pick whatever stereotype you want: a Democrat from Brooklyn with some obvious liberal signifiers parachutes into the working-class suburbs of Pittsburgh for the weekend to get out the Harris vote. Although the volunteer is conscientious, all that winds up happening is the voter is reminded that the election is coming up, so they end up turning out and voting for Trump when they otherwise might have sat out.
This passage implies that when campaigns canvass they're just blindly going to every door in a neighborhood, knocking, and then telling the person who answers about the fact that there is an election. In reality, they have a ton of data about every residence. Some residences that are identified as having strong partisans get a visit that is simply to remind them to vote (and they know whether you've already voted or not). Some residences are deemed as persuadable, and the visits there are targeted at persuasion (so the canvasser will be trained to ask questions, determine the person's key issues, and then attempt to persuade them to vote D (or R, both parties do all of this). Obviously a persuasion visit can backfire, but that's not the same as just showing up and saying "hey, there's an election, go vote!"
The messaging of both the 24 Biden/Harris and the 24 Harris/Waltz campaign was an incoherent disaster. I an extremely engaged Democratic partisan, and even I barely heard a clearly articulated message other than "Vote for us because we aren't Donald Trump." Harris backtracked her Medicare for All vow from the 2020 primary without really laying out any new plan. There was some kind of concept of a plan about inflation price increase caps without much detail on how it would be implemented.
As a swing state voter, I was always going to (and did) vote for the Dem nominee in 2024, but running as a status quo candidate at a time when most people hated the status quo was always going to fail. And yes, if you look at the stock market instability and blatant corruption and gangs of unaccountable masked ICE agents disappearing people from the country without a trial, then obviously the status quo would have been better than this, but it was never a winning message.
Agree to all of the above, and I would add an even bigger challenge is not lack of an articulated plan, it's the lost trust that Democrats will actually execute their plan. Biden ran on all sorts of promises and delivered on essentially none of them -- codifying abortion rights, legalizing THC, reforming student loans, rising the minimum wage, etc etc. Day one of Trump sitting at a desk with an enormous stack of executive orders to sign was a powerful message.
I am not sure that’s actually incoherent, presuming you’re locked into Biden/Harris. Given inflation and the perceptions of the border, if the election turns out to be about, “Look at how great my policies are,” they’re going to look at the actual results and say, “Sorry, you suck, I’m voting for that guy instead.” Their only hope was to say, “Hey, at least we are better than _him_” and hope for the best.
Now, would it have been better to run someone from the outside who could plausibly run against some well-chosen Biden/Harris policies? Of course. But for the candidates we had, the strategy probably made sense.
Tangential to this subject matter, but pertinent to the 2026 and 2028 campaigns …. Just finished Original Sin, the book about the Biden “cover up.” Not much new info for people who were already following that disaster, but the most striking thing about the book is how essentially all of the Dem senators/reps/cabinet members that speak to the authors are anonymous. In other words, they are now open to criticizing Biden - “I couldn’t believe how bad he looked” - but they are STILL unwilling to do so on the record. Wtf?
Keep on stonewalling, Dems. Refuse to acknowledge your mistakes. Refuse to reflect and correct. See how far that gets you.
Plus isn't this the real scandal? Mike Johnson says that Biden was convinced that he hadn't actually paused LNG exports. Instead he believed he had approved a study on the effects of LNG. It sure looks like somebody put a piece of paper in front of Biden and told him "Sign this" while lying to him about what he was signing.
And yet the media is ignoring the story.
https://www.thefp.com/p/when-mike-johnson-knew-joe-biden-not-in-charge
Absolutely. That’s the part of the story that hasn’t come out yet: what he was manipulated into signing, and who was manipulating him. I don’t mean to suggest that he didn’t have ANY autonomy over his decisions, but after the reading the book I find it hard to believe he had full autonomy, every time. I mean - for questions re Hunter, his staff had a cue card ready to show him that told him to say “I love my son.”
read above, this is nonsense - even if Johnson said it, either his statement, or someone's interpretation of this interaction is taken out of context, because there was no pause an the record exports of LNG, only on new approvals. Additionally, ANY president may sign a bunch of things on strong advice of his cabinet without knowing all the details - this happens all the time, and if you have a quality cabinet that you trust its a non-problem.
Biden DID NOT pause LNG exports, he paused new approvals. Record volumes of LNG was exported in BOTH 2023 and 2024. And, there was tremendous concern that ramping up even more LNG exports would have raised domestic prices, adding to the already troublesome inflation. For me, there is no "real" scandal, just a stubborn old man not wanting to relinguish power, and unable to understand that it would have been better for the country. Concerning performance, except for a very small number of critical decisions (which can of course be very important), the government runs itself to a large degree, if a president lets it.
Except that is not what Johnson reported. He said he came away from the meeting with "fear and loathing" because Biden claimed that he had only approved a "study" on the effects of LNG. The link to the interview is right there.
Is Johnson lying? That would be a major news story. I'd Johnson telling the truth? That would be an even bigger news story. And yet the press seems strangely indifferent to the affair.
Absolutely fair - I’m sure the President himself does not scour every document that comes his way. But if you haven’t read the book, I suggest you do so, bc cabinet members are quoted in the book as saying their meetings with him were rare, and heavily scripted when they did occur - and not very productive as a result. And to my point above, every cabinet member who is quoted is not named (ie, they’re referred to as Cabinet Member 1, Cabinet Member 2 etc) ….. so if the issue were simply that Biden was a stubborn old man, why not say that on the record?
Before 2008, Obama criticized the Iraq war. But he didn't just go after Bush and the republicans, he was highly critical of democrats who voted for the war. Taking this position did more than any other to win the nomination and the presidency.
Possibly for the nomination - that and the anti-Clinton and anti-woman vote in the primaries.
Of course the naive people who voted for Obama because of the war got to learn how clueless they were once he won the election.
Fiction for the general:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2008/08/21/section-3-issues-and-the-2008-election/
https://www.politico.com/story/2008/11/exit-polls-economy-top-issue-015270
1) thanks for sharing the data. That's rare and valuable
2) this is impossible to prove with regards to Obama, but I'd still be that taking a position against one's party helps the other side see a candidate as "somebody I'd consider."
3) the financial crisis overwhelmed everything, so no surprise that it was a dominant issue. I'm not sure Obama's edge on the point was primarily due to specific positions versus him seeming competent and McCain seeming not up to the moment. I suspect that, without the crisis, Obama's Iraq War stance would have made a significant impact vs. McCain. But, given that the financial crisis started in early 2007, there isn't enough quality to support or refute that.
Meanwhile, $1M buys a presidential pardon in the land of Trump.
And cricket noises from the R's.
True. They’re also pathetic.
But here’s the thing I don’t get anymore: WHY are the Dems being so deferential? I can understand (but not excuse) last year, when Biden was still in power, but … now? I get that he has prostate cancer, which is awful, but is that really why no one is owning up to their comments? Or are they afraid that admitting/addressing their misjudgment would be worse than continuing to stay mum and ride the But, Trump train?
What do they get by coming out and saying it in public?
Seriously, what do they gain, besides some pissed off associates and angry democratic voters on both sides of the argument?
Staying quiet actually buys them more support, since it's keeping the dirty laundry inside the house instead of spreading it on the lawn.
The Original Sin isn't going to change anything, and long term may end up being a boon to the democrats, because it was news that was published as a book too late to matter and with questionable motivation.
The Media crowd has gotten too used to doing this. Books and books on Trump after he's elected or left office, not enough strong voices and exposes during the actual run up to the election. Media trust would go up immensely if they actually said this up front and Trump tried to arrest a few of them.
Meanwhile, the arguments saying about how bad Biden was are mostly coming from the Republicans, who have a president who had to ask his aides to explain what he was signing in the middle of the signing. Amongst other things.
Biden will be gone by 2028, probably dead, but Trump's own diminishing faculties and questionable orders signed will still be around.
At that point, the Dems who said something could use that as leverage to say they are the better party... but none of them said it *at the time* which is when it mattered. Speaking up afterwards just gives the conservatives someone to point to and say 'they did it too!' And suddenly the Democrats are having to justify their statements.
So again, what do they gain coming forward?
And if you try to tell me Moral Highground,
I'm going to motion in the direction of the White House and laugh.
The Moral Highground clearly isn't marketable anymore. No one cares.
And finally, having read the book, I'm not convinced that Tipper's got anything more than a sensationalist fluff piece. People tried to cover up and hide dementia in a beloved family member, while other people talked themselves into everything being fine.
Agree to disagree I guess.
I work in healthcare, with a particular interest in patient safety, and studies consistently show that what makes patients MORE likely to sue their physicians after a medical error is when the physicians stonewall and don't own up to the error. It's not the mistake that's irredeemable, but the cowardice and obfuscation. Frustration and rage at not being heard are part of human nature.
Irrespective of Biden's decline and the coincident cover-up, the Dems' losing a presidential race to an unpopular 78-year-old convicted felon seems like a pretty large political fuck-up to me. It absolutely did not have to happen. And it wouldn't have happened without serious systemic dysfunction in the party. You may think differently, but I don't see how they turn this around without publicly acknowledging the dysfunction and taking steps to remediate it. Bc as far as the public knows, the same idiots are still running the show. Why trust them next time?
So yeah maybe by 2026 this whole sorry episode blows over, and maybe the Dems' strategy continues to be "but, Trump" - but so far Trump's been in office for four months, and has done some pretty unpopular things - yet his approval rating is still 8 points higher than the Democrats'.
I'm in security and analytics. Biden was over 8 points more popular than Republicans at this point in the cycle, which is why I tend not to take polling too seriously directly after an election cycle when wounds are still fresh and you have silent losers / loud victors.
As far as 'you don't see how they turn this around' part, I remember thinking back in 2009 that the republicans were never going to recover until they put up an honest and principled Reaganesque candidate, and they cleaned house of their corruption. I thought that was the only way... and then I watched all the principled politicians thrown out.
Now, to address the major misunderstanding that you have that most people make about me when they try to pidgeonhole me into 'Democrat' or 'Republican' and 'You obviously think differently...' arguments:
I believe both parties are run by complete morons running on dreams and wishes with no concept of how systems work, protected by a meritocracy that worked so well that it let these fools get away with this for too ducking long.
Sorry, did I say two parties. I mean All Parties. The greens and the Libertarians are no better, and having actually been a treasurer in the Libertarian party I can say that with a degree of direct experience.
I spent over 20 years attempting to make the argument that *this time* they'll go with our local homegrown candidate who is sane and a better choice, and who they can trust because it's not like it's a secret what we stand for. The Democrats and Republicans HAVE to come to us, this isn't even a race that matters, it'll be a easy win and... nope, they elected an idiot again.
Why? Because it's more like a team sports event to them.
Realizing that was the most freeing moment in my life,
because suddenly smart people making dumb choices made sense.
Let me take you into my mind for a second (bear with me, mixing some metaphors in here.):
Trump is a star player that fills the seats, but his fans aren't really loyal to 'the team' and now he's holding up the entire franchise. He's also a heel, which means that it can turn real sour real quick.
The Democrats have a solid team at it's core, and good fundamentals, but it's so worried about 'everyone having their turn' and sucking up to the owners and no one hurting old Joe's feelings by telling him he's too old to be on the court. People are mad because they didn't tell Joe to get off the court until it was too late and the new Team Captain was unpracticed going into the final game.
The final game was a Republican win 55 to 50 after many dropped balls by the Democrats. Analysts say that this was embarrassing for both teams, but the Republican fans have torn down the baskets and thrown them into the river anyway.
Offseason is here, and the Republicans have been caught by the Paparatzi snorting nose candy and Trump is looking like he's starting to go the way of Joe. In fact, rumors are leaking that they have him on Double Doses of Adderall to keep him awake during the Exhibition matches.
Meanwhile, on Team Blue, training is ongoing despite some infighting as the team argues to remove some of the old standard bearers. Some are calling the events of last year a scandal. Media analysts are saying they can't recover, even as their farm system prospects are overperforming their statistical averages. The Republicans continue to point to Trump's performance in exhibition games as signs that they will win this year. There has been no attempts by Republican leadership to reign in the drug use and illegality due the current hometown hero status.
With all that, who do you give the edge next season? Republicans or Democrats?
Wow, super-fun post and I like the metaphors!
I appreciate your perspective as someone with hands-on experience. And I concede that current polling and future results don't always correlate - if they did we'd have a President DeSantis right now.
With respect to the team prospects for next season (2026, hypothetically), I give the edge to the Dems BUT that's largely bc midterms are low turnout affairs and - back to the Nate's original essay point - as of now that favors Ds.
As far as farm prospects go ... Wisconsin Supreme Court, all that - I get it. But those too are largely low-turnout high information voters - and they're more pissed off than the Rs - so I'm not sure how much that extrapolates to feelings about the party as a whole.
To your point about 2009, and thinking a Reagan-esque candidate was the answer, only to have Trump turn the whole thing upside-down and sideways ... my outside the box solution is that a new entity rises from the ashes, one that meshes non-MAGA Rs and non-AOC Ds - in other words, the bulk of the electorate - and let the poisoned Democratic Party brand become the nominal third party. (Remember, there were Whigs too, once.) Look at Dan Osborn's run in NE - he pointedly refused the Democratic endorsement. If NE were a purple state, he wins.
Patient safety can be evaluated with statistics and honest post mortems (of the process and specific cases when things go bad enough).
And of course "being more likely to sue" is not actually a serious metric for quality of health care outcome. It is of course a financial concern, but a screw up for a patient who doesn't sue is more important than proper treatment with a bad outcome for a patient who does sue.
You overestimate what "the public knows",and the likely repercussions of choosing to duck and cover.
But I didn't suggest anything about the quality of the health care outcome. I'm using the analogy only to make the point that people are pissed off when their legitimate concerns are disregarded.
To me it seems apparent that the Dems would be better off publicly addressing and fixing their systemic dysfunction (groupthink, silencing dissent, etc). But can I say with certainty that it will still matter in 2026, or whenever? Maybe ducking and covering and riding it out IS the better, or at least neutral, path - I'm just having a hard time envisioning that, based on my own feelings and reactions I've heard talking with other voters. One guy I spoke with - who detests Trump - was like, "I think the Dems are done, just done." Again, that's one guy - but variations on that theme - as evidenced in the polling - shows it's a pretty widely-held sentiment.
It will get them very far because Trumpf is gonna blow up bigly and the Dems will be able to pick up the pieces.
So for those who don't know Catalist has a huge (by political standards) dataset of voter information. They are a big deal in political circles. When they release their numbers all of the political analysts/commenters/writers are going to put something out. Silver is no exception.
That said I recommend that readers here go look up some of the coverage in other media outlets because Silver skipped some of the most interesting stuff. (I also recommend checking out the interviews with David Shor of Blue Rose from a few months back because Catalist's data set seems to be backing up what Shor reported).
1. Black and Hispanic voters swung to the Republicans. Especially black and Hispanic young male voters.
2. Younger voters swung to the Republicans. Especially black and Hispanic young male voters, but also Asian young male voters.
3. Whites basically didn't change their vote at all from 2020 to 2024. Trump's win was driven by minority defections.
People have been talking about the gender and education gaps in voter preference for years now. 2024 just reinforced that: what we saw was young, blue collar black and Hispanic men starting to vote like blue collar whites. Race was not as important as socioeconomic class this time out.
If you're a Democrat I would seriously consider whether accusing Trump of being a member of the KKK really makes sense. It's not resonating with younger minorities, especially in comparison to economic and cultural arguments.
The "Abundance Agenda" is the Democrats' lifeline out of hell, if they have the brains and the guts to embrace it.
I got ridiculed by friends and commenters when I suggested in late 2023 that the Democrats draft Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger as their ticket, feeling that Trump was an existential crisis, but that also there needed to be honorable people to disagree with in the Republican Party. Maybe in some states it would be more pragmatic to find reasonable Republicans rather than have magical thinking that the Democratic brand of local governance will stop being viewed with scorn.
I think part of the problem is in thinking that Cheney or Kinzinger would be viable alternatives to the DNC status quo. Instead why not go with Fetterman who seems much more genuine and real?
Thanks for much needed correction!
If you use the web browser interface there is an edit option in the 3 dot menu next to your post.
Thanks. To answer your question: there are so many things to ridicule me for, it is some times hard to tell the proximate cause.
I noticed it because I did the same thing once and got a light roasting from my wife.
Maybe part of the Dem defeat is enough voters did not like being lied to about Biden's condition, having an unpopular candidate rammed down our throats(no primary), a candidate who seemed weak, robotic, unreal ??? A candidate that lacked courage and didn't do live press conferences to a friendly press. Who gave the same talking points over & over again( I come from a middle class family). Not to mentioned the main ally of Dems the Mainstream press is being tuned and more & more people get their news outside of Liberal mainstream press.
There seems to be endless speculation and little good data on why Trump won.
I would start with the basics although everyone argues. The Democrats ran a woman presidential candidate against Trump twice. Twice Trump won. The Democrats should pay for some random sampling where you measure people's pupils or whatever the gold standard is of detecting bias and question them about why they did not vote for Kamala. Was it because she was a woman? Try to get some real data on the issue and similar issues. Maybe America just is not willing to elect a woman president. Try to get some data before making new playbooks.
There were a lot of sources of bias for Kamala, not just that she is a woman. She's also black, she's a Democrat with far-left positions, she's apparently impossible to work for and all her people quit quickly, and she can't speak plain. It's hardly just that she's a woman!
Her positions were not far left. We have actual progressives in SF, and Harris wasn't one of them.
Unfortunately, like all Democratic candidates she needed to court the left fringe during the 2020 primary, and never really had a solid window to "tack toward the center".
In 2008 there was a 3-way primary for the D's, with Clinton in a decent lead.
When Edwards withdrew, his women supporters split 50-50 between Clinton and Obama.
His male supporters split overwhelmingly for Obama, and that was Obama's margin of victory.
Random? Probably not.
Bottom line in plain English is that Harris ran a shitty campaign (not all her fault by any means) relative to the millions of folks she was trying to persuade to vote for her...
The flipside to the trending increase in voter turnout over time is that it may be related to increasingly populist candidates and party shifts - which can be troubling in its own right. More specifically, a shift from fewer well-informed voters to more but ill-informed voters isn't necessarily a positive trend.
I have to wonder if perhaps Americans only vote when they're angry. A return to good governance may return the country to a time when Americans could ignore politics because they could trust that the country was in good hands.
However, Nate's essay actually hints at the opposite: people often don't vote at all when they're angry. I'm a political junkie, but I didn't vote in either Obama elections ---- I was offended at Sarah Palin being chosen to represent all women, presumably because she had a big front and was brainless, and after that it was a choice between Obama and the Mormon. No, just --- no. Hey, they want me to play Democracy, let them run acceptable candidates. Not voting is opting out of whatever mess is going on. Not my circus, not my monkeys.
Trump/MAGA converted the most philosophically incompatible/undesirable members of the Democratic coalition. They also probably snagged a lot more kids rebelling against school system shenanigans than ever before (thanks COVID). Trolls appeal to these types. There’s your margin.
A wonderful answer would be for the blue team to cleave off the more educated, secular, socially moderate and free-market red-teamers, but that would require a philosophical shift AT LEAST on par with MAGAism. Classical liberal economic ideas have no place here.
Received a notice a few days ago that my subscription would renew at the end of the month and had decided to allow that to occur. I like the numbers based analysis you are capable of. I was very much enjoying the deep dive in this article on movements in the electorate. Then you told me that you are one of these intellectually infantile, morally bankrupt, tantrum throwing twits who apparently, despite University degrees with their names on them, don't understand how a two party system works. This wasn't an election for prom King. Grow up. If you want more say in your vote, then agitate (in real terms, by physically lobbying your representation) for ranked choice ballots, or even a parliamentary system. What is unacceptable from a supposedly intelligent, grown-ass man, is a "protest vote" in an election where one of the candidates is a transparent criminal, and I would argue a transparent traitor (convince us all you believe he had those secret documents for any reason other than to monetize them). You are just so upset at the choice available you'd happily risk a warping of democracy under a budding autocrat such that you may never get your choice again? This is not a line of reasoning I'd expect to see in a reasonably intelligent 8 year old. You will not get another dollar from me. The difference between you and I, is that if denying you my money had even a tenth of a percentage point's chance of putting the orange clown in office, then you'd still have my subscription, as personally galling as it would be to give you my money. That is the behavior of a thinking adult, as opposed to a tantrum throwing child masquerading as one.
This wasn't a snap decision. I was debating my subscription, but had decided I liked the numbers work and would try to ignore most of the punditry. I've been increasingly annoyed with the punditry. Particularly your sad "I told you so" mirroring that hack Jake Tapper on Biden's health. I saw a clip of Biden interviewed recently. He was cogent. I've yet to hear a cogent word from the orange clown in over a decade of this insanity. Do I think Biden was an "acceptable" candidate? No. Was he running against an acceptable candidate? You purport to say no. And your choice, was to abrogate your responsibility as a citizen to choose the least worse option. But by all means, pander to your subscribers in the "man"no-sphere by arguing Trump and his minions are just that. I no longer trust you have adult judgment, and thus I no longer trust your work enough to pay for it. Don't worry, I doubt this is your own personal Musk moment. I suspect there are plenty out there willing to keep lapping up what you're peddling.
“That is the behavior of a thinking adult, as opposed to a tantrum throwing child masquerading as one.”
I suggest a mirror, my friend.
“And your choice, was to abrogate your responsibility as a citizen to choose the least worse option.“
Is there any reality to this commenter where a party other than the Democratic one is the least worse [sic] option?
I can't speak for the original poster, but ...
Party? Not to me.
The R's have abandoned reality, the Greens never had a grip on reality, and the Libertarians make the Greens look like realists.
Candidates? Sure.
But the modern Republicans never select Tom Campbell or Kevin Faulconer.
At least Pete Wilson had a brain.
Excellent analysis. I think that the drop off voters were critical in having Harris lose the swing states by a few percentage points when polling suggested that the race was 50/50. The democrat voters seem to be becoming more like the republicans of about 20 years ago, more affluent and more likely to vote in those low turnout elections like special elections and primaries.
So far the R's haven't shown any serious turn-out skills when Trump isn't on the ballot.
The demographic numbers took pretty grim for the R's if they can't find candidates to carry the MAGA banner.
Harris was running an uphill campaign into a headwind. The fact that Trump barely won should worry the R's.
Actually I totally agree, he barely got the popular vote. And I could sense that states that Biden carried in 2020 like Georgia and Arizona were going to very tough for Harris to win. But I was shocked when literally all of the swing states he carried in 2020 : WI, MI, PA, NV, most of which were rated as toss ups were won by Trump but just by a few percentage points. And all have Democratic Senators or Governors so they are not red states. I guess Nate was right about nominating Shapiro, he is clearly much more talented than Walz and I'd love to see him run in 2028. I'm pretty sure that PA at least would have gone to Harris if it was a Harris/Shapiro ticket!
Walz was definitely a weak campaigner.
I am starting to think that it may be hard in US politics for a woman to land a top tier VP sidekick.
The idea that Shapiro's opening requirement was "co-presidency" was disqualifying on many levels. He is extremely unlikely to get my vote in any primary.
I never saw anything about Shapiro being a co-president, do you have a specific story? Googling is not very helpful! Thanks!
For example ...
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/06/politics/tim-walz-inside-harris-vp-pick/index.html
'Shapiro struck some as overly ambitious, with “a lot of questions” about what the role of the VP would be.'
and
'the bigger hurdle for Shapiro was his face-to-face meeting with Harris, where he posed “very specific” questions about the role of a vice president, including what decisions he would be included in making'
There were other places that had similar material. A search for 'josh shapiro "co-president" VP' turns up that phrase quite a bit.
To paraphrase James Carville: It's the y chromosome, stupid.
Probably. The Dems can collect data on that by running a tranny next time: a person calling himself a woman who is really sort of a male. If the problem is that people won't vote for an actual woman to win, that candidate would presumably do better than Harris, anyway.
"...Democrats need to find a new playbook..."
No kidding. That's like saying "the Pope's Catholic" or that "Bears shit in the woods".
There seems to be a logical lapse in this analysis.
I take the claim that, "Turnout didn’t cost Kamala Harris the election," to mean that Harris would still have lost if more people had voted. I think that requires data on people who didn't vote, not on people who did vote.
The assumption in this analysis seems to be that if new voters went 13.4 million for Trump to 12.6 million for Harris, that if there had been more new voters, they would have gone for Trump in the same proportion. But it seems equally plausible to me that the fact Trump attracted more new voters means the remaining eligible voters (people who didn't vote either in 2020 or 2024) were depleted of Trump supporters and would have gone mostly for Harris if they had voted.
I could make a similar point about voters who voted in 2020 but not in 2024. If more of them voted for Biden in 2020 than for Trump, perhaps their ranks were depleted of Democrats and the remainder would have favored Trump.
This issue is partially addressed in the last section, "There’s no bright line between turnout and persuasion," but not sufficiently to my mind. If turnout is all about persuasion--that is if non-voters are all due to not having a strong preference between the candidates--then the numbers presented mean the opposite of what is claimed in the article. At the other extreme, if turnout has no correlation with persuasion--that is if non-voters have the same distribution of preference strength as voters--then the analysis in the article stands. Since the truth is almost certainly somewhere in between, and we have no data on how the 2024 non-voters would have voted, I don't think we know much at all.
A subtler point is there are multiple counterfactuals to increase turnout, that likely would lead to different conclusions. If weather had been better on Election Day, turnout would likely have increased. Assuming weather was better everywhere--or at least equally in blue and red areas--would Harris have done better or worse? That answer is probably different from the counterfactual with easier registration and ballot-casting rules, and also from a counterfactual with less stringent signature-matching and other controls, and also from a counterfactual in which some event favoring neither candidate increased public interest in the election.
David Shor at Blue Rose estimated that if all registered voters had turned out that Trump would have won the popular vote by 5% rather than 1.5%.
Yes.
Here is one modest slice of data :
https://www.prri.org/spotlight/breaking-down-the-differences-between-voters-and-non-voters-in-the-2024-election/
Non-voters compared to voters are :
Less educated - H -13%
Less religious - H + 43%
More 3rd parties / Ind - H + 3%
More Democratic - H + 91%
Younger - H + 6%
More minorities - H + 35%
More lower or middle economic bracket. H - 4%
More single - H + 13%
More urban - H + 22%
The only items that lean R in the larger voting population is education and lower economic brackets.
(The +/- data is from 2024 exit polls, with some eyeball averaging where the PRRI data isn't sliced the same way)
Only 1k people in the non-voter survey, so the usual MoE applies.
This is very helpful, but it suffers from the same problem in the opposite direction. It covers all eligible citizens who didn't vote in 2024, not just the ones likely to have voted had turnout been larger.
The issue is we care about the marginal voters--the ones close to the edge of voting or not voting. These are the people who determine if higher turnout favors the Republican or the Democrat. We have data on all the people who voted in 2024 in various categories (Trump 2020 voters, Biden 2020 voters, non-voters in 2020), but we only care about the ones who almost didn't vote. You have information on everyone who didn't vote, but we only care about the ones who almost voted.
Possibly we could made some guesses about marginal voters by comparing these groups, figuring that the marginal voters are likely halfway in between the average among all voters and the average among all non-voters. That an heroic assumption, but at least it attempts to address the question.
100%
I think this mainly shows the danger of guessing what impact might happen with increased turnout.
Basically the data is all over the place unless you go to a mandatory voting scenario.
NO Mandatory Voting!!!!!
I think it might hard to get past the 1st Amendment and the laws that push voting authority on the states. Making non-voting a Federal offense seems just a little bit extreme.
That said, I think they should take steps to encourage it more.
Make election day a national holiday and move it day to Wed to discourage people taking Monday off to create a 4 day weekend.
Perhaps tie some Federal money to voting participation to stop places from limiting voting facilities in targeted neighborhoods.
The fact that 4% of voters in November had more than an hour wait is prima facie proof of intentional vote suppression.
From my perspective, Australia is a horrorshow. I can't imagine being forced to vote. A law like that passes, I'll never vote again, that's for sure.
I don't suppose there was intentional vote suppression; I suppose there was a LOT of voters overwhelming some polling places.
I think there are a lot of assumptions being made here. Take this passage, for example:
Pick whatever stereotype you want: a Democrat from Brooklyn with some obvious liberal signifiers parachutes into the working-class suburbs of Pittsburgh for the weekend to get out the Harris vote. Although the volunteer is conscientious, all that winds up happening is the voter is reminded that the election is coming up, so they end up turning out and voting for Trump when they otherwise might have sat out.
This passage implies that when campaigns canvass they're just blindly going to every door in a neighborhood, knocking, and then telling the person who answers about the fact that there is an election. In reality, they have a ton of data about every residence. Some residences that are identified as having strong partisans get a visit that is simply to remind them to vote (and they know whether you've already voted or not). Some residences are deemed as persuadable, and the visits there are targeted at persuasion (so the canvasser will be trained to ask questions, determine the person's key issues, and then attempt to persuade them to vote D (or R, both parties do all of this). Obviously a persuasion visit can backfire, but that's not the same as just showing up and saying "hey, there's an election, go vote!"