A new analysis of precinct-level data by the NBC News Decision Desk shows the extent to which President-elect Donald Trump’s wins in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — and Vice President Kamala Harris’s losses — were driven by weak turnout in heavily Democratic cities.
Going into Election Day, Harris’s clearest path to victory was to win all three states in the old “blue wall.” Ultimately, she fell short in all three, and the nearly completed vote count in those states shows how the number of votes compared to 2020 dropped in some of the most Democratic-friendly areas of those states.
[…]As the diagonal black lines show, in all three states, heavily Democratic counties on the right side of each panel had worse turnout relative to 2020 than the heavily Republican counties on the left side. The largest county in each state — Wayne County, Michigan, home of Detroit; Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania; and Milwaukee County, Wisconsin — had either the worst or second-worst shift in votes cast of any county in their state.
Wisconsin did a good job raising turnout in Milwaukee County, but it wasn’t enough.
Baud
So we’re back to our people didn’t show up?
Starfish (she/her)
Could this have been because of the self-own last time when Trump discouraged his voters from early voting?
Scott Mc
So – does the ground game matter? Any ideas what happened here?
Aziz, light!
Cognitive dissonance is not just a river in Egypt.
Baud
Could just be inflation disgruntlement. Maybe Gaza in Michigan as well. I guess there will be more analysis to come.
Interesting we had a chance to win the electoral college while losing the popular vote. That would have been an interesting timeline.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Scott Mc: If you look at Wisconsin, clearly the ground game in the big blue counties was there (turnout was up) but it lagged the overall rise in turnout. So, it probably matters.
hrprogressive
And some people were dead-certain that Philadelphia, nearly alone, was going to clinch PA for Harris.
Apparently not.
Served
This is looking to be the source of Trump’s uptick in Chicago/Cook County IL as well.
I would guess their may be a common root cause but I also wonder if having no other major federal races on the ticket and IL being solidly blue (votes don’t count) meant lower turnout among Dems.
Quaker in a Basement
These charts show the percentage change in votes cast 2024 vs 2020. But what about turnout percentage of registered voters? Was that down similarly? Or did the voting pool shrink?
Baud
A more disturbing possibility is that a lot of Dem voters are misogynist, as we saw in 2016 as well.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: It wouldn’t have to be a lot to make a difference.
mrmoshpotato
@Served: IIllinois is solidly blue? Since when?
KatKapCC
@Omnes Omnibus: It is a lot.
different-church-lady
Now maybe, just hear me out on this… maybe not shitting on our own candidates would help turnout? I mean, yeah, I know it’s sounds kinda crazy, but…
Baud
@different-church-lady:
When has that ever worked?
Manyakitty
@Baud: I honestly thought a Black woman had a better chance than a White one, but alas. Shit. FUCK.
different-church-lady
@Baud: I don’t know. Has it ever been tried?
BlueGuitarist
Would be useful to take into account Philadelphia’s 4.18% population decline since 2020.
Jinchi
Cue the pundits insisting the only way for Democrats to turnout voters in blue cities is to kick immigrants and poor people.
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady: But I only agree with the candidate 90% of the time. Don’t impinge on my freedom to criticize.
satby
Hello. And racist.
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus: Well be sure to exclude the 90% when you’re writing your op-ed.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Seriously, even though Bluesky has no algorithm and I see only who I’ve followed, the negativity I see is too damn high.
WaterGirl
Anyone Democrat or Independent that was too tired or lazy or didn’t care enough to vote will get exactly what they deserve.
Unfortunately, the rest of us are going to get it, too.
Is democracy that hard to understand???
eemom
@Manyakitty:
Why did you think that?
Baud
@satby:
I’m not certain racism is more of a problem than sexism with Dem voters. With voters generally, yes.
Unkown known
Looking at those numbers it’s not so much that D’s underperformed the last time, it’s that the R’s overperformed.
The story that still makes the most sense to me are the ones about inflation and the Afghanistan withdrawal. Lots of non-engaged voters saw those things and were mad about them for various reasons, and Kamala was basically seen as the incumbent in terms of receiving the blame.
Krugman shared a nice chart on BlueSky of inflation and wages rising together. The inflation line was labelled “BIden did this” and the wage-rise line was labelled “I earned this myself”. It’s how low info people are prone to seeing these changes, and it’s REALLY hard to convince them that they are wrong (even though they factually are).
So lots of hopping mad R’s all pumped up to come and express their outrage at the ballot box, and a lot of D’s who were motivated, yes, but only about as motivated as they were in 2020 when they were also showing up to save democracy from impending fascism.
Jinchi
@Baud: 2016 and 2024 were both extremely close elections, so I hope people aren’t learning the wrong lessons here.
I fon’t think Joe Biden would have done any better than Clinton in 2016 or Harris in 2024.
His luck in 2020 was timing.
Mag
In Minnesota, 135,255 people voted to reelect Klobuchar that didn’t vote for Harris/Walz. Klobuchar won 56.20% of the vote versus 50.89% for Harris/Walz.
As a gauge of Walz’s popularity, by comparison, he won reelection in 2022 with 52.27% of the vote.
Even in Minnesota, Harris/Walz underperformed. Neighboring Wisconsin and the other Great Lake states, Michigan and Pennsylvania, weren’t going outperform Minnesota in turnout.
I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that either a) the voters want this, b) disenfranchisement worked better than Republicans expected, c) Putin had a 50-state strategy, or d) all of the above. Add in racism, misogyny, corporate billionaire media, and willful obliviousness of people who should know better, then what other outcome could their have been? The right has been working toward this outcome for more than 50 years.
different-church-lady
@satby: I refuse to believe actual Dems are like that. But I’m certain a lot of swings who sometimes vote Dem are.
WaterGirl
@Baud: It’s pretty tough not to be negative at the moment, even if you’re not blaming Democrats. It feels like the sky is falling, and I don’t think that negativity can be blamed on BlueSky.
KatKapCC
@WaterGirl: Sadly, for some people, it seems to be. Which, in 2024, is just baffling to me.
different-church-lady
@WaterGirl:
That’s one of them rhetorical questions, no?
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I’m speaking of negativity towards Dems, not the state of things generally.
eemom
@WaterGirl:
Or too racist and/or misogynist.
Glad the 1600 pound elephants are finally getting some air time around here.
John S.
@Manyakitty:
The question that can never be answered is just how much were racism and/or misogyny a factor.
The drag of incumbency, inflation, and myriad other factors, which were surely damaging, cannot easily be decoupled from the overall result.
So we’ll never really know how much of which factors were the ones that ultimately tipped the election.
mrmoshpotato
@WaterGirl:
Apparently yes for some people.
different-church-lady
@John S.: Tragic accidents usually have multiple causes.
Baud
@Jinchi:
The comparison isn’t with Biden but with a generic male Dem. It’s all speculative, but it’s happened twice now.
Jackie
@Baud: ☹️
And, probably a bit racist as well. ☹️
Poe Larity
If Donald gets a third op, can we run Obama?
New Deal democrat
@Baud: One possible way to check would be to run a similar analysis for Conressional races. Did the race or sex of the Congressional candidate in the same area, e.g., Philadelphia and its suburbs, lead to a different result? Or was there a similar drop off in Philly vs. 2020 for White or male candidates?
Here’s a different hypothesis: did Black voters in the three cities rebel against the replacement of Biden on the ticket?
Jinchi
@Unkown known: I believe that inflation was a real factor, but I don’t think anyone was voting on Afghanistan.
Gaza, absolutely. Ukraine, maybe.
But not Afghanistan.
John S.
@different-church-lady:
This is true. But politics have a lot less one weird trick explanations than typical real life disasters.
It would be nice if there were the equivalent of “you hit black ice and lost control” type causalities in politics, but that usually is not the case.
Baud
@New Deal democrat:
I hope not. That would hurt Biden most of all.
MagdaInBlack
@John S.: How about 4 weird tricks? Racism, sexism, misogyny and white nationalism.
New Deal democrat
@Unkown known:
Good point. So why was Trump better at pulling small rural area voters out of the woodwork now vs. 4 years ago? Are we back to the D candidate was not a White male?
PJ
@Jinchi: “Luck” is another way of saying that Biden was a safe, “moderate” old white guy, while Clinton and Harris were women, and Harris was also black.
Never underestimate how sexist and racist this country is.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: You know what? A lot of people have been talking about that ever since the election. It’s not just getting mentioned now. Sure some people are looking for other reasons too.
Soprano2
@Baud: Yep, that’s a distinct possibility.
Ryan
Ben Wicker for DNC chair! Best argument ever.
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
As much as it pains me to say this, I suspect you are correct.
hitchhiker
This election taught me, at age 72, that there is really nothing I could ever have accomplished or achieved or overcome that would have been enough to make up for my gender.
It’s freeing, in a way. And of course I knew this and had lots of evidence that it was true every day of my life — but the stark contrast between Harris and him was so extreme that it seemed certain that most adults would recognize it and act accordingly.
That they didn’t — and what that means — is going to be for my little granddaughter to absorb into her being. She’s almost four. She and her twin brother were born during the Jan 6th riot, just as the doors were being breached by the mob. It absolutely rocks me that we’re here.
Someone mentioned negativity over at bluesky, where I’m posting as Calamity Jim. I can handle negativity a lot more easily than the many posts that include 45’s ugly face. That I do not need to see, ever, anywhere.
Ryan
@hitchhiker: I’m sorry, this makes me sad on a personal level.
John S.
@MagdaInBlack:
All of those were factors. But even a candidate who wasn’t hindered by any of those factors — like a white, cisgender Christian man— would have faced an uphill battle.
Other factors such as inflation and anger at the incumbent government have doomed other candidates worldwide.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
You know what? A lot of people have been paying lip service before now.
Folks who know their shit, not so much.
kindness
I have a hard time understanding any Democrat who chose not to vote this election. Honestly I have a hard time understanding any independent who chose not to vote this election. Not meaning to cast stones but those folk are lousy people.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@satby:
Yeah, it couldn’t possibly be the fact that Biden voters were pissed that the party couldn’t stand by a well liked, successful President, deciding to change horses near the end of the race. The Tonya Harding’s of the Democratic party can blame Biden all they want but it’s his voters that told them to fuck off.
Voters are not going to reward weakness and a party that can’t stand by a successful candidate/incumbent isn’t going to win. Yes, it’s petty and short-sighted of voters to do this but that’s the way it is. I don’t blame Harris, I think she did as good as she could with the shit sandwich suddenly shoved into her lap.
IMO Biden would have won and that’s all I have to say about this.
Ryan
I can kind of understand. If you don’t pay close attention to politics, the president is omniscient and responsible for everything. I don’t get why they bother for downballot offices though.
lowtechcyclist
@Jinchi:
I think Afghanistan made a big difference, just not as something that voters were thinking about.
Ever since the Afghan withdrawal, the media have been unremittingly on the warpath against Biden, despite a remarkable record of success on his part. Three years of that has to take a toll on people’s opinions.
Splitting Image
@Jinchi:
This is actually part of the overall problem. The withdrawal from Afghanistan ended a 20-year long engagement that had been a major rallying point for years. And the withdrawal was handled superbly considering the situation Trump left for Biden.
No one cared. Or voted to support Biden on the issue. Or against Trump. The press worked feverishly to turn a Biden win into a loss, and the protestor class simply moved on to another issue to protest about as though the whole Afghanistan war never happened.
Goldfish voters.
Jinchi
@Baud: If Clinton had won in 2016 or Harris in 2024 we’d be debating the brilliant campaign each waged. with just a shift of a timy proportion of votes.
It’s the nature of out winner take all system. We hail people for a bare win and curse them for a bare loss.
Trump won his primary in 16 against a wide field of more competent Republicans, male and female, and he essentially cleared the field this year as well.
I think the real problem is that there is a huge draw for the politics of hate and grievance right now. We’re seeing this all across the world.
Martin
@John S.: I don’t think they were a significant factor. Certainly didn’t help, but contra opinions of many here – Democrats were awfully excited when Joe wasn’t the candidate and Harris, despite my belief that she would govern in a more progressive manner, didn’t campaign that way.
We continue to put forward that the way to win elections is to appeal to voters on the others side. Well, white women heard the abortion message, voted for the abortion voter initiative, and then voted for Trump. Meanwhile, Democrats calling for change from Biden’s policies were told there would be no change. Why are people surprised that Democrats didn’t turn out if Democrats were too afraid to give their own voters what they asked for? This isn’t complicated.
Republicans don’t respond to argument. They respond to being beaten. Stop looking for validation that our ideas are good ones and just kick their ass.
And the various narratives regarding misogyny or racism are counterproductive as Democrats are going to internalize the lesson that nominating women and people of color is electoral suicide far more strongly than the GOP will. I suspect we’ve already hit the point that if you want a woman president, vote Republican because they are FAR more likely to nominate one than Democrats after this assessment. It might be MTG or Nancy Mace – they might be horrible – but they haven’t internalized that it’s impossible for a woman to win.
Assessments about the election that are inactionable are merely learned helplessness. Reject them. They will cause us to lose more.
Geminid
@Unkown known: Independents had to be a factor as well. Some states have more Indies, some less, but they’re pretty much everwhere in varying amounts. A swing within this group could make a sizeable difference in a state like Wisconsin.
Joe Biden carried this group in 2020. I’m waiting to see numbers for 2024, but I suspect Trump won a majority of Independents this time.
lowtechcyclist
@John S.:
I think it’s the opposite lately.
We lost this one by less than 250K votes across three states. So this is the third super-close election like this in a row.
There are always numerous factors that could have made a small difference – but when an election is this close, it only takes a small difference to reverse the outcome. So you have numerous factors that either tipped it towards the winner or could have tipped it towards the loser but didn’t.
‘Overdetermined’ was the phrase some commentators used with respect to the 2016 outcome.
zhena gogolia
@hitchhiker:
My feelings exactly.
John S.
@Martin:
This is great advice!
kindness
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Joe Biden absolutely would have lost. Did you miss how the entire press treated him, especially after the debate? Sorry but I don’t agree with you there.
prostratedragon
@Served: We had a collective awakening to that in Cook County, where a dip in turnout in 2014 led to the election of Bruce “the Vandal” Rauner. Chicago metro has carried the State for Dems since. But I guess collective memory has a 10-year half-life.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Recognizing a problem is one thing. Making bad choices regarding the solution to the problem is another.
Jinchi
People forgot Covid and empty shelves at the grocery store , so I’m with you on that point.
The media also spent the first three years insisting we were on the verge of recession, so it’s no surprise voters thought Biden was bad for the economy.
Propaganda works and I think we have to wonder how much it matters that ours is dominated by a small group of billionaires who are starting to dabble in politics.
Manyakitty
@eemom: less scary
Betty
I daw some stories before the election that polls were showing a drop of support for Harris among Blacks in Philadelphia. Not sure why.
karen marie
@Baud: Or they figured “we have this in the bag” and thus didn’t bother.
Geminid
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Nice to see you around again. I trust you and yours have been doing ok these last few months.
John S.
@lowtechcyclist:
I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying. But I think you justify my point that there are too many factors to make it possible to draw a straight line from any one cause to the effect.
Manyakitty
@Baud: block early, block often. I’m demoralized enough. No need to make it worse. My feed is generally smart, diverse, and enjoyable.
Manyakitty
@different-church-lady: this. So many causes it’s hard to know where to start.
karen marie
@WaterGirl: Yeah, I guess you heard about “Dr. Oz” being put forward for CMS.
@Jinchi: I simply do not understand why anyone who wants to see the end to the wholesale murder happening in Gaza would vote for Trump or just stay home. It makes no sense to me.
Omnes Omnibus
@Manyakitty: Maybe Baud should block himself.
Geminid
@Betty: Micro-targeted propaganda may have caused a decline in support for Harris among Philadelphia’s Black voters. Republicans were definitely pushing it.
Manyakitty
@Odie Hugh Manatee: same. SAME.
mrmoshpotato
@Unkown known: Lots of non-engaged voters were mad about the withdrawal from Afghanistan? What?
prostratedragon
@Baud: That continues to be my working hypothesis. Racism might be an intensifier, notwithstanding Obama’s two wins; exceptional folks ought to stay exceptional, now that the point’s been proven. Unfortunately, many people will never tell the truth about this, so nomination is always going to be a risk.
Manyakitty
@Omnes Omnibus: lol–a sincere form of self-criticism
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: What is your proposed solution?
Soprano2
@eemom: You know, there were multiple reasons the election turned out the way it did. It would be as much of a mistake to ignore them as to ignore the role racism and misogyny played in it.
I think Dems should say this was a 50-50 election, because it’s the truth. There is no mandate for the R’s no matter how much the press wants there to be one.
lowtechcyclist
@Martin:
What did they want fixed? Inflation and housing costs. She had a plan to increase housing construction, and inflation was already back to normal levels. What were they asking for that she wasn’t promising to give them?
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
People feel totally defeated. Their best efforts failed. Time will heal that, but it will take more than a year to regain the positive mental attitude.
Old School
@Martin:
I promise to less for the middle class! I’ll cut taxes for billionaires! Unions, scmunions! No healthcare for trans prisoners!
Or what policy changes do you feel Democrats were demanding?
different-church-lady
@John S.:
Like… Joe Biden?
mrmoshpotato
@Jinchi:
Biden’s 2020 luck was timing?
lowtechcyclist
@John S.:
OK, I misunderstood you then. Thanks for the explanation!
John S.
@different-church-lady:
Sure, except he had his own negatives. I’m not so sure that victory would have been assured with him at the top of the ticket.
We’ll never know.
RevRick
@satby: It may very well be that sexism and racism played a role in Harris’ loss, let’s not forget that she wracked up the 4th and perhaps 3rd largest vote total ever.
Being in the Philadelphia TV market, I can testify that she was yoked to every unpopular Biden administration action/inaction, policy/lack thereof by outside, billionaire superpac. It was all designed to drive down her favorability and discourage her voters. I mean she got hammered with everything and the kitchen sink. To hear the commercials you’d come away believing that she, as VP, made all the decisions, and President Biden was an afterthought.
Instead of railing at our voters, perhaps we should get out of this bubble and make our own videos touting Democratic programs. Do propaganda in the best sense for our side.
SpaceUnit
Slightly off-topic, but I never considered six a real number. Somebody just made it up.
And eleven is total bullshit. Eleven can fuck right off.
John S.
@lowtechcyclist:
Ah, no worries. My sentence structure goes all to shit in the evening.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I feel like the endless discussions of ‘If we’d have done this.., we’d have won’ are just bargaining, a stage of grief.
I held on to rage the longest. Now, for me, its grim acceptance.
Quinerly
I feel like I don’t even know this country anymore. (And, yes, I know exactly who Marc Penn is).
Who are these Independents? Who are these Dems? (Yes, a sliver…but still).
Trump’s approval rating at 54%
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4998260-majority-of-voters-approve-of-trump-poll-shows
Eta…Biden’s approval rating was 55% on 11/20/2020. He hadn’t appointed freaks to the Cabinet.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: In broad terms, if misogyny toward female candidates exists, it will lose us a couple of points off the bat. As a result, when we nominate a female candidate, we need to make up the points elsewhere. It has to be part of the calculation. As far as how? I don’t know because I don’t know the lay of the land for any upcoming elections.
Or we could just ignore it. I am rather doubtful that this would yield a positive result.
Baud
@SpaceUnit:
I’ve always felt 11 leads a secret life as Roman numeral II.
KatKapCC
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
This is a guess, not a fact.
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
I have no doubt. And I don’t mean that a lot of Democratic voters are in the he-man woman haters club. They just will not vote for a woman for president. They may deny that that’s what it is, but that’s what it is.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@RevRick: Propaganda videos about Dem accomplishments, city living (to counter their ridiculous BS), bashing the management of red states, and we need something to overcome the perception that Democratic men aren’t real men and don’t support men. That is a thing now, and its damaging.
Omnes Omnibus
@KatKapCC: Hence the “IMO,” I would think.
lowtechcyclist
@SpaceUnit:
How about zero? The square root of 3? Pi?
We could also use some imaginary numbers, like the square root of -1.
lowtechcyclist
@John S.: As does my comprehension. :D
Baud
@Quinerly:
It’s the good economy.
The Thin Black Duke
Trump isn’t Lonesome Rhodes or Greg Stinson or Saul Goodman.
Trump isn’t exceptionally smart or charismatic or funny.
Trump is a lazy, nasty, vulgar, barely-literate, mobbed-up slumlord from Queens.
But it didn’t matter. All Trump had to be was white.
SpaceUnit
@lowtechcyclist:
It’s the math equivalent of Bigfoot or alien moon bases.
KatKapCC
@Omnes Omnibus: Sure, but what’s the point? Reworded, it’s “I think Biden would have won.” Okay, and? How many people on this blog were saying over and over that they felt optimistic, even close to confident, predicting the Harris blow-out, etc? A lot of people “thought” she would win.
This person is saying “I think Biden would have won” after saying they think Harris lost because loyal Biden voters stayed home in protest after he left the race. So it seems like trying to offer up an opinion as a hindsight fact.
Manyakitty
@The Thin Black Duke: and “rich” (yes, those are sneer quotes)
lowtechcyclist
@SpaceUnit:
I don’t know about alien moon bases, but front-pagers bigfoot all the time around here. ;-)
Omnes Omnibus
@KatKapCC: A good 90% of comments on this blog are someone’s opinion, what someone thinks.
ETA: That comment was making that statement back in July and even walked away in disgust after Biden withdrew, So, not a johnny come lately to that particular viewpoint.
stinger
@hitchhiker: This:
And this:
100%
MagdaInBlack
@The Thin Black Duke: And there we have it.
Melancholy Jaques
@Omnes Omnibus:
I guess I’m guilty of thinking that goes without saying.
Sally
@WaterGirl: Did you see my little comment #64 in Rose’s post? Democracy is a privilege and a responsibility.
karen marie
@The Thin Black Duke: I don’t know, I think “stupid” factored in quite a bit. People like feeling that they’re as smart as or smarter than the president. Being bone-grindingly stupid was a big advantage
Look at Bush v. Gore. “Vote for the fucking idiot” was the choice Americans made 24 years ago, and they stuck with that ethos in 2024.
Omnes Omnibus
@Melancholy Jaques: And yet…
mrmoshpotato
@hitchhiker:
Apparently a lot of adults can keep breathing with their heads shoved up their asses.
KatKapCC
@Omnes Omnibus: I suppose there’s something to be said for consistency!
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Your argument is that if we ignore it, we could slack off and not go after those points elsewhere. Why wouldn’t you do that no matter what? Why wouldn’t Democrats always go for a 10 point win? And if that’s your mindset, then who gives a shit if your candidates race, gender, relation, sexual orientation might cost you a few points? Democrats should always work to run up the score.
sab
@hrprogressive: Cleveland Ohio had 46% turnout. Good for them (seriously, it is) but pathetic for the state. But all the local Dems won.
The Thin Black Duke
Sally
@Baud: I have only ever lived in the South, so I said to my husband in 2008, “they’ll never vote for the black guy”. He said, “they will, over any woman”. I was a keen Clinton supporter in 2008, and thought Obama didn’t have the necessary experience. Silly me!
MagdaInBlack
@mrmoshpotato: 😄😄
Geminid
@prostratedragon: This past election made me take a fresh look at the ones before it. And that made me reappraise the 2008 election and Barack Obama the politician..
I still think highly of Obama and I value the coalition he put together. I think that going forward, it gives us our best shot at winning.
But I think I overestimated the Obama coalition’s strength in 2008. That was an especially bad year to run as a a Republican, what with Bush’s failed Iraq war and then the financial meltdown. Either factor would have handicapped a Republican, and the two together were probably insurmountable.
So then I look at 2012, and I wonder if Romney would have won had he not been a Mormon. It would have been closer at least.
Like I said, this doesn’t change my view of Obama or his politics. But I believe that the result in 2008 made me think this country wss more liberal than it actually was, and that the last three elections were a reversion to the norm.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: No, that is is not what I said.
Baud
@Geminid:
I wouldn’t call Trump any kind of norm.
Melancholy Jaques
@Omnes Omnibus:
In my opinion, this is only – or perhaps mostly – an issue with female candidates for president.
Also my opinion, it isn’t just an issue of our regular voters being reluctant to vote for a woman. It is also the kind of voters who only show up in presidential elections may be less willing to vote for a woman for president.
I would like someone to do a study on this. I bet it would be hard because people do not want to admit that they won’t vote for someone just because they are female.
Quinerly
@Baud:
I’ll add this. A quick Google reveals, Trump’s approval rating on 11/20/2020 was greater than Biden’s was for most of his presidency. This after his presidency, Covid response and bleach injection…those weird fucking news conferences during Covid Times.
We can all slam the polls, but the polls really haven’t been off (except for Selzer in Iowa) this year. 2024 was a margin of error election. That’s what the polls said up to election day.
Our Blue wall collapsed just like it did with HRC. Dems didn’t come out and vote in Detroit and Philly. And, I don’t think those voters would have come out anymore for Biden, with his abysmal 40% approval rating the day of the election.
The last time I said, “I have no answers” here in July, I was accused of having dementia by a “valued commenter.” It’s looking like we must all have some form of dementia since we all seem to be looking for answers now.
I am coming to the conclusion that the answer seems to be there is something deeply wrong with the electorate. Biden winning in 2020 was a one off. I fear Trump and the next Trumpist are the norms.
I’m off this thread for the evening. Going to enjoy part 2 of Leonardo DaVinci on PBS. I still believe in funding for PBS and NPR. I think for the most part Ken Burns does a good job.😉
Steve in the ATL
@Baud:
sans serif=shifty and untrustworthy. No offense to the font on this website….
John S.
@Geminid:
I’m pretty much coming from the same place. You look back and realize how things always stood on a knife’s edge, and there are all these various factors that come into play.
That’s why i agree with @Martin: go big or go home. If we’re going to lose, then we might as well go down swinging.
Baud
@Steve in the ATL:
The federal rules require seriffed fonts for a reason.
Geminid
@Baud: Sure, Trump’s a singular politician. But he had to make the most of the same basic electorate Obama succeede with, and without the headwinds McCain faced.
Baud
@John S.:
When in the process should we collectively decide that we’re going to lose?
Quinerly
@Geminid:
Just seeing this.
I think you are right on target.
Baud
@Geminid:
Obama changed that electorate, however. Particularly in the backlash.
ETA: I do agree that there’s a good chance we’ll be a minority party for a long time.
Soprano2
@Betty: Adam posted a link the other night about microtargeted ads in certain cities. They looked like Harris ads but were designed to cast her in a negative way. That might have had an effect.
KatKapCC
@Melancholy Jaques: Clinton has noted that, aside from when she would be running for office, she would have very high approval and admiration ratings. Even once in office, her ratings would be high. But while running? Ew, girl cooties.
Geminid
@John S.: A lot of people say that after close losses. It has a lot of emotional appeal. But Martin doesn’t know any more about electoral strategy than you or I; he just talks like he does.
Bill Arnold
@Baud:
Extremely difficult to accurately quantify with simple questioning (e.g. polling); people can be (are) reluctant to admit to either.
If researchers could read minds, or had access to people’s life logs to actually observe the day to day words/behavior of large representative samples of the population, maybe.
eemom
@The Thin Black Duke:
Thank you for continuing to come here and speak truth.
Not sure why it’s too much to ask white commenters on this blog to refrain from opining out their asses about how much or little of a role racism played in this monstrosity.
Quinerly
@Soprano2:
Those ads depressed Black turnout.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: My point was that each candidate has strengths and weaknesses and it may be that being female is an electoral weakness in the US. As a result, when we run a female candidate, we need to know that she will lose points because she is female. We need to make up for that in other areas. The same thing we would do with any electoral weakness that any politician might have.
I’d be willing to bet that if we ask any of the female commenters here they would say that they are familiar with having to work harder and be better that any man to get to the same place.
As far as trying to run up the score, I have always advocated that.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: your original point was plenty clear. Like, seriffed font clear. Some people here just fancy themselves contrarians.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: No, they don’t.
Amy!
Before I accept the narrative being presented, I’d like some more numbers.
This is a comparison of 2024 to 2020. Was turnout in the Republican counties in 2020 lower than the comparable Democratic counties in 2020? That is, did they have proportionally more room to grow? For instance (and usefully), can we compare the 2016 2020 2024 series, or even 2012 2016 2020 2024 (possibly with a second series for midterms, 2014 2018 2022).
I’m not altogether sure of the whole county painted in red or blue part, either. It makes a nice graphic, but I’m sitting here in rural NC, but in an oddly agricultural _and_ purplish-blue county. How red or blue counties are may not be much of a predictor of anything beyond urban/rural balance. And increased turning in a mostly-red-but-with-notes-of-purple county that in fact turned hot fuchsia in the election would still show, on this particular choice of chart, as an increased turnout for the bloody-handed side.
Melancholy Jaques
@Quinerly:
I have no doubt. The only surprise is that there are a lot more ignorant, hateful bigots than I thought.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: well played.
Tazj
@hitchhiker: Yes, given the stark contrast between Harris and him, I also thought more people would’ve made the wiser decision.
With Bush II in 2000, and Romney, I didn’t like either one of them but I could understand their appeal. I didn’t think so many people would vote for Trump this time around even with their amnesia about how he handled Covid and January 6th.
He looked and sounded crazy to me. I saw his rambling, the NYC Nazi rally, bad makeup and the garbage truck as the final acts of a desperate campaign.
I don’t understand how people would want an embarrassment like that for president. But lo and behold he won every swing state.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: It was just hanging there.
John S.
@Baud:
You tell me. We all have access to the same data set.
Bill Arnold
@kindness:
They may have (probably would have, IMO) started paying attention to Mr Trump’s gaffes/senile glitches/incoherence and elderly demeanor, in the interest of improving the horse race. Two old white men, one being running a campaign on a bunch of objectively false narratives and many basic lies, some of which might have gotten more critical attention.
Or not. We will never know. I’m surprised that you are so sure.
Manyakitty
@eemom: oh dear, have we interrupted your post-race fantasy land?
p.a.
On top of “all the above”, a considerable # of voters are apparently so fucking stupid they can’t/won’t remember the shitshow that was tRump1. Not sure we can say they were all tRump voters the first 2 times around.
karen marie
Deleted, because fuck it.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
I still think what happened to make the last three elections be as close as they were was that Trump, in giving people a permission structure to be openly racist, sexist, misogynist assholes, pulled a lot of RW voters out of the woodwork that hadn’t given a damn about the GOP before, because the perennial GOP dog whistles were too subtle for them.
So before 2016, we’d been thinking that the country was more liberal than it really was because a whole demographic of deeply deplorable human beings simply weren’t bothering to vote.
Now they’re voting, and we’ll have to deal with that. It may be that once Trump’s not on the ballot anymore, some of them will go back into the woodwork, and it wouldn’t take that many to make a difference, given how close things have been.
But I wouldn’t want to count on it until after an election where it happens.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: You said: “As a result, when we nominate a female candidate, we need to make up the points elsewhere. It has to be part of the calculation. ”
Ok, I don’t disagree with that. My point is that it’s immaterial because it’s not actionable. If democrats are thinking ‘hey, we nominated a man, we don’t need to work as hard’ then they deserve to lose. Being able to quantify that a given candidate has a built-in electoral disadvantage shouldn’t have any impact on the policies you propose, who you appeal to, how you campaign. The only possible impact it would have is to say ‘we can’t overcome that’ and therefore not nominate such a candidate.
I would also argue that white democrats expressing that we shouldn’t nominate a black candidate is self-defeating as it’s probably a good way to keep black democrats from turning out. I don’t see why the same argument wouldn’t apply to a female candidate. You simply need to overcome whatever bias might be there – and knowing how big that bias is doesn’t inform you of anything. And if the data up top is being correctly interpreted, Democrats failed to turn out Democrats. What part of this campaign was working to make up that ground on the left? Because it completely failed to swing Trump voters – particularly white women by casting Trump as toxic and responsible for abortion bans. White women didn’t budge. And a lot of people have been warning about this for years now. The GOP is waging a culture war – they aren’t going to commit treason against their side by switching votes. You have to win on your side of the battlefield, and Dems didn’t run that campaign as the data above implies.
hitchhiker
@Omnes Omnibus:
No. As I said earlier, working harder and being better than any man is not enough to get to the same place. My gender, it turns out, is an absolute constraint.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
I shot the serif, but I swear it was in self-defense.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Okay. You are, as always, the expert. We shouldn’t acknowledge racism and sexism on our side because we then might need to address it. Good thinking.
mrmoshpotato
@Manyakitty:
LOL!
mrmoshpotato
@lowtechcyclist:
Agreed. Dump screamed the shit that the Rethuglicans only said in coded language before.
Hell, he was telling his supporters to beat the crap out of protestors at his Nazi rallies.
Soprano2
@eemom: Do you think racism was the sole factor? That seems to be what you’re saying.
VFX Lurker
This.
Planetjanet
@Martin: I don’t see how you could say that Harris didn’t campaign as a progressive. She gave the most full throated call for women’s right that I have ever seen, more than whatbBiden could ever muster. Her call for help for elder caregivers was radical. She recognized the complexity of the Israel-Palestine horror and rallied for humanitarian aid in Netanyahu’s face. How can you dismiss all that?
Lyrebird
@different-church-lady: shocking!!! /s
Seriously, thank you.
Sounds very real to me!
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
Are you and Steve having a five-minute argument, or the “full” half-hour?
Martin
@p.a.: I don’t know why people keep rejecting the premise that they want Trump to blow shit up. Republicans will tell you this all the time. And some Democrats will as well. Isn’t that kind of what the anti-Biden pro-Palestinians on the left been saying? That the baseline GOP and Dems are in perfect agreement that Israel should be empowered in all cases, and if Dems are saying that Trump is an outlier, isn’t that an endorsement that he might change things? I know people are saying he might make things worse (I agree with this). Have you seen images out of Gaza? Are you sure it can worse than the current trajectory? Would a quick death of a million people be better or worse than a slow death of a million people? Because we’re on the slow death of a million people roadmap right now. Sometimes in desperation you engage in a desperate act.
I know a LOT of desperate young people that are inclined to vote Democratic, but at some point you realize that democrats aren’t doing enough to quiet the intrusive thoughts and voting for them, or voting at all, doesn’t seem to be accomplishing anything. Sometimes the intrusive thoughts win and you just want shit to stop and you don’t particularly care how, because the only alternative is eternal darkness.
eemom
@Manyakitty:
Please elaborate on why you “honestly thought a Black woman had a better chance than a White one” because the Black woman was “less scary”.
Planetjanet
@Omnes Omnibus: Ah, Omnes, you be you. Thanks for the laugh. By the way, are following the Autumn Nations? Australia is surprisingly good this year.
mrmoshpotato
@Martin:
What are these vague “intrusive thoughts” you’re talking about?
And what is this “the only alternative is eternal darkness?”
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m not saying that. I’m saying that the act of addressing these things are generational efforts. You aren’t going to fix that by 2028. I’m not saying don’t try – but we should always be trying that.
I’m a data guy. How does knowing that a woman having a 2% electoral bias inform what policies we advance, or how we campaign? What’s actionable? In what way would that look different if you got that number down to 0%? My argument is that you should be doing precisely the same stuff whether it’s 0% or 2% or 5%. The only thing that you wouldn’t do the same is decide that you can’t overcome the 2% or 5% and therefore declare ‘we can’t win with a woman’. That’s the only way that data is useful, and I reject that solution. I’m not saying it’s the correct way to look at it, I’m saying I think Democrats internalizing the idea that we can’t elect women in this country is party suicide because it is self-fulfilling. If you are a single-issue voter on electing a woman, your only choice then becomes to vote Republican and hope to get a Nikki Haley out there.
I’m sorry. I’m reminded of an ask by campus leadership that asked for academic performance by a demographic metric that we were by law prevented from evaluating students by and I refused to provide it. It wasn’t illegal to measure that, but it was inactionable and having that information couldn’t inform policy but it could create a bias. We couldn’t refuse to admit these students, but we could quietly harass and demean them. It was better to not know that information than to know it.
Now, if you have a plan to change that number, that’s a different matter. But all I’m hearing is enormous investment in the idea that this is baked into the electorate and impossible to change. And if it is, then why fucking measure it if you can’t do shit about it?
Martin
@mrmoshpotato: I know a lot of suicidal ideating young people. Like, a shocking number.
mrmoshpotato
@Martin: I see. Thanks for the clarification.
Another Scott
Maybe someone’s already made this point, and maybe I’m missing something, but my initial impression is I think the graphs are garbage.
Counties don’t vote. People vote. More people live in a few cities, fewer people live in lots of counties. Small absolute changes of rural votes will lead to larger percentage changes in a large number of counties.
I think that too many people are grasping at straws about various new numbers and quickly trying to make some profound argument about them.
DJT got similar numbers of votes as in 2020. Harris got fewer than Biden did in 2020 – we don’t yet know why. That’s what we know at the moment, AFAICS.
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Ah, I didn’t realize I needed to know the solution to the problem in the first two weeks after the election. But let me counter you questions with one of my own. Why are you so resistant to the idea that misogyny is in play here? Yeah, racism too.
Betsy
@Baud: This is the answer.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: I never argued that it wasn’t.
But let me take the bait for a moment. Yes, the country is misogynist and racist to a degree that we can’t overcome. Now what? Do we ban women and people of color from the democratic primaries? I mean, what even is the fucking point of allowing them in on the off chance one wins, thereby dooming us in 2028 as that is preordained? Does that motivate Democratic voters? Does it convert Republicans?
I don’t think any additional time is needed to recognize that all possible pathways from internalizing that information is damaging to the party because it does nothing to inform how to proceed other than to do things that are actively counterproductive. If it’s true, then it’s true but either way it shouldn’t change how Democrats behave, what policies they put forward, or how they campaign.
I’m not saying the country isn’t misogynist or racist. I’m saying that information doesn’t help us to win. You either overcome it or you give into it. So ignore it – it’s not useful information, regardless of how true it is. Focus on things that are actionable and ignore the stuff that isn’t.
The question isn’t how many voters are misogynist, the question is why we didn’t overcome that. We lost by about 0.5%. That’s not an insurmountable obstacle. It could have been overcome, and there’s plenty of valid observations from voters that inform us that we can choose to learn from or not. That really should be the only focus. The misogyny and racism could be overcome. We lost by maybe 250K votes. Thats’ not a lot.
Kay
Most voters chose far Right policy. They want the federal government completely dismantled, they want to pay zero taxes, no investment in infrastructure, no public programs or public assets and no civil rights protections.
I think they should get what they want. They take everything they have for granted – the only way they start to appreciate what they had is if they lose it all. I’m just not willing to spend any more time coddling our child-like and spoiled electorate. They rejected norm-based centrist government and embraced a corrupt far Right regime. I think they made a terrible mistake but it’s not my job to protect people from their own poor decisions.
SFBayAreaGal
@MagdaInBlack: Yup
Kay
If 3% inflation and a housing shortage caused Americans to reject a norms based centrist government and embrace a far Right corrupt regime then they would have embraced that at some point anyway – if it hadn’t have been 2024 it would have been 2028.
Americans can’t handle the slightest discomfort or delayed gratification. We embraced fascism because food costs went up 20%. Imagine when an actual recession hits and hiring stalls – they’ll sell their own grandmothers off.
Kay
I would also stop telling young people to get involved politically. It’s a waste of their time and they will need all the preparation time they can possibly get.
They need to start amassing some assets. If I were 21 I’d get a second job, live as cheaply as possible and plow everything I had into property – land – in the northern Midwest as a climate change hedge.
Ramona
@Martin: Are those 250K votes 0.5% of the total voters in the states where those 250K votes would have made the difference?
rikyrah
@mrmoshpotato:
They had a story about the one ward in Chicago that went for the Orange Menace.
Northwest corner of the city
Full of cops who were just thrilled about the complete immunity offered by Trump.
Same muthaphuckas who make six figures and resent that they are still forced to actually live in Chicago😒😒by statute.
Spc
@mrmoshpotato: as a state; not every region.
Miss Bianca
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Late to the party here – I was one of those pissed-as-hell Democratic voters. Hell, I *left* the Democratic Party after 40 years because I was so disgusted by the way they treated Joe Biden and my conviction that, given the chance, the Democrats would find a way to shoot themselves in both feet and then say, “this is fine!”
Nothing against Kamala Harris. I think she did about as good a job handling the grenade she got tossed as anyone could have. And pissed as I was, I voted for her and for Dems up and down the board who had called for old Joe to stop being so old or failing that, just be gone already.
Because I may be pissed, but I’m not stupid.
And I don’t know that Joe would have won, given everything I’ve learned about world electoral dynamics this time round. But I do know that to me, it looked like the Democrats were not displaying a smart, pragmatic pivot, but the panic reaction of a flock of hens facing a rain storm. That was an ugly, ugly look and not one that I’m going to forget in a hurry.