From the December 3 New York Times daily newsletter:
If you’ve been reading post-election coverage, you’ve probably seen one of the big takeaways from the returns so far: In counties across the country, Kamala Harris won many fewer votes than President Biden did four years ago.
With nearly all votes counted, she has about 74 million; Biden received 81 million four years ago. Donald Trump, in contrast, has 77 million votes, up from 74 million four years ago.
The drop-off in the Democratic vote was largest in the big blue cities. In places like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, Trump gained vote share but didn’t necessarily earn many more votes than he did four years ago. Instead, Democratic tallies plunged.
As such, it’s tempting to conclude that Democrats simply didn’t turn out this year — and that Harris might have won if they had voted in the numbers they did four years ago.
This interpretation would be a mistake.
In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain.
For one, the story doesn’t apply to the battlegrounds, where turnout was much higher. In all seven battleground states, Trump won more votes than Biden did in 2020.
More important, it is wrong to assume that the voters who stayed home would have backed Harris. Even if they had been dragged to the polls, it might not have meaningfully helped her.
How is that possible? The low turnout among traditionally Democratic-leaning groups — especially nonwhite voters — was a reflection of lower support for Harris: Millions of Democrats soured on their party and stayed home, reluctantly backed Harris or even made the leap to Trump.
During the campaign, The New York Times and Siena College polled many of these voters. After the election, we analyzed election records to see who did and didn’t vote. The results suggest that higher turnout wouldn’t have been an enormous help to Harris.
That may be surprising. It’s not usually how people think about turnout. Typically, turnout and party-switching are imagined as independent. After all, millions of voters are all but sure to vote for one party, and the only question is whether they’ll vote. In lower-turnout midterms and special elections, turnout can be the whole ballgame.
But in a presidential election, turnout and persuasion often go hand in hand. The voters who may or may not show up are different from the rest of the electorate. They’re less ideological. They’re less likely to be partisans, even if they’re registered with a party. They’re less likely to have deep views on the issues. They don’t get their news from traditional media.
Throughout the race, polls found that Trump’s strength was concentrated among these voters. Many were registered Democrats or Biden voters four years ago. But they weren’t acting like Democrats in 2024. They were more concerned by pocketbook issues than democracy or abortion rights. If they decided to vote, many said they would back Trump.
It will be many months until the story is clear nationwide, but the data we have so far suggests that the decline in Democratic turnout doesn’t explain Harris’s loss.
Clark County, Nev., which contains Las Vegas, is an example. There, 64.8 percent of registered Democrats turned out, down from 67.7 percent in 2020; turnout among registered Republicans stayed roughly the same.
But this lower Democratic turnout would explain only about one-third of the decline in Democratic support in Clark County, even if one assumed that all Democrats were Harris voters. The remaining two-thirds of the shift toward Trump was because voters flipped his way.
Even that back-of-the-envelope calculation probably overestimates the role of turnout. Our polling data suggests that many of these nonvoting Democrats were no lock for Harris. In Times/Siena data for Clark County, Harris led registered Democrats who voted in 2024, 88 percent to 8 percent. But she had a much narrower lead, 71 percent to 23 percent, among the registered Democrats who stayed home.
There’s no equivalent pattern of a drop in support for Trump among Republicans who stayed home. Indeed, many high-turnout Republicans are highly engaged, college-educated “Never Trump” voters who have helped Democrats in special and midterm elections.
In Las Vegas and elsewhere, our data suggests that most voters who turned out in 2020 but stayed home in 2024 voted for Biden in 2020 — but about half of them, and maybe even a slight majority, appear to have backed Trump this year. Regardless, there’s no reason to believe that they would have backed Harris by a wide margin, let alone the kind of margin that would have made a difference in the election.
This is in contrast to my thesis about the 100K missing voters that made Harris County so much closer; there were missing voters like that all over the country. Nate’s point is that per the polling data he has, had they bothered to show up, they wouldn’t have been that much of a boon for Dems anyway. Perhaps so, I don’t have any data to counter that, but it still fits my contention that we need to talk to these folks and hear what they have to say. If nothing else, that’s the starting point to try to win them back. ProPublica has talked to some Latino voters who did show up and voted for Trump, and it’s bracing but necessary to hear.
I’m working through the precinct data now, and will talk about that next week. There’s definitely reason for concern, but plenty of reason to keep fighting and moving forward. It’s not like there’s a better option than that anyway. I wanted to present this to keep me honest and hopefully on the right track.
Greg had it right; he just didn’t tell us what he imagined the middle was.
Sure I did:
https://www.harriscountydemocrats.com/post/can-democrats-rebuild-our-brand-and-win-statewide-general-elections-in-texas-yes-to-win-in-novem
Good to see that Kuff is willing to make space for pertinent data and interpretation thereof that doesn’t confirm his own cherished theories. Perhaps there is hope for Tex-Dems after all.
Greg, are all the things you list necessary, or would a few do? If a few would work, which ones would they be?
Wolfie, let us see how good Trump will be for the Democrats in two years. He was the Democrats’ best friend for almost four years. People just have short memories of how bad it was under Trump.
Racism and sexism are still powerful forces in our society, including minority communities. I don’t think much more of an explanation is necessary. I will admit it is difficult for me to understand how anyone could vote a bunch of terrible people like Trump and his pals into office. Short memories indeed.
As for sexism, yes, there is very much a problem: state-sponsored feminism, in particular.
It started with the destruction of the black family through federal antipoverty measures, well-intentioned or otherwise NY Senator Moynihan wrote about it back in the day. Remember the man-in-the-house rule? The government displaced the male breadwinner/husband but still sought to make him pay later, using coercion and garnishment of wages.
Now it’s spread to society at large. AG Paxton’s army of lawyers and caseworkers are chasing men and enforcing traditional gender role against them, except that those men get nothing in return. If they start a second family, they will be paying for kids in two households. How many can afford it?
No wonder the marriage rate is down. It’s no longer an attractive proposition for men. And as for successful women, they want a man that’s even more successful and also handsome, sexually skilled but nevertheless monogamy-minded and not commitment-shy. How many are there? How many still left?
The ugly truth is that the coupling/mating market is in disarray. Family formation imperiled and reduced, marital stability elusive.
Meanwhile men are still dependent on women for love (including sex, of course) and procreation (having a family or at least be an unmarried father), but women no longer need men for what men have traditionally provided to them: financial support/security and protection (against other males). These functions have been taken over by the state. The sexual bargain is broken.
Men are now the second sex, and the Democratic party keeps pushing to maximize the further empowerment of women at the expense of men. Look also how the male judges get pushed out in the Democratic primaries. It doesn’t look like parity now.
The pendulum has swung too far.
Also note how the disparity discourse stops when men suffer. Just check out the suicide rate by sex, or life expectancy, for that matter. The data is readily available, but the recogniton that there is a problem is absent. The Texas Tribune has a *woman’s* health beat. Great! Let men bite the dust.
Nor are men even allowed to complain or let’s say doing so will have consequences. Such complaints can trigger sexual harassment charges (in the workplace)
and condemnation as misogynists elsewhere, online and off.
Misandry, on the other hand, *is* the zeitgeist.
***
These topics – men’s problems under hegemonic feminism, societal and state-imposed and enforced – are largely taboo. They make everyone uncomfortable. Men are terrified and afraid to speak up. And for women, being made to “feel uncomfortable” these days is enough to get a sexual harassment inquisition going.
Many women are today totally comfortable destroying the reputations of men they don’t like in the first place (“creeps” and sundry losers and deplorables) or no longer like (former lovers, superseded boyfriends, ex- husbands). They are applauded for it. Long articles are written bewailing their overinflated psychic dealing-with-men problems and the conjured ineffectiveness of the powers that be to assure their comfort and getting rid of male colleagues or bosses that they have an interpersonal or etiquette problem with. Not to mention having been criticised or reprimanded by a superior. What an insult! I couldn’t possibly be at fault.
Male workers are fired at the instance of female coworkers or otherwise forced out of the workplace and can no longer support themselves, not to mention a family. Or kept silent by implied threat of denunciation. No one is safe.
So here is another “secret” why male people (in particular) elect to (1) no longer vote for Dems, ie, turn out, and/or (2) vote Republican.
It’s because the Dems are on a war path against them for being men or just don’t care about their concerns and their struggles.
It’s democracy 101: You vote for the party that better represents your interests, even if you must hold your nose doing so because that party or candidate stinks and is merely the lesser of two evils.
If your reproductive apparatus has fallen off, or is about to fall off, please see a doctor right away. If you call and explain the problem your male privilege should get you an immediate appointment.