Let's face it, Dem voters didn't show up.

[Cattledog]

Biden got 81 million votes in 2020

Trump got 74 million votes in 2020

Harris is set to get around 73-74 million votes once final CA comes in and the rest of the country finishes counting.

Trump should end up with 75-76 million just barely beating 2020.

So there are going to be about 5-6 million less voters than in 2020 according to my poor math.

Can someone explain this???

[mobeau69]

1. Doesn't seem to make sense. Long lines everywhere.

We probably got fucked.

[jimfields33]

6. Many who filled out mail in ballots in 2020 didn't

renew their mail in application for 2024? I bet that’s what happened. Voter population went to 2016 numbers. 2020 was always a unique election. Republicans were interested in early voting this year which led to more votes.

[Trekologer]

42. This is exactly it and why Republicans are so bent on making voting hard

In 2020, it was much easier to vote with many states encouraging main-in voting due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Four year later and unending efforts to limit or end mail-in voting and here we are.

Edit to add: It will end up that Trump got around the same number of votes as he did in 2020 but the Harris will have received far less than Biden did. We, as Democrats, didn't motivate our potential voters to take the time and vote. We can dive deep and figure out where the motivations fell short but the top line is that they didn't come out and vote -- for whatever reason that might be.

[Meadowoak]

20. Elon and Putin hacked the tabulators

[jimfields33]

43. That would take a massive job. Each precinct is only hooked up to their own internet.

Most results are emailed to supervisor of elections.

[ananda]

52. Apparently the long lines were due to voter suppression...

delilberately made long so that many people would
leave in frustration.

[LeftInTX]

62. It's the numbers, not the lines.

We had long lines, but were short in numbers compared to 2020. There were various reasons for this. We had an extra week of early voting in 2020. We had 97,000 mail voters in 2029 and 32,000 in 2024. People didn't want to vote by mail. So we had more vote in 2020.

[yardwork]

2. Some of it is voter suppression.

In NC, new rules made it much more difficult to vote by mail this year. I was hearing this from my neighbors. I think some people gave up and didn't cast their votes by mail. There were long lines in early voting, too.

The Republicans make it difficult to vote, on purpose.

But, obviously, that's not the only factor here.

[Sympthsical]

14. Illinois is living rent free in my head

Because the numbers there are telling story.

"Harris would be the first Democrat to win Illinois by less than 10 percentage points since the last time a Republican won in Illinois in 1988. Her current support of 51.3% would be the worst performance for a Democrat in Illinois since Bill Clinton won with 48.6% of the vote in 1992."

You're right that voter suppression is a problem. But man, those Illinois numbers reflect a repudiation on every level. It's difficult to dismiss what just happened when you see this sort of thing in Democratic states. People are casting about for causes that magically make what happened not our fault, but I'm finding it extremely difficult to justify grasping that narrative.

We're going to have to reckon with this one thoughtfully.

[yardwork]

17. It may not be accurate to assign a coherent reason for this.

I just posted something similar in another thread: https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=19676934

This election, I feel more strongly than ever that there is no coherent, logical conclusion to be drawn. I think that the internet and the splintering of traditional forms of media into niches makes it very easy to send propaganda to distinct groups. Trump told one thing to Latino listeners of Spanish language radio. He told another to kids on TikTok. He told another to farmers. In public - if you can call his rallies public - he blathers a lot of incoherent words that anybody could interpret as they wished.

People voted for Trump because they preferred an easy fantasy to grappling with the.complicated issues they face in their lives. We're becoming a nation of infantile crybabies.

That's not the fault of Democratic messages or policies. Apparently, policies and plans are now passe.

[Sympthsical]

23. I'm going to disagree somewhat

I responded in that thread as well, and the thrust of my argument is we just kind of ignore what's going on in the country in favor of preferred narratives.

Part of it is that we were the party in power. And when you're in power, you want to tout all the awesome things while minimizing the rough ones. The economy is great on paper- and if you have investments, hooray for you. But the costs of living just haven't recovered from the pandemic. Working people are still finding day-to-day living difficult. I see it everywhere with my own eyes. I see it in my own pocketbook. I stand in the aisle of Safeway looking at prices and thinking, "Yeah. I'm not paying $11 for a jar of mayonnaise."

There's a longer argument that this has been a decline that revved up since the 2008 financial collapse and then started landing body blows during the pandemic.

But we haven't had a coherent response to this stuff. The past three months has been "Trump Trump Trump!" But what if people don't share that obsession? What if they're not political junkies and are just focused on scraping by, feeding their kids, and keeping a roof over their heads? Then they turn to you, and it's "Twitter hates Trump, but Swifties have got this!"

That's . . . not where Americans are. It's where the terminally online and insular media elite are, tho. So, that's nice for them, I guess.

I think we, meaning the party, are in a self-obsessed bubble. And we spend too much time only talking to people who live in there with us. We just don't see this country well. And now we have a choice. Do we let the bubble pop or do we start lining it with steel reinforcement?

Not super thrilled with the direction people seem to be choosing if the replies here are shared widely.

[yardwork]

30. I'm going to sit with this a while.

What you're saying is true of many of us here on DU, but I'm not at all sure it's true of Democratic politicians. I think they're genuinely trying to listen and help people. The message isn't being heard, and at some point maybe that's the fault of the non-listeners.

What you say if "us" is also very true of "them" - all the people who voted for Trump without being able to articulate a single thing he's actually done to help them. And, the ones I know are wealthy. Prices aren't bothering them because Republican policies have put a lot of money in their pockets.

Your post makes good points, though. I'll think about this.

[Omnipresent]

37. Spot on!

[City Lights]

63. This exactly!

People voted for Trump because they preferred an easy fantasy to grappling with the complicated issues they face in their lives. We're becoming a nation of infantile crybabies.

[Native]

26. according to pundits on msnbc, based on the demographics of this election, the Republican Party is now more the party of

The labor/working class, and the Dem party skews more toward the college educated.

[Sympthsical]

28. And given the electoral college

That is not a great position for us to be in.

[Native]

31. Exactly right. And we have to recognize the diversity of Latinos and Black Americans.

[Native]

33. And we have to do a better job of fighting disinformation on social media

It was pointed out that Trump had like three different videos running constantly on YouTube. We had none. And the quantity and extreme nature of the disinformation was like nothing canvassers had ever experienced in the past. If you're working two jobs to keep a roof over your head and barely have time to prepare meals for your family, you don't have time to pour over legitimate news sources, much less afford what it costs to subscribe to them. And we all know how big media is taking over local news stations. Bottom line, many people are getting their information from social media these days. We need to get with the program.

[yardwork]

29. The Republican Party is now the party of the wealthy and the poor.

The wealthy are making tons of money fooling the poor, who keep handing over more power and wealth.

[Jk23]

70. If Illinois is depressing you stay away from The Queens, Bronx and New Jersey numbers.

Not to mention Miami in Florida...

[jimfields33]

44. Isn't the governor a democratic politician? I doubt he'd sign off on such rules.

[yardwork]

47. The NC state legislature has been controlled by Republicans since 2011.

They changed a lot of laws, stripping our Democratic governor of various powers. The Republicans control the voting rules in NC. They imposed a voter ID law that makes voting by mail quite onerous. Also, the ballots themselves are confusing. They have to be returned in certain ways. Many of them were faulty, too - stuck together, had to be cut apart and retaped.

Despite this, NC elected Democrats to all the state leadership positions. I'm not saying that this is why NC voted for Trump. Just pointing out the typical Republican voter suppression.

[ananda]

53. Don't forget the bomb threats and poll worker abuse.

Some voting sites in blue areas had to be shut down.

[Dem4life1234]

3. Voter suppression and bullshit shenanigans

I hate these thugs so much

[Meadowoak]

22. somethings very fishy about the vote count, It doesn't match up. long lines everywhere for 3 weeks, breaking turnout

records everyday, now all the sudden they are telling us the dems all stayed home. bullshit. Elon and Putin rigged the tabulators. to flip votes or squash Harris votes. This needs to be investigated.

[rurallib]

40. Just what I have been thinking, but who will investigate?

Not the senate, it is MAGA
The House will probably be MAGA
Justice Department? MAGA!

Washington Post??
NYT???

It looks like once again Trump and the MAGAs have committed a crime and gotten away with it. No investigations because they control anything that would or could investigate. As for media they control the advertisers who are for the most part MAGA adjacent.

[Meadowoak]

41. if there is an investigation, it has to be done before trump is inaugurated.

we still have the senate

[FloridaBlues]

60. Republicans turned out, long lines doesn't mean voting for dems this election

[John1956PA]

4. In PA, the vote was a bit higher in 2024 than in 2020.

The PA vote is still being counted. As of now, the tally shows that slightly more PA votes were cast in 2024 than in 2020.

In 2020, Biden won PA by about 80,000 votes.

In 2024, Trump is leading in PA by about 130,000 votes.

[Sympthsical]

5. What's to explain?

People didn't show up. It was always going to be an enthusiasm election, and people weren't sufficiently enthused.

2020 was an odd year due to the pandemic, so we can't really use it as a base line for expectation of what elections look like. This year was just a regular old election.

We needed turn out to win, and for a myriad of reasons, many Democrats and independents decided "Nah." Trump didn't significantly improve his numbers. Ours were just rotten.

We have a choice now. Do we acknowledge that maybe there's a problem in our perceptions and thinking about the electorate and how people in this country think and feel, or do we blame everyone else and double down on doing what just failed spectacularly?

I see a lot of doubling down, which I'm hoping is just an immediate aftermath reaction.

[True Dough]

11. "This year was just a regular old election."

Couldn't disagree more! Even if some Dems were more enthusiastic about voting for Biden instead of Harris, they should have voted to keep the biggest menace to democracy in American history out of the White House! What an enormous mistake to be apathetic at this point.

[Sympthsical]

15. Shoulda woulda coulda

At the end of the day, people prioritize differently. And I think we weren't perceiving that correctly. We assumed our priorities were everyone else's.

The vote tally says different.

[True Dough]

16. Well, now we all pay the price

due to the laissez-faire attitude of others.

[MontanaFarmer]

19. I agree with you.

We're missing something in the way trump makes working people "feel heard." And it can't be all racism and xenophobia. A lot is rooted there, certainly, but that isn't all of it. I think there's a no-doubt takeaway to be learned from abortion. Social issues are powerful motivators for voters, as issues. But they do not change partisanship. Right leaning women will show up to enshrine abortion, anywhere and everywhere, but our side incorrectly assumed they would also vote for candidates around that principle and they did not. Exhibit A, montana: trump wins 59-38, abortion amendment wins 57-43. I think in some way voting for CI-128 created a mental permission structure to then vote red the rest of the ticket. I think it's crazy too but the stats are what they are.

[Sympthsical]

27. It's like people are managing democracy a la carte

As you noted, single issues can get a lot of support, but it seems like voters have signaled they'll vote for certain issues without purchasing the entire political meal.

And it might actually not bode well for us if voters realize they can do this. "How bad can Republicans be if I can just fix the parts of their social agenda I don't like while still keeping the populism?"

That's something we're going to have to give some thought about, because it's definitely interesting behavior in the current environment. We have become, to a not insignificant degree, a party preoccupied with social and cultural issues. If voters think they don't need us any longer to manage what they want in those areas, we might find ourselves in some trouble moving forward.

[kirby]

7. Apathy...

Some people just couldn't be bothered. And for all the outreach to first time votes, they went to Trump +8.

[underpants]

9. That stat blows my mind.

Even if they weren’t young voters I didn’t think there was much of a sign up effort by the republicans

[joshcryer]

49. Pretty simple, a lot of conservative zoomers came of age in those rural counties.

Basically kids born around 2004-2006 came of age and after being raised as conservative their whole lives were more than happy to vote for the Republican.

[underpants]

55. Yeah I guess so.

[JI7]

8. I think many of those 2020 voters might not be into politics much

and don't usually vote but because of Covid they did then.

Also remember that people were home more than usual becsuse placed were not open so people that don't usually follow elections did so that year.

Some might have just wanted him to fix the disaster we were going through with Trump.

2020 was just unusual becsuse of covid.

[JohnSJ]

10. How do you know that deficit came from Democrats? The obvious decreases I saw via the exit polls were in the following

areas:

Labor split the vote between Harris and trump.
Latinos split the vote between Harris and trump

and the turnout by women was disappointingly not as strong as anticipated by women.

I think those are the factors that had the greatest impact.

It makes me sick.

We had a compassionate, optimistic, candidate, with a plan to unite all people and make their lives better, and the populous instead choose hate and division.

I have a lot of anger toward the country now, and I will never forgive or forget what they did.

I live in California, in a very blue district, and for that I am thankful, and hope we can prevent the thugs from instituting their draconian policies nationally, but a lot depends on if they get rid of the filibuster or not.

In the meantime I will bide my time for the next two years, and hope they we cwanmake some kind of comeback in the midterms to limit the damage that they will surely implement.

[jimfields33]

45. Can you imagine if they get rid of the filibuster and add 4 seats to the Supreme Court and then turn around

and say we did this because the Democratic Party had that for their priority if we had won. Disaster.

[JohnSJ]

48. You bring up an excellent point. They already got rid of the filibuster for confirming SC judges. It makes one pause

now that we have such a dangerous person in the WH, and the Senate controlled by the same, if perhaps the call to remove the filibuster out of frustration by the continued block of our judicial nominations, maybe is not such a wise decision after all.

[jimfields33]

57. Decisions are often made emotionally typically with frustration.

Senator Reid had enough of the bull crap that republicans gave when filibustering the judges so he said screw it and implemented the 50 vote rule. Of course nobody could see that less then a year later the repugs would win the presidency and senate and said well heck thank you senator Reid. Now we will add the Supreme Court to your rule. Ugh.


I have no doubt that the filibuster will be gone. They probably won’t add Supreme Court judges but they certainly could since it has been brought up as a good thing.

[duncang]

12. I wonder how many of them showed up at rallies.

Just for a chance to see the star. Being a fan of someone not actually in support of VP Harris.

[jimfields33]

46. BINGO!!!!!!! You literally won the true statement of the day!

[ColinC]

13. They did.

But many voted for Trump. Didn't help that Harris snubbed the Arab American community, Trump saw an opening and took the largest Michigan suburb from Harris almost overnight.

[SKKY]

18. Yea, but Trump improved by 19% among Hispanic Men, and 8% among Hispanic Women...

...that's the game right there.

[Cattledog]

21. During the Pandemic everyone got a mail in ballot automatically

I think that made it easier to vote and a lot more people did.

[Crepuscular]

36. ...

I think you are correct in this. Another point to consider is that older voters, as a demographic, tend to vote more than younger voters. How many of those older voters who voted in 2020 have since passed away, due to covid, complications of covid and other natural mortalities? Younger people who replaced those older voters who died in the population, may tend to vote at lower rates and/or skew more towards independents and republicans, especially younger Latino's and Blacks. That could explain in large part why the Democratic turn-out was significantly lower this cycle. Recruitment of young voters to replace those lost by attrition is going to be a key moving forward.

[Vinca]

24. It seems there were 2 topics that Trump glommed onto that stuck: immigration and the economy.

We know it's all bullshit, but people lap it up like dehydrated cats. While I sympathize with younger people re the economy, I think we have to look at the real reason for much of their ongoing financial problems: college debt. When I was a young person (dinosaurs roamed the earth) you didn't have to have a college degree for every single job. There were plenty of good-paying jobs that offered training and advancement and a decent standard of living. You could take college courses while working and end up at the top of the food chain and debt free. Now you practically need a degree to flip burgers. That's driven people into debt and more debt and more debt and they never get out of it.

[pimpbot]

34. I would also add gender issues

I live in a deep blue area of a blue state and just from casual conversations the whole boys on girls teams thing is a lightning rod. I think the GOP found a replacement for abortion as a wedge issue.

Trump had that add with the podcast people talking abouy govt funded sex change operations, saying harris is for they/them not you. It played over and over.

[oasis]

56. When I first saw the ad during a break in a

football game, my first thought was “this will be a significant setback to the Harris campaign if widely spread”.
Thereafter, I saw the ad in every game I watched in the last 2 weeks.

[Vinca]

61. Good point. I wish Democrats had pointed out that what Kamala was talking about in that clip

they used in the commercial they played about a million times was a policy from the TRUMP years that she was supporting when she was a senator.

[MichMan]

65. Less than 15% of the population has any college debt.

[AllyCat]

68. And those 15% would have a much easier time if

They weren’t paying $1300/mo in student loans. It’s a huge deal. So is medical debt.

[durablend]

25. Where the hell were the "swifties"

Or did they vote for Trump too?

[pimpbot]

32. You have to be 18 to vote

A large part of her following is too young to vote.

Also, Im sure she has many fans who just like her music and dont care about politics.

[Elessar Zappa]

58. Young women DID vote for Harris overwhelmingly, probably.

So don’t blame them. But they were cancelled out by young men who voted for Trump.

[bigtree]

35. I actually think he'll bottom out and she may creep up over him

...when all of California's votes are counted.

[Nanjeanne]

38. Biden won campaigning on a very progressive worker friendly platform. Build Back Better

would have been transformative. It failed by two Senators. But it was an incredibly strong bold piece of legislature.

Harris, I thought, would be pursuing that - particularly when Walz - who had passed many progressive Sanders style policies was picked. The excitement was real. The “call me what you want, I want to feed children” was so refreshing. But instead the walk away from that towards Cheney and other Rs who supported none of those things and were simply anti Trump happened. Speaking more about lethal military and having R in cabinet and seat at table doesn’t help the working class. Where was minimum wage? Paid leave? Medicare 4 All that she used to support? Even Walz was hollowed out by D consultants.

Yes abortion rights is extremely important. And black women once again were the standard bearers. But the idea that white R women were going to support the black woman candidate on just that issue was a misstep. Towards the end it became more about the threat of Trump than tuition free public college and addressing the insanity of $10,000/yr pharmaceutical deductibles. Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez aren’t the answer for struggling workers.

And sending Bill Clinton and Richie Torres to Michigan to chastise the Palestinian protestors was tone deaf.

Would Trump still win? Maybe. But trying to grab the illusive white Republican vote at the expense of what should be the core Dem base didn’t work in 2016 and didn’t work now. Harris is so articulate. She could have put together a really bold platform and sold it with joy. I’m sad she chose not to. But I’m not a paid insider Dem consultant making millions on failed campaigns year after year so I can get a pundit job on MSNBC. I’m just an old hippie left wing always voting Dem woman who knows why I became a Democrat and has kept hanging in here hoping for a better world.

[quaint]

39. Troublesome at the end of the campaign...

Telling women to lie to their husbands was a bad move, in my opinion. Raised the hackles of their husbands. Some women may have not voted to prove to their spouse they did not vote for Kamala--as a safety measure

[ananda]

50. Better to say Russian interference and voter suppression.

Plus the constant propaganda and fearmongering in ads
and on social media.

They reached voters vulnerable to propaganda and
misinformation

[Faux pas]

51. Voter suppression, purging,

machines "flipping" (?), massive skulldugery going on between the usual subjects and surely a bunch of new players.

[Elessar Zappa]

59. Zero evidence for machine flipping.

Zero. Let’s not be like the Republicans, who claimed the same thing in 2020. Real evidence is required to make extraordinary claims like that.

[Faux pas]

64. I was just spit balling

and nothing more, K?

[lamp_shade]

54. Exactly!!

[WarGamer]

66. 2020 was an asterisk election due to COVID.

I predicted months ago that 2024 would go back to statistical historical turnout growth... less than 2020, greater than 2016.

[JCMach1]

67. Suppression through social media microtargeting

Easier to keep butts on the couch than to get them to vote.

That was what Thiel and Musk were busy doing with help from Russia.

You may have noticed how changed your feeds are the last few days. As a 57yo WM, the change is very, very obvious.

[Blue_Roses]

69. I'm sorry, but this is like

beating a dead horse. We lost and it just seems like everybody keeps repeating the same thing.