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.
@ J et al
MALE MEMBER & EARLY DEMISE PRIVILEGES IN BLACK AND WHITE
As an emeritus member of the academic proletariate (adjunct “professor”), I don’t have medical insurance, so if I have or get prostate, testicular, penile, or – God forbid – breast cancer, I might just have to die.
I once complained about the treatment of adjuncts by a certain state universtiy (and by extesnion, others), including the denial of benefits, such as medical insurance and TRS eligibility even when adjuncts’ teaching assignments at two campuses add up to 80% or 100% (the minimum is 60% for eligiblity). All to no avail. See Faculty Rights Coalition v Sharokhi. Faculty Rights Coal. v. Shahrokhi, No. H-04-2127 (S.D. Tex. July 13, 2005). Judge Lee Rosenthal graced us with a long opinion. The gist is this: the university has a rational basis to deny adjuncts benefits: It saves them money.
On a more positive note (quality of life has a lot to do with attitude, see Viktor Frankl on Man’s Search for Meaning), every additional day of life is a blessing. And an opportunity to do something useful. Like recognizing teachable moments, for example.
My Dad, also an academic (albeit in a harder discipline than mine) led a very healthy life with much walking and had access to health care whenever he needed it. Nonetheless, he was already dead at my age, so I count myself lucky. But he had a meaningful life, though cut short, and he was a good father. His legacy lives on in me and my siblings and those of us who have offspring of their own.
THE REMEDY: PENECTOMY
A penectomy refers to the surgical removal of the penis. You can have a partial penectomy or a total penectomy. The surgery is the most common way to treat cancer of the penis. You can also have a penectomy as a [so-called] gender affirmation surgery.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/22806-penectomy
Note: I added [so-called] because that would be medically unnecessary, ergo elective, based on a prior decsion as to which “gender” the person wants to belong to. I am okay with being a man in addition to being just me (unique identity), so gender-disaffirming surgery by choice is not for me even if I could afford it.
In other words, I have no problem with my gender matching my sex (male).
TL:DR
Wolfie, it would not surprise me if you are a white male with all the privileges that go with that. I could never walk in those shoes, so my life experience would be different.
When I asked my father about the four years he spent in the Pacific Theater and if he would do it again, he replied without hesitation, “Yes, as there he had food to eat.”
For my first 13 years, the outhouse was a common site in our backyard. Cold-water showers, of course, were normal, summer or winter.
That white male privilege must be nice. Even though I was second in my class, it did not matter when I graduated. Even now, people think I got where I got it because of what they call DEI.
White male privilege must be nice.
@ Meme
You know, most of us don’t get to choose your parents. They choose to make us and some of us just happen to be the fruit of passion, or accident.
I’m glad to hear you had a dad as a kid. Seems like we have something in common.
Mine was too young to fight in WW2, but I was conscripted at age 17 and started basic training shortly after I turned 18. Ten of us in a room on base was comfort along with community showers and WC, and reliable supply of canteen food.
Setting up camp in the woods was a different matter. We built our own latrines there, no outhouse.
It was the era of the Cold War and I am glad I only had to shoot at pop-up enemies (and at comrades in the field with blanks). The only fatality in our company during my stint was a guy that got struck by a car while on liberty.
But I got my basic training in the winter and that was unpleasant. You didn’t have to be gay to spoon the comrade next to you in the tent. Just to keep warm. Not much fun on the shooting range or on sentry assignment in snow and ice either.
So, I know about the simpler life and exposure to the elements, and was enriched by the experience even though me and my buddies were all drafted. As such, we were a cross-section of our age cohort. There were no blacks (by skin color), but that doesn’t mean weweren’t all mongrels like most Indo-Europeans. Serving in the military helped me grow up. After that, my dad didn’t seem that strict with the discipline in retrospect.
Kids these days don’t get that. They are pampered.
I wouldn’t call having had loving and caring parents a privilege. I would much rather think of it as a blessing, and I am grateful for it.
We always had food on the table (and had to finish the plate, no waste.). They had grown up during WW2 and had experienced food rationing, so that was why. There were rules and limits, but no helicopter parenting.
18 is the minimum age for getting drafted. You may have volunteered at 17, but they took you at 18.
“Although it has not been applied in recent American history, U.S. federal law continues to allow for compulsory conscription for militia service under emergency or extraordinary security conditions. The law is described in Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution and 10 U.S. Code § 246.[5][6][7] Such conscription would apply to able-bodied men between the ages of 17 and 44 who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, U.S. citizens, as well as women in certain health care occupations. ”
Men should not have to depend on women to be less bright or to have less good jobs. If men can’t find women, they need to look at themselves. Stop wanting women to be chattel like they used to be.
In a way, I am glad Trump won; I don’t hear as much whining from all those MAGA “men.”
Dear Meme,
I honestly thought you were a guy. A black brother.
Now it looks like you weren’t subject to the draft on account of your sex. There were only two sexes then, so it follows that you must be are a female. So that means you were safe from being called up for military duty.
Can you now see your female privilege?
Maybe not, since you try to convince me that I had a choice about doing what men were supposed to do for the greater good of the entire community: Protect them.
***
I am glad I got acquainted with the thinking of Viktor Frankl early in my life. He shows you how you can find that which is good in any situation, no matter how bad. His approach will lift you up even if you are not religious. There is meaning to be found under all adversities: Concentration camp, in his case. It’s up to you. There may be much you have no control over (DNA, family origin, milieu, economic, political, and social conditions) and what you are subjected to (coercion, oppression, persecution). But you have dominion over yourself. Your attitude. What you make of it all. How you deal and cope with stuff. And the kind of stories you tell if you survive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning
Defect to another subject: do all Republicans lie?
The draft has not been used since 1973; I was number 269 in the lottery. I tried to enlist twice, once when I was 17, so I know that you were not drafted at seventeen unless you were seventeen during WWII, and that may have been possible. All the men that I have met who were in WWII who were not 18 lied about their age. Most of them had no birth certificates, so who would prove them wrong?
MAGA and its whining “Men.”
That was at the height of the Vietnam police action.
Wolfie should we throw you a pity party?
I made a mistake in the year. It was either 70 or 71 when the lottery occurred, and I was still at Oklahoma State University.
About that pity party, wolfie?
Want to know how to find women, no secret?
https://youtu.be/pNZU0SGmYyI?si=GnBfJ62ECSYe8KH5
MAGA and its whiny “MEN.”
Concerning Republican lies, a good example is the recent campaign to elect Republican judges. Full of lies, but effective. Teh rump’s promise to lower grocery prices- complete BS, not gonna happen, but effective.
I saw a recent story in Daily Kos that reinforced some of my thinking- the problem this year for Dems was that people wanted change, and Dems were incumbent and represented the status quo, so they got voted out. People were mad about high prices, not the Democrats’ fault but they were made to pay by the stupids, who believed the lies. Part of the problem was corporate collusion to raise prices way beyond inflation to cash in and hurt the Democrats at the same time. This strategy certainly worked. Earlier, I referenced racism and sexism. When I step back, I see that a black female was running against a nasty old white guy. Will hispanic voters be enthused about this contest?
Anyway, the dynamic will be different next time, nationally anyway, as Democrats will be the outsiders clamoring for change. That will mean even bigger and more outrageous Republican lies.
MALA
Instead of throwing me a pity party you can buy a copy of my memoir if/when it’s out. That’s one of my current non-ghost non-fiction writing projects and it covers a lot of time and territory including my childhood and adolescence, education, stint in the military, significant other people (with wombs and without, the latter generally with bigger bones and more muscle mass), the joys of parenthood and the cruelty of the family law regime, changes in values and mores and ramifications, and much more.
I haven’t decided yet whether to do a separate monograph on my academic life and political/legal activism, much of which was unsucessful in the short run.
***
It’s pretty clear you are not interested in one man’s story, wild or otherwise, electing to deride and belittle instead and even offer alternative biographical facts. And since you never met me, it’s likely your general mindset and modus operandi. Sad.
Perhaps you could start with Anne Frank’s Diary, the unsanitized version. There is much to learn and to ponder there. Especially about growing up and facing challenges. Trying to cope. Anne perished in the camp, her family having been denounced, but millions around the world got to re-live her experience and take inspiration from it. Thanks to her loving father.
As for the MAGA label you pin on me, I have a better slogan: MALA: Make America Love Again
No doubt, the volume will be fascinating. You can title it ‘ NARCISSISM IS NOT A PROBLEM IN AMERICA, EXCEPT FOR SOMETIMES ‘.
Again, changing the subject, Wolfie, with the same suggestion: You are smart and white, and me, someone else who is not as well-read and not as smart as you are.
So were you seventeen and drafted, wolfie? You know you could publish your selective service record here to prove me wrong if you so desired.
Pity party, wolfie?
If I were to consider buying a book you wrote, would I expect it to be written by Wolfie?
I prefer the Count of Monte Cristo over the Diary of Anne Frank.