Contrary to what left-wing optimists had hoped, Democratic nonvoters in 2024 appear to have been less progressive than Democrats who voted. For instance, Democratic nonvoters were 14 points less likely to support banning assault rifles, 20 points less likely to support sending aid to Gaza, 17 points less likely to report believing that slavery and discrimination make it hard for Black Americans, 17 points more likely to support building a border wall with Mexico, 20 points more likely to support the expansion of fossil fuel production, and, sadly for economic populists, 16 points less likely to support corporate tax hikes (though this group still favored corporate tax hikes by a three to one margin). Overall, nonvoting Democrats were 18 points less likely to self-identify as “liberal” or “very liberal.” Here is a point for the centrists.
After spending months blaming actual leftists, it turns out it was just regular Democrats that were okay with giving Trump the presidency.
The DNC is 100% aware what lost them votes.
Kamala lost votes because nobody besides DNC leadership voted for her to be the pick, she also lost a lot of votes for the crime of being a colored woman in a bigot country.
And they are in a pickle, because doing things that will get them those votes in the long run means their rich masters make less free money than the previous quarter.
We really need a leftist party we can ditch the DNC for
While it certainly contributed, there are far greater reasons she lost than just being a black woman.
Completely dropping her initial messaging about being anti corporate, stopping Walz from his clearly successful rhetoric of just calling them weird, not doing enough media appearances, etc
If you look at the largest demographics that voted for Biden but stayed home for Kamala it was white men/women, and hispanic men.
The two canidates had identical policies.
So more than any time in US history we were able to accurately see that yes, less people voted for her because she was a woman and colored.
Is this real?
Since when has “left” politics started to care about seemingly everything except economic factors? As a medium-interested person in US politics, it easily seems that lots of issues were brought up, but the one central issue, which is to tax the rich and give handouts to the people, fell short. That’s the one thing that i actually care for, goddamnit.
By no show they mean the DNC managed to produce non viable candidates for another election, correct?
Democrats are center right. They work for billionaire and Israel. Used to be a party that supported working class and was anti war/anti genocide. People moved on. 2028 will be the same. They have not learned. Most of are done with voting the least worse.
Over 4 million voters were disenfranchised during the election.
Don’t forget this part.
FWIW, the pollster who did this study predicted a 4-point Kamala win.
Polls generally don’t model the results of electoral fuckery.
Predicting what is going to happen in the future is harder than finding out what happened in the past. Especially when you’re asking people what they are going to do vs what they did. Honest people can change their minds.
All true, but it’s just worth pointing out that if their methodologies haven’t changed, they seem to have overestimated the likelihood of winning by appealing to moderates in the past.
It wasn’t a no-show problem, it was that the 2020 numbers were artificially inflated by Covid vote-by-mail precautions.
When the Republicans saw how that boosted turnout, they spent four years trying to handicap it.
I was telling everyone that the '24 numbers would be lower.
We really do need 100% vote by mail in every state to have proper voter participation, but that’s the last thing Republicans want.
Just make voting mandatory and give people time off to vote. Read about Australia’s voting system. It’s really awesome and I wish we could have something like that here.
People refuse mandatory vaccines, can you imagine what they’d do with mandatory voting?
Give people a tax rebate for voting.
I’d rather not have people who don’t support any candidate checking the first box or making a random selection to get a tax rebate.
Actually studies show in general people take it seriously. Thought that if youre going to “have to” do it you may as well vote for someone you want.
Right now non-voters are essentially checking a quantum waveform of a box, that collapses to endorsement of the eventual winner.
Id much rather they make a choice, even a random one.
Not an awful idea, but I’m sure someone would claim it’s bribery…
Bribery to hand in a blank ballot isn’t a big deal when we’re have Felon Musk actually bribing to favor a specific party.
In Australia, even the lamest request to cancel the fine will be accepted by the government. The minor slap on the wrist just keeps everyone honest and for the most part politically aware.
Seriously. We need mandatory federal voting holidays with democracy sausages being offered at every polling station.
Doesn’t Australia also have problems with far right nut jobs though?
I think it was a no show problem because we had practically the same decreased turnout in 2012 compared to 2008 without pandemic voting weirdness to explain it, but either way 100% vote by mail is an excellent idea (both the underlying policy and campaigning on “let’s make interacting with your government less of a pain in the ass” type ideas)
Something interesting, according to this survey 27% of democrat non voters want Obamacare repealed. 27% think women are too easily offended. 20% are pro-life.
As the article suggests, however, we shouldn’t really take this data as a defining reason for why democratic voters didn’t come out to vote. Even more so, the data literally shows that the majority still broadly support progressive policies. Portraying this as “oh the Democrats were too progressive or too far left” is BS. The articles first couple paragraphs focus on portraying things from this perspective but it does get better.
I think you should just look at the graph though. That’s the data. And it shows that non-voters were still majority supporters of progressive policies. That’s what matters.
Perhaps it’s just the $150M spent on The Abundance agenda working their magic, producing articles that support centrist neoliberalism.
Yeah, this was an odd write-up. I found this section particularly baffling.
It’s true that Democrats need to energize their base voters, but our analysis suggests that they’re unlikely to do so successfully through a strategy of blanket progressive appeals to an ideologically diverse base. Instead, Democrats need to persuade nonvoters with a clear and credible message about how the party plans to improve the economic lives of working people.
Now, credible eliminates the means-tested-to-death programs the Dems love so much, right out of the gate. This, much as the author seems loath to say it, leaves you with progressive ideas, or Republican/conservative ideas. Presumably, folks who cared enough to register as Democrats don’t like the conservative ideas, so we can fairly safely discard them as a winning move to get those voters out. Raising the minimum wage, universal healthcare, building more housing and/or implementing schemes to help people afford current housing, expanding benefits like WIC and EBT, free and universal university education, or taxing the rich and corporations to fund these sorts of programs are all clear, credible and progressive stances that would help working people.
It doesn’t get much more simple than, “I make minimum wage. They say they will make minimum wage a bigger number, so I will get more money.” or “My check would be bigger if I didn’t have to pay insurance premiums, and I could spend it on other stuff if my insurance actually reliably covered most medical expenses without me having to cough up $2500-$6000 a year out of pocket first.”
I’d also like to send out a special “Fuck you” to everyone who signed off on changing the position representing nonvoting Democrats and those who voted, depending on whether the nonvoters were more or less likely to respond in a certain way compared to those who voted in this section.
The second thing to notice about the demographics of Democratic nonvoters: They were overwhelmingly working class and relatively economically precarious. Democratic nonvoters were nearly twice as likely (60 percent vs. 32 percent) to have a household income of less than $50,000 per year, they were nearly three times less likely to hold a four-year college degree (47 percent vs. 17 percent), twice as likely to be gig workers (31 percent vs. 15 percent), and only half as likely to be union members (27 percent vs. 14 percent). Further, nonvoting Democrats were more than twice as likely as voting Democrats to report feeling the economy is worse now than a year ago (46 percent vs. 22 percent) or that their incomes had recently decreased. And, perhaps not surprisingly given their economic precarity, Democratic nonvoters were substantially more likely than voters to support increased state welfare spending (61 percent vs. 52 percent).
Wanting Obamacare repealed isn’t “Democrat” unless you want it replaced with Medicare for all. Go vote Republican if you want to strip everyone of their healthcare.
My thought as well. I totally get if you want it replaced with Medicare for all (I do), but no actual Democrat wants that shit repealed outright without a universal healthcare replacement.
I’m starting to think fear and anger is just the biggest factor in US politics. When your party is in charge, you get complacent and tune out. However, the other party’s media ecosystem whips up fear and anger which drives turn out. And, vice versa when the other party is in charge. It’s why the US swings back and forth constantly. It’s just volatility built into the system and when certain norms breakdown, the volatility becomes more pronounced. We are very much at risk of going off the rails. People need to turn out even when they aren’t outraged at the current administration. They need to turn out even when their side did just okay.
That implies that each party has its own media ecosystem, and they’re equally effective. But there is almost no center-left or leftist media in the US with any reach at all.
It’s true, not just for the U.S. either. And the biggest topics are always economy and immigration. At the end of the day, people will vote for what’s perceived as safety and security, a return to “the old times when things were better.” They will sacrifice freedoms for it. That trade is of course, a lie. And that’s how fascists get voted in, by preying on that fear.
Policy is always important…
But you can’t just completely ignore charisma, which is what this article is doing.
Where the progressive edge comes from, is it’s a very easy sell because progressive policy is pretty obvious answers to huge problems.
But when you have a zero charisma candidate trying to tell people that the economy is actually great and America has the best healthcare ever…
You need a lot of charisma to sell that.
Oh, you know, just centrist politics things.
Ah, so next time they should swing to the right harder. Interesting.
(The questions were probably loaded, like “do you support sending aid to Palestinians and Hamas in Gaza?”)
They surveyed people who self-identify as democrats, and I feel like an increasing number of people who identify as leftist or progressive do not, or have stopped, thinking of themselves as democrats. So, to me, the question is whether these conservative, non-voting democrats outnumber the thoroughly disillusioned, non-voting progressive independents.
Oh, that explains it.
Yeah looking at those questions-- If someone asked me if I was “liberal” of “very liberal” I would object to being called liberal at all. Liberal just means centrist anymore.
anymore
The “positive anymore” is a Midwestern bane on the English language.
Nowadays. You’re meaning to say nowadays.
Note that they’re less progressive, not not progressive. The data tells a different story than the headline.
Oh no. Thanks. Damn those lying statistics.
You can find the data here. Took a quick glance at the data and didn’t find anything particularly loaded and didn’t see any direct mentions of Gaza but I could have missed something.
Thanks for that, but it feels incomplete. A search in the questionnaire doc finds no instances of Gaza, Israel or “Pales”(should cover Palestinian and Palestine), and one question about gun ownership.
Edit: we’re missing the “team” data questions (their word not mine)
After spending months blaming actual leftists, it turns out it was just regular Democrats that were okay with giving Trump the presidency.
It was everyone who didn’t vote. People claiming to be ‘actual leftists’ spent a lot of time shitting on voting in general and voting for Harris in particular (Lemmy skews solidly left, so that’s not a good representation of all non voters, though.) But everyone has a duty to show up and vote. They didn’t. And now chaos and, yes, fascism, is ruling just as we all said it would.
It’s like how you wouldn’t stamp out a fire in your own house because you’re upset of how your neighbour treats his kids. Then complain that you have no home now and blame it on the fire. Jfc.
The fact is that non-voters either have more important things to do than vote or don’t feel they’d make an impact if they did vote.
When countries, states, and localities encourage education, promote mental and physical well-being, provide ample opportunities and fallbacks for financial security, and make it convenient to vote, then people more likely to at least vote, and at most vote progressively.
Scarcity promotes apathy, which promotes conservatism.
Or are being repressed by the countless methods Republicans employ to purposely decrease the number of voters.
Reduction in ballot boxes, removal of polling machines in highly populated districts (especially those with high minority populations) forcing hours long lines, reduction in early voting time, removal of access to mail in ballots, egging on their militia/LEO folks to intimidate potential voters, the 30+ fucking bomb threats at polling locations in swing states in 2024
This makes sense to me.
I have also come to the conclusion that the US is a center right country and running progressives just lets the far right win.
Because people are, by and large, spectacularly awful.
2008: Run a progressive platform and focusing on motivating Democrats with policies they want. Win.
2012: Run a progressive platform and focusing on motivating Democrats with policies they want. Win.
2016: Run a centrist/ RW platform and focusing on trying to capture Republican voters. Lose.
2020: Run a progressive platform and focusing on motivating Democrats with policies they want. Win.
2024: Run a centrist/ RW platform and focusing on trying to capture Republican voters. Lose.
If you/ yours wins the ideological fight for what Democrats need to do differently to be competitive, they’ll never win another election.
Its toxic, its wrong, its strategically idiotic. It loses elections. You should keep this opinion to yourself or just go be a Republican. Democrats can’t win with you in the party.
2008: run someone pretending to be father left than he was. Win
2012: that guy who won on a left leaning platform ended up governing further right than was promised, proceed to lose thousands of seats to the opposition across the country at all levels of government, setting the stage for this crisis we are now in with rampant right wing gerrymandering and election manipulation.
None of those were progressive. Socially left and economically right != progressive
lol I’m no centrist
Also you forgot midterm and state elections, where they lose way more often.
Expresses explicitly centrist talking points:
lol I’m no centrist
Man, I don’t even think countries are real. I’m just being realistic about how shitty everyone is.
What you say matters more than what you say you say. Your “realism” is just the same ol’ disgusting centrist cynicism that continuously loses Democrats elections.
I get it. Its the big tent party. We’re forced to share an umbrella with centrists. But centrists SUCK at winning elections. They’re FUCKING bad at it, and they’re the ones who share your views. You have to decide between winning elections, or repeating this ideology.
It’s been damn near 40 years of this bullshit and I’m tired of pretending people actually want things to get better.
If they did they wouldn’t end up nominating centrists in the first place.
This is who the average Democrat is.
DNC hasn’t held a non-tilted primary since 2008. There will be voters next year who have never seen a legit Democratic primary happen
the same ol’ disgusting centrist cynicism that continuously loses Democrats elections.
👆
“Because people are, by and large, spectacularly awful” is a terrible message for getting people to vote for you, and you can tell a lot of actually awful people in the Democratic party believe it based on the stupid shit they campaign on (for example - nobody is going to buy it when you say you want a lethal military, your party likes treaties and peace and UN hearings, you’re just pretending to be a Republican because you think we’re all stupid).
Maybe if we run on what we actually believe and stopped trying to bullshit people they’d stop being so spectacularly cynical about their country.
They won’t vote for me anyway because I’m a progressive.
I don’t think it used to be that way, but it has always struggled with class disparity to different degrees. When the financial security and physical health of people are compromised, they’re less likely to be progressive.
