Similar improvements for Trump among younger voters were cited in CNN’s 2024 exit polling of more than 22,000 voters. In the last election, Biden beat Trump in this demographic by 23 points. This year, Harris’ lead over Trump among those aged 18 to 29 was 13 points, a 10-point dip in the key demographic.
This is the sort of attitude that gifts power to repulicans ever more.
Instead of blaming voters, blame the Democrat party. It needed to appeal to voters concerns and needs. It needs to ask why it failed to convince younger voters, and address what their priorities are.
The obvious answer at the moment is the Dems failed to campaign well on the economy. Harris defended the last 4 years as a success but for many lower income people of all ages it will not feel that way. Middle class voters who own their own homes were shielded more from inflation than renters whose housing costs due rent inflation sky rocketed as well as all other living costs - they were hit doubly hard.
The Dems decided to focus on women’s reproductive issues and a fear of democratic loss, and hoped women would come out and vote balancing our other groups. This failed. It’s clear Harris and the Democrats should have campaigned hard on economic change and offered a different vision to trump.
So don’t blame voters. Blame the Democrats for this and many other failings in this election (no real contest at their primary, Biden hanging on til late with patronising dismissal of concerns over his health by the Dem leadership, and then a coronation of Harris who also inherited Bidens team rather than had time to build her own campaign).
Looking at the overall vote count the Rep vote seems largely similar to 2020, or slightly up, but the democratic vote has fallen significantly. This is largely due to the Democrats failure rather than due to Republicans success.
Weird how Republicans do literal nothing to help their voters but they still turn out. Democrats at least make marginal improvements but don’t do everything that every one of their voters wants, so the voters don’t turn out. It’s the voters’ fault.
Republican voters don’t care about being helped. They simply want somebody to blame for their problems. They would happily jump on a grenade so long as they could jam an immigrant underneath them on the way down.
The Republican voter doesn’t believe that they’re poor - they’re just temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Any day now, the money will drop out of the sky and into their laps. So they happily march to toe the party line as it hurts them over and over, because they think that one day they’ll be the ones stepping on everybody else.
Yep, and both the “liberal media” and the Enlightened Centrists ™ and tankies pile on with this framing, as well. The qons wreck the place, set it on fire, and smear shit on the walls. The Democrats get a tiny bit of power and are expected to fix it all in 2 or 4 years, with qons kneecapping them the entire way…and because of course they cannot fix everything in this time frame and in these circumstances, they get blamed for this.
Republicans give them the red meat they want. They piss off the people they hate. Their campaigns are all about making the base happy.