Since Tuesday some Dems have been doing their own version of "Stop the Steal" speculation about the outcome. These arguments fall into several main claims: 1. "How could there be 20M fewer voters than in 2020 w/"record-breaking turnout?" 2. "How could 15M fewer voter for Harris vs. Biden?"
3. "How could so many swing state voters vote for the Dem for Senate but not for Harris for POTUS?" There's a few others, but these are the biggest ones, so let's tackle them first:
It wasn’t that they didn’t vote for POTUS, it’s that many GOP voters voted ONLY for POTUS. I worked the polls and can only speak anecdotally, but lots of people who said they don’t vote often came out and only voted for one position.
I was verbally walking them through how to use the booth (they were new booths) and they would hit one button and say “Ok, I’m done, what next.” I live in a HEAVILY republican town.
I'm also a poll worker and had a lot of similar anecdotal observations. A lot of people who didn't seem to know how to vote. One lady was perplexed the some other guy's (Vance) name was on the ballot with Trump and she wanted to only vote for Trump. I had to explain the concept of a running mate!
Yes! Lots of older women (like elderly) saying that they hadn’t voted in a long time and then were in the booth for like a minute. I wonder what the messaging was to make them do that.
I’d add the House and state legislatures to the Senate. For all that Republicans do to suck up to Trump they get little electoral benefit from it
1. There weren't 20M fewer voters. I've been compiling the data as it's being updated by CNN's tracking center via a Google spreadsheet. As of this writing, total POTUS turnout is ~147.6M, or ~10.8M lower than 2020's 158.4M. www.cnn.com/election/202... docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
There's still around 8.8 million ballots left to count across over half the states, including over 4 million in California alone and half a million *apiece* in Washington, New York, Utah & Arizona. When all of them have been counted, the total will likely be around ~156.4M...just 2M below 2020.
2. Again, Harris *didn't* receive 15M fewer votes than Biden. She's currently down ~10.4M, with 70.8M votes. If the remaining 8.8M break out the same as those already counted, she'll end up w/~75.6M...5.7M fewer votes than he received. If they break ~10% more in her favor, she'll have ~76.0M.
Also note that Trump leads Harris by ~3.7M in the popular vote at the moment (2.5%), and once the remaining ballots are counted will likely only lead by between 1.9M - 2.8M (1.2% - 1.8%). That's a respectable popular vote win for Trump, but hardly a "landslide" or "mandate."
I was thinking the other day that we're a nation split pretty close to down the middle. One half of the country can't live without the other. Trouble is, only one half seems to understand that.
It's insane to me that he won the popular vote, after losing it so badly the last two times, and since then doing nothing but demonizing whole swaths of the population. How on earth does that make ANY sense?
3. It's not so much that Dems were voting for Dem Senate candidates but not voting for POTUS...it was that TRUMP voters were voting ONLY for him while leaving the Senate blank (or actively voting for Gallego in AZ). Across the 5 states, 536K Trump voters didn't vote for the GOP Senate candidate.
Thanks! So IIUC, without the problematic "Trump only" voters, Harris could have won Michigan and Wisconsin (& also Nevada) BUT she still might have lost Pennsylvania (depending on how many GOP voters didn't vote for Trump at the top) and therefore still lost the election. 🤔
Has this happened in any other Trump election? Because it is extremely suspicious. No candidate has won all the swing states in 40 years, and the first to do so has seemingly no effect on the down ballot race.
And not just in the Senate races, either. Of course Stein crushed Robinson in NC, but Dems also won the Lt Gov and SoS races there, a near-sweep (missing out on Treasurer, which tends to be a pretty apolitical race since so many people don't know what they even do).
He responded on X. About 40,000 net Trump undervotes in swing states in 2020, so substantially less than the 500,000 in the five swing states he mentioned in 2024.
As for the "record-breaking turnout!," this was likely true in about 20 states, though @electproject.bsky.social is the authority on that. Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina& Michigan appear to have seen 100K+ higher turnout overall than in 2020.
Thank you!
HOWEVER, it also looks like ~1.5M *fewer* voted in California, around 337K fewer voted in New York, 252K fewer in Illinois, 213K fewer in Florida, 150K fewer in Louisiana and 139K fewer in Massachusetts. Basically, it was up in 6 of the 7 swing states but down in most of the non-swing states.
Interesting. I had seen that our turnout in California was up 2%, to 67.2% of eligible voters. Will have to poke around a bit more into our numbers.
Charles, I am very grateful for these analyses. It's helping me see patterns other analyses have not.
The one swing state where total turnout was likely *down* slightly from 2020? Pennsylvania...which is also the only swing state Senate race which Dems appear to have lost.
I think the easier explanation--as painful as it is--can be found in stuff like this: Here's national exit polls of 18-29 yr olds from 2020 vs. 2024. Different polling firms of course, but if the Youth vote really did shift from 60/36 to 52/46, I think that alone would do it.
As if senators do not determine policy and as if they do not confirm judges.
Same deal with the Governor’s race in NC. About 100,000 people—mostly Trumpers, I’m guessing—left the Governor’s race and other Council of State races blank.
Yup...in fact, over 350,000 Trump voters didn't vote for Robinson.
Couldn’t remember the exact numbers. Knew it was a lot.
My emerging thesis is that much of Trumpism is just Trump—a ton of low-info/low propensity voters that the GOP can’t really count on showing up when he exits the stage.
Watching the last House and Senate races get called, I noticed more third-party votes down ticket in Arizona and Nevada that may affect results (6% in NVSen, 2% AZSen, 2+% AZ06). Wondered if it was a strategy to siphon votes or just a sign of discontent.
This somehow makes me feel slightly better that it wasn’t the case that he got HUGE amounts of new voters. We have work to do but it can be done. I mean Trump lost by 7 million and came back and won. It can be done.
Thank you again Charles.
I am in perpetual confusion about how this happened. I mean, I have all the likely components, but they are like a jigsaw puzzle that has been nibbled on by mice. I cannot make any of it fit.
I wish I knew the answer. Partially, ride-or-die republicans shoulder much of this, but independents who refused to fact-check and read did the real damage. I told my friends, an uneducated electorate did this. They will discover much too late their error. At our cost.
Wish they would stop it.
I’m very glad to see you active here. Thank you very much for cross-posting this absolutely crucial thread. The conspiracy-mongering Over There among people you’d think would know better is getting completely out of control.