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Cassandra Moore's avatar

This is very interesting data and I agree with your conclusions, i.e., the left needs strong economic messaging and action to capture the low-engagement population. I would add that the majority of low-engagement groups are getting their news from social media (Pew, 9/17/24 Consumption across Platforms), and the majority of those sources are right-wing. So if we want to engage these folks, we must not let the right dominate social media as they are now.

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Dwight McCabe's avatar

One theory about low information voters backing Trump in 2024 is that they weren't paying attention to political news, but were still being fed subtle rightwing messaging on non-news social channels like TikTok, Instagram, podcasts and content focused on sports and gaming. Democratic messaging was reportedly largely absent from those channels That messaging undercut support for Biden, then Harris as well as for Democrats generally while boosting Trump.

I was struck by interviews with young Trump voters, young women, young blacks and Latinos who'd you'd expect to vote for Harris, whose reasons for chosing Trump were straight out of rightwing propaganda and divorced from reality. Anecdotal data for sure but reinforcing the point that rightwing messaging reached them and influenced their vote.

In the experience of consumer marketers like myself, we learn early on that people act on emotion not facts, that messages with an emotional base work to get action while facts don't. When I look at a state like Missouri controlled by Republicans for a couple decades with failing schools, shrinking income, poor healthcare outcomes, yet voters are not punishing Republicans for the facts of results in the ground but are reelecting them based on effective emotional messaging. So personal experience does not appear to determine how people vote there.

That makes me dubious about the impact of personal experience on voting opinion. What data is available for what factors are most influencing political opinions of low information voters now which result in this dramatic change against Trump?

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