Seriously? You idiots just sat through 4 years of Biden sleeping though his term......crickets. Trump needs time to fix this mess. Get lives people and learn to think for yourselves.
Your hyperpartisan take — and the trite repetition that this self-inflicted mess was somehow the last guy's fault — on the subject is appreciated. But we're querying the swin voters who actually matter.
Two things come my mind on why the Felon won. 1. Lot of voters did not like either candidate and stayed home. 2. Lot of voters were racist, and Kamala took the brunt of that. The economy may have crossed voters mind, but I don't believe impacted too much. The economy was good under Biden, and it faded when the Felon took Office.
I think the big problem the Democrats have is that they usually don't have a plan in place for the electoral future. They're pretty good at winning short-term, but once they're in power, they go all-out on what "the groups" want, rather than simply governing pragmatically and effectively.
"a return to the old dynamic of less-informed/engaged voters being systematically more friendly to Democratic candidates and causes."
We just know that they don't like Trump, we don't know if they like the Dems. Maybe they've given up on one goofy miracle cure and will look for another.
So, if I'm reading this correctly, and understanding what you're saying, the trope about "economic anxiety"-voters identifies an actual and fluid group of voters, who are low-information actors highly sensitive to economic conditions and also critical to the re-election prospects of incumbents. Have I got that right, GEM?
One thing I think it's worth doing is disambiguating between the marginal disengaged voter, likely one more responsive to inflation/economic conditions/immigration and the median/mean disengaged voter. I think we can _much_ more easily observe the marginal voter than we can the median, and I'd suspect that it's not clear there's been a realignment among them.
I also think intensity or elasticity is probably a worthwhile dimension to add here -- thinking about the marginally disengaged voter, you could also see those being much more persuadable. So i think it's closer to shifting winds than a true political realignment.
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?
I think the number that matters to President Trump is HIS team. While slipping from 94 to 88 isn’t nothing, it’s not like they’re having much voters’ remorse over there on Team Trump. Until/if that number moves I don’t see much incentive for Trump to change course. Plus the more Team Blue is unhappy, the more happy Team Red seems to be. “Libs owned”
That's just for strong Trump voters. Those with softer support have dropped more substantially and the support of low engagement voters has collapsed. Trump can't win just with core strong support voters.
Team Trump isn’t even proposing any legislation that would require clearing the filibuster. There appears to be zero pressure from the Team Trump voter base to even try to pass a strong immigration bill or nationwide 15wk abortion ban. Unlike with Team Blue voters, there doesn’t seem to be any pressure to nerf the filibuster and do any of those things. Instead all Team Trump is trying for is the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that will deliver maybe some wall funding and extend the TCJA. He doesn’t need anything for the Big Beautiful Bill except to hold existing Team Red congressmen together. And the thing is…what’s the point of ANY Republican congressman who doesn’t vote to maintain tax cuts. Even Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney would vote for extending the TCJA if they were still in office IMO.
Question: Why didn’t voters blame Trump for the Covid economy? I know one argument is that voters only process the three quarters leading up to a presidential election. Is there anything else to be added to that premise?
How much of this shift is coming from people who never paid attention to the news, and how much from people who stopped paying attention to the news? I know several people who say they turned off the news to preserve their sanity.
Is there any data that suggests the disengaged voters showed up to vote because the candidate running against a white male was a smart, bold female who was not white? I am not a data cruncher. I have spent my life studying and watching the impact of US sexism and racism and it seemed like the more sexist and racist Trump became the more interest there was in getting to the polls. I sincerely hope my hunch is not true. Thank you for your work and for fact checking my assumptions.
I'm wondering what impact do you think covid had on 2020? One of my theories is that voters didn't blame Trump for the covid economy (which is why voters remember the 2018-2019 Trump economy and not the economy in 2020), but blamed Trump on his response to covid, which was based mostly on ideological lines.
'That is a complete inversion of the relationship between engagement and support for Trump in 2024, and a return to the old dynamic of less-informed/engaged voters being systematically more friendly to Democratic candidates and causes.'
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.
(A) By the chart showing an increase in news conversations on social media. Given Meta deprioritizing political content, I would have expected that to be the opposite.
And (B) That only 18% of young people say they are reading print publications
Seriously? You idiots just sat through 4 years of Biden sleeping though his term......crickets. Trump needs time to fix this mess. Get lives people and learn to think for yourselves.
Your hyperpartisan take — and the trite repetition that this self-inflicted mess was somehow the last guy's fault — on the subject is appreciated. But we're querying the swin voters who actually matter.
Two things come my mind on why the Felon won. 1. Lot of voters did not like either candidate and stayed home. 2. Lot of voters were racist, and Kamala took the brunt of that. The economy may have crossed voters mind, but I don't believe impacted too much. The economy was good under Biden, and it faded when the Felon took Office.
Inflation was really bad and was a death sentence for an incumbent the economy it a big reason why democrats lost
I think the big problem the Democrats have is that they usually don't have a plan in place for the electoral future. They're pretty good at winning short-term, but once they're in power, they go all-out on what "the groups" want, rather than simply governing pragmatically and effectively.
"a return to the old dynamic of less-informed/engaged voters being systematically more friendly to Democratic candidates and causes."
We just know that they don't like Trump, we don't know if they like the Dems. Maybe they've given up on one goofy miracle cure and will look for another.
So, if I'm reading this correctly, and understanding what you're saying, the trope about "economic anxiety"-voters identifies an actual and fluid group of voters, who are low-information actors highly sensitive to economic conditions and also critical to the re-election prospects of incumbents. Have I got that right, GEM?
One thing I think it's worth doing is disambiguating between the marginal disengaged voter, likely one more responsive to inflation/economic conditions/immigration and the median/mean disengaged voter. I think we can _much_ more easily observe the marginal voter than we can the median, and I'd suspect that it's not clear there's been a realignment among them.
I also think intensity or elasticity is probably a worthwhile dimension to add here -- thinking about the marginally disengaged voter, you could also see those being much more persuadable. So i think it's closer to shifting winds than a true political realignment.
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?
Thoughtful, thanks. The scatter plots were not very convincing because they did not seem based on data.
I think the number that matters to President Trump is HIS team. While slipping from 94 to 88 isn’t nothing, it’s not like they’re having much voters’ remorse over there on Team Trump. Until/if that number moves I don’t see much incentive for Trump to change course. Plus the more Team Blue is unhappy, the more happy Team Red seems to be. “Libs owned”
That's just for strong Trump voters. Those with softer support have dropped more substantially and the support of low engagement voters has collapsed. Trump can't win just with core strong support voters.
Team Trump isn’t even proposing any legislation that would require clearing the filibuster. There appears to be zero pressure from the Team Trump voter base to even try to pass a strong immigration bill or nationwide 15wk abortion ban. Unlike with Team Blue voters, there doesn’t seem to be any pressure to nerf the filibuster and do any of those things. Instead all Team Trump is trying for is the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that will deliver maybe some wall funding and extend the TCJA. He doesn’t need anything for the Big Beautiful Bill except to hold existing Team Red congressmen together. And the thing is…what’s the point of ANY Republican congressman who doesn’t vote to maintain tax cuts. Even Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney would vote for extending the TCJA if they were still in office IMO.
Question: Why didn’t voters blame Trump for the Covid economy? I know one argument is that voters only process the three quarters leading up to a presidential election. Is there anything else to be added to that premise?
How much of this shift is coming from people who never paid attention to the news, and how much from people who stopped paying attention to the news? I know several people who say they turned off the news to preserve their sanity.
Hi Elliot
Is there any data that suggests the disengaged voters showed up to vote because the candidate running against a white male was a smart, bold female who was not white? I am not a data cruncher. I have spent my life studying and watching the impact of US sexism and racism and it seemed like the more sexist and racist Trump became the more interest there was in getting to the polls. I sincerely hope my hunch is not true. Thank you for your work and for fact checking my assumptions.
Hi Elliott,
I'm wondering what impact do you think covid had on 2020? One of my theories is that voters didn't blame Trump for the covid economy (which is why voters remember the 2018-2019 Trump economy and not the economy in 2020), but blamed Trump on his response to covid, which was based mostly on ideological lines.
I hope everything is well,
Elliot
Really interesting stuff. Great work on this
'That is a complete inversion of the relationship between engagement and support for Trump in 2024, and a return to the old dynamic of less-informed/engaged voters being systematically more friendly to Democratic candidates and causes.'
I'm not sure that conclusion is supported.
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.
Here's a link to that study for anyone wondering: https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/news-platform-fact-sheet/
I was struck
(A) By the chart showing an increase in news conversations on social media. Given Meta deprioritizing political content, I would have expected that to be the opposite.
And (B) That only 18% of young people say they are reading print publications