Democrats won 'highly engaged' voters and struggled with everyone else in 2024
Democrats won 'highly engaged' voters and struggled with everyone else in 2024
The final NBC News poll showed Vice President Kamala Harris losing voters who don’t follow politics closely by double digits.
Summary
In the 2024 election, Democrats excelled with highly engaged voters but lost ground with less-engaged voters, particularly younger, working-class, and non-college-educated individuals.
Vice President Kamala Harris won among voters who closely follow politics by 5 points but trailed Donald Trump by 14 points among less-engaged voters.
Democratic strategists highlighted failures in outreach, reliance on narrow data models, and ineffective messaging.
Critics noted the party’s brand is often defined by extreme voices, while Republicans capitalized on dissatisfaction with the economy and national direction, resonating with everyday frustrations.
Highly engaged voters are invested and take the time to understand policy and nuance. Generally this is not the case. All the others are just trying to get through the day. So you cannot win them over with policy and nuances.
You need to show big, bold initiative and follow through.
The Democratic party could not even prosecute a guy who tried to murder Congress. So the thinking goes - Why the fuck would someone vote for them when they do fuck all?
Hell if someone tried to murder you and you just gave up and went about your way, no one would trust you to do anything of substance. That is the problem with the Democratic party today.
The Democratic party could not even prosecute a guy who tried to murder Congress. So the thinking goes - Why the fuck would someone vote for them when they do fuck all?
The "thinking" was instead to vote for the guy who tried to murder Congress?
The point of this article is that Trump was elected by those who did very little thinking at all.
They just didn’t vote at all, which is kinda the same thing but there’s nuance to it even still.
They did focus groups this past summer about at what point people would stop voting for Trump based on his felonies. The overwhelming answer was if he received a custodial sentence. The double delay signaled to voters that these felonies weren't actually that bad.
Similarly the non action on the Jan 6 case also signaled to voters that it wasn't a big deal. So they didn't feel like they were voting for the guy who tried to murder Congress.
No, it's that voters respond more to actions than words.
Democrats doomed themselves with the pro-democracy message in 2024. They shouldn't even have mentioned Trump's threat to democracy. It simply made them look unhinged to low-information voters. By the time the 2024 election came around, Biden's own actions made running on the democracy angle nonviable.
The fatal flaw in Democrats' messaging is that they ran on Trump as an enemy of democracy in 2016, 2020, and 2024. They ran on it, and yet, they did nothing about it.
Trump should have been hauled before a military tribunal and charged with treason on day one of Biden's presidency. Any SCOTUS justices that tried to carve out special provisions for him should have been hauled in front of the same tribunal and been charged as accomplices. Every single person remotely involved with the conspiracy, including seating members of Congress, should be rotting in Gitmo right now. They all should have been sent to jail or the gallows within 100 days of Biden taking office.
THAT is how you respond to a threat to democracy. You do what you have to do, purge who you have to purge, and let history be your judge. Damn the consequences. Do some MAGA traitors want to start a riot in protest? Fine, send in the military to put them down. Do what you need to do and cut the rot out of the body politic.
You can't just SAY something is a threat to democracy. You need to get off your ass and actually DO something about it. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and had pro-Confederate newspapers shut down, and that was just the start of it.
When democracy is threatened, sometimes you need to run roughshod over a lot of democratic norms, lest the enemies of democracy get away with it and try again. They only need to win once, you need to win every time. Which means that when someone does actually try to overthrow democracy, you need to come down like the hammer of God upon them. You need to respond with such overwhelming force that people are lining up at the door to strike a plea deal for a mere decade in prison. Realistically, when things get this bad, you need to be prepared to sentence thousands of people to decades in prison based on rapid trials in kangaroo courts if necessary. When thousands of people become so far gone that they think overthrowing a democracy is an acceptable option, the only real way to resolve that is to start handing out life and capital sentences like candy.
What did Biden actually do? He appointed an attorney general who sat on the Trump case for two years and only started an investigation when shamed into it by the House. And then Trump just ran out the clock. Garland prosecuted a bunch of the low-level people who physically stormed the capital, but he made sure all the actual high-level ring leaders escaped unpunished.
Biden didn't have a spine. He showed, through his actions, that he really didn't consider Trump a serious threat to democracy. And if the sitting president of the United States doesn't consider someone a threat, why would you expect disengaged voters to do so?
My only hope is that if Trump's promised Reign of Terror does occur, that he starts with all the leading figures of Biden's Justice Department. While whatever mistreatment they receive will be for things that weren't actually wrong, at least they will be indirectly punished for their actual crimes - failing to defend this nation's democracy. If Biden and Garland end up themselves sitting in prison on some Trumped-up charge, well I'll have zero sympathy for them. They will simply be serving their sentence for their cowardly failure to defend American democracy. If anyone is to feel the boot of a new autocracy, let them be the first. They are the ones that created it.
The Democratic party could not even prosecute a guy who tried to murder Congress. So the thinking goes - Why the fuck would someone vote for them when they do fuck all?
It was never the Democrats job to do that. It was congress's. Democrats did try. And they absolutely could have done better in many areas. I'm not defending them on that. But we need to also recognize that a large portion of Congress was flattered and extremely impressed that Trump was able to sic so many people on them. That they had no choice but to eagerly and gladly defend him while sucking up for him. Conservatives love an authoritarian. And without a few conservatives. Democrats were and never did accomplish much of anything.
What I am trying to say is, it doesn't matter whose job it was. People vote for a leader. It was up to the leaders to make it happen. That happened to be the president. It's nothing more complex than that.
The chief executive of the US has been a Democrat for 4 years, and it was absolutely their responsibility to prosecute (or ensure prosecution happens to) anyone that broke the law, or to at least protect the country. The norm has been for Presidents to maintain a firewall between themselves and prosecutorial decisions, but that's not constitutionally mandated as far as I can tell.
Hell if someone tried to murder you and you just gave up and went about your way, no one would trust you to do anything of substance. That is the problem with the Democratic party today.
I agree that the democrats needed a big bold message, but this is a strange metaphor. If someone tried to murder you and you just went about your way, people would... Vote for the murderer, I guess?
They didn't vote for Trump; they simply stayed home.
They did focus groups this past summer about at what point people would stop voting for Trump based on his felonies. The overwhelming answer was if he received a custodial sentence. The double delay signaled to voters that these felonies weren't actually that bad.
Similarly the non action on the Jan 6 case also signaled to voters that it wasn't a big deal. So they didn't feel like they were voting for the guy who tried to murder Congress.
That is how the godfather works.
The Democratic party could not even prosecute a guy who tried to murder Congress.
They could. They chose not to.
Yup
At this point I consider it amaizng that Biden didn't make a big show of straight up pardoning him to "let the nation heal"
We've got to leave this "We go high, they go low" bullshit back in the Obama days
The Democratic party could not even prosecute a guy who tried to murder Congress.They could. They chose not to.
It makes one wonder if there really was a plot to murder Congress or if, perhaps, the Democrats were engaged in hyperbole.
So you cannot win them over with policy and nuances.
There's no room for nuance, but you absolutely can win them over with policy, it just has to be policy that helps them get through the day. Everyone experiences the stress of not knowing how much your healthcare will cost, and getting hit with a massive bill anyway. "Free healthcare" instead of complicated subsidies for insurance that nobody really understands.
Progressive policy tend to win even in states where the dems ate shit..
Surprise surprise. The ignorant fell for the party that excels in spreading misinformation, hate, and fear.
The real shocker here is we learned the ignorant account for the majority in America now.
Dark future.
The real shocker here is we learned the ignorant account for the majority in America now.
It was probably always this way, they just weren't engaged with the process until one of their own usurped a major party and let them feel comfortable being openly ignorant and bigoted again.
Do you really think we can really say a majority or even half?
only approximately 1/4th eligible voters voted for him, a right goal has always been to create swarms of apathetic or single issue voters. I guess it definitely still counts as ignorance
I mean if people don't vote, they don't count. If the majority of voting Americans vote for something, then I'm going to say the majority of Americans. The majority of voting Americans are ignorant. The rest simply don't count because they've chosen not to count.
Note: That obviously doesn't include those not of voting age.
Elona deleted votes with starlink satellites
So Democrats won with people who were invested in keeping Trump away from Presidency and failed virtually every other demographic?
Yes, Democrats failed them. It's kinda their whole thing.
It doesn't help that Republicans and their allies (Elon, Fox News, Russia, China, etc.) fill the void of TV and media with endless propaganda and lies.
How does a political party engage with those that ARE NOT WILLING to be engaged as voters. Its a losing situation that doesnt seem to be getting better. How do we get across to the braindead masses that their attention to policies will help them vote more effectively if they dont actually care to vote more effectively. Its fucking infuriating.
It's about having a coherent message.
What exactly were Kamala's biggest goals? In other words, if she could accomplish just three things in office, what would those three things have been? Can anyone answer that question? Does anyone know?
Because you certainly can with Trump. He wanted to deport millions of people, raise a bunch of tariffs, and exterminate trans people. Those were the three things he ran on.
What Democrats repeatedly fail to understand is that having a policy paper on your website is NOT THE SAME THING as actually having policy positions. You can't just point to something on your website, written by a staffer, as what you support.
I voted for Kamala, but I still to this day have not a damn idea what the woman actually stood for. Sure, she had official policies, but she never had any core issues that she hammered on again, and again, and again. She never had an effective 'elevator pitch' for why she should be president, other than just that she isn't Trump.
Democrats need to pick 3-5 things for an election cycle, 3-5 major policy positions. And then they, all of them, need to repeatedly and endlessly hammer home those things.
This.... Trump had ideals, horrible ones, but he had them. The Democrats simply didn't....
No Dems did have messages: We love war criminals. Fuck Palestine Fuck immigrants
They’re just… all Republican messages.
Sure they had some other milquetoast ass positions on stuff, but nothing big. No stopping genocide, no health care for all, no overhaul to social security to ensure its success, no overhaul to minimum wage to ensure it’s constantly updated to be a living wage in urban and suburban areas. No getting money out of politics. No positive immigration reform to help legalize those who’ve been working here who prop up the agricultural industry. Nothing big and important that wasn’t a Republican opinion. Because they’ve decided they’d rather be centrist republicans than do anything of use, they’ve done this since after Obama got elected. Hell, if it wasn’t for Obama care and changing opinion on gay marriage idk if Obama would’ve even been re-elected because they sure did a whole lot of nothing outside of that to try and “work with republicans”.
By dumbing down its message and putting up a talented showman.
There is no more hope, society is collapsing already. Look out for yourself, those around you have already demonstrated that they don’t care about others.
By inspiring them.
Memes
Maybe by presenting a coherent philosophy of governing that isn’t just blowing the already powerful? The Dems could have run on what Walz did in MN. Tons of amazing policies that he implemented on narrow margins. He was vocal about defending marginalized folk. He was helping the common person.
Instead, Harris said she wouldn’t do anything different from Biden. I wasn’t even motivated by the time I voted. Voting for a person who just wanted the status quo was super unexciting.
So, really, Trump won because people simply didn't bother to show up.
This is how EVERY conservative wins.
Every. Single. Fucking. Time. It's been half a century of backsliding because of a lack of willingness to vote strategically (or at all). The reason that Dems were able to keep pushing right is because there was no pressure from my fellow leftists that would rather throw the toys out of the pram and make the world worse than dedicate the slightest amount of effort to long-term improvement.
People think Dems had extreme voices but voted for Trump?
Literal imbeciles?
If it's true that you can't fix stupid, there really is no hope in our lifetimes.
Critics noted the party’s brand is often defined by extreme voices,
Sigh.
I figured at this point "Gay people have the right to exist" wasn't considered extreme, but here we are.
self reported highly engaged tend to be dems and less engaged tend to be republican. Not much of an insight to weave an entire article from. And then they quote zionist ball-licker John fetterman kicking progressives. Garbage article from a butthurt centrist wanting to lash out because of their own bad choices.
Dems need a PAC that mails out those scary postcards like Republicans do.
- “Trump wants to deport you.”
- “Trump wants higher prices”
- “Trump wants you to pay more for private schooling.”
Etc. Etc.
I suppose they can start that now. But they don't have to brand Trump with it but the entire Republican party. Let the shit stain soil the Republicans, as aggressively as Biden was attacked.
Just everytime a stupid decision comes about, costing you more, send a postcard. "Hey, hope you like paying more, hope you like all your jobs leaving for China, hope you like hurricanes, droughts and severe weather, XOXO from your Republican friends".
The trouble is, PACs cost money, and there's no profit in that message. ALL the big business favors the fascists because the fascists let big business exploit the public unchecked.
That's why big business cannot be allowed to exist in a free society.
So, they got the opposite of low-info voters.
Basically democrats won the people that were actively paying attention, and conservatives one the people that were passively hearing about yet election.
Even with those only 5 points ahead? Are you fucking kidding me? Is everyone stupid?
Nah, there's plenty of bigots in there, too. Granted, there is significant overlap.
You had a bunch of people who said "Wait? They're gonna have a woman be President? Yeah not really about that, things are woke enough as they are."
So..... yeah a bunch of bigoted assholes
"people able to look around and engage with reality vote against Trump"
People disliked when I just said this after the election and now it's just a fact.
dems didn't stay at home
I think most of those voters vote based on who they identify with, not based on policy arguments. Trying to sway those voters with better messaging is a lost cause if they see your candidate as a career politician whom they cannot relate to.
Some other thoughts: a lot of people talking about ignorant voters but not much said about the disastrous state of education in the US, the lack of affordability, nor the ill-preparedness for work of degree-holders. Countless people in the US have degrees that don’t fit their job!
Seems like the problem was Americans in general just not konwing what was going on