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BREAKING: Voters who don’t like Democrats didn’t vote for Democrats

Politico has a story today about Democrats being doomed, more or less. That's fine, I guess, if a little tiresome, but it turns out this conclusion is based on three focus groups. Check it out:

The focus groups — held immediately after the 2024 election and conducted by GBAO, a Democratic polling firm — featured three kinds of voters: young men in battleground states who voted for Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024; voters in battleground states who voted for Biden in 2020 but didn’t vote at all in 2024; and voters in blue states who had previously voted for Democrats, a third party candidate or didn’t vote in 2020 but voted for Trump in 2024.

So this story is based on—and only on—voters who explicitly abandoned Democrats in 2024. It's like interviewing the 1% of people who don't like chocolate and then declaring that chocolate is in big trouble.

Come on. Democrats obviously have some problems, but this is ridiculous. Kamala Harris received a 1.4% lower share of the presidential vote than the recent Democratic average while House members did 0.97% worse. And this is entirely due to losses among Hispanic voters.

Democrats have some issues to address, but 2024 was a fairly routine loss, not a world historical realignment. Let's get a grip here.

56 thoughts on “BREAKING: Voters who don’t like Democrats didn’t vote for Democrats

  1. peterlorre

    The issue is that the consequences of the election are likely world historic, even if the basic story about the electorate is bog-standard.

  2. Art Eclectic

    Kevin, you can keep saying this all day long but it doesn't change the fact that wins and losses are by razor thin margins. No one has pulled off a double digit margin win since Reagan in 1984.

    Republicans address their shortcomings and lack of strong enthusiasm by cheating (conservatism can never be failed). Democrats need to take a step back and honestly assess economic policy that's costing them the support of voters. People see opportunity dwindling for them and their children, that's on us to fix.

    1. golack

      The Dems should fire all their media consultants and their firms. Maybe then I'll stop being constantly spammed by texts.
      (Google Messages filtered them out, but it kept forking my text streams, so I had to uninstall it)
      The Harris campaign got the convention right, then started re-running HRC's campaign--albeit with many more texts. And the MSM let Trump tweets dictate the coverage.

      The so-called "conservatives" seem to be dictated by fear, and Trump and Fox News keeps pushing those buttons to keep them agitated and angry. Applying that to everyone else just frustrates them--you need to present a positive plan of action or they'll just stay home. Granted, it's hard to break through the MSM media coverage of Trumps latest shiny object

      1. JohnH

        And what, pray tell, would you like better media consultants to do? You can start an explicitly liberal outlet, and indeed they do exist, but will it rival Fox and its co-conspirators somehow? Will those who don't already favor someone like Biden flock to it? Will the Times pick up its truths the way they pick up conservative lies? Indeed, what will it add even for us since truth rather than just lefty propaganda we'd approve is already biased against Republicans?

        1. golack

          They needed to do what the were doing during the convention--embrace patriotism and present a positive view of their policies and what our country is and can be.
          Sell the achievements of the Biden-Harris administration instead of running from them.
          Just stop the incessant, annoying and insulting texts. And stop ignoring requests to stop.
          After the convention, the campaign veered off the rails a bit--and instead of course correction, they seemed to have double down on texting.

          Breaking Trump's hold on the MSM is very hard--but alienating your own voters is not how to go about that.

    2. Jasper_in_Boston

      Your assertion that “economic policy” is what is costing Democrats votes is just that. Also, let’s not forget, Democrats had won three elections in a row heading into last month’s. And Democrats are overwhelmingly likely to take back the House of Representatives two years from now.

      The consequences of handing the White House back to Republicans are pretty shitty given who their nominee was. No argument here. But Kevin’s absolutely right: this was a routine loss.

      1. JohnH

        And let's not forget, too, that voters time and time again say they like Democratic policy, including or even starting with economic policy. It's the Democrats they don't like (or, perhaps, given Covid, its brief spurt of inflation and murder, and the fate of other rulers both liberal and conservative worldwide, the state of the world).

    3. jdubs

      While this is the standard response, given what actually happened over the last 4 years, this seems like exactly the wrong prescription. The Dems did this and weren't rewarded for it in any way.

      I realize it's easy to just assume that the Democrats just need to do more, better, different economic policy....but there's little evidence that this makes a difference for voters. We just saw that this didn't work out.

      1. golack

        Trump kept saying everything was a hellscape. The Democrats never pushed back. The should have kept thanking the people for persevering through Covid.

    4. RZM

      I've said this mutliple times, but I think that the media coverage of the economy - and that is not just Fox or Joe Rogan but most of the MSM as well - played a big role in this election. It was so relentlessly negative that the Biden admin. just stopped talking about "Bidenomics" and Harris pretty much followed the same line making little effort to defend what should have been a positive. I realize that higher prices for things like gas and groceries make a bigger impression on people than their faster growing wages. Still, a full on effort to sell the positives of this economy should have been a bigger priority. IMHO they could have pushed back hard against the media narrative. Among other things they should have challenged the MAGA idea that people were worse off than they had been 4 years earlier when we were still in the midst of the worst of Covid. 2020 ws a disastrous year, we are much better off now.

      1. Anandakos

        And it doesn't take too many people who did NOT get a raise, or only a piddling one, during the time of accelerating prices to destroy the Democrats' chances. That they came within six seats of a majority in the House after a bout of 9-percent inflation says that their connection to the voters is still sound.

      2. ColBatGuano

        Yes, there needed to be a more consistent effort to push back against the MSM economic doomerism. I saw an article back in September that tried to say that unemployment was still a big issue because they found 4 random people who couldn't find jobs. Same with stories about one grocery item being 25% more expensive.

    5. spatrick

      "Democrats need to take a step back and honestly assess economic policy that's costing them the support of voters. People see opportunity dwindling for them and their children, that's on us to fix"

      I get so tired of this crap!

      I want you to name me one specific policy in the 2024 Democratic Party Platform in the economics section that you think was specifically anti-people and anti-opportunity. If you say "trade" there were just as many Republicans who supported NAFTA and China MFN. This is the same party that passed the ACA which Republicans continually wished to repeal. Joe Biden appeared on a goddamn picket line which no other sitting President has done. You can spit out the "neoliberal", Bernie Sanders garbage at Clinton and Obama if you wish, so long ago as it was, but given the course correction done by the Biden Administration, hasn't that reassessment you long for already taken place?

      Articles like this simply reinforce my opinion that Politico and websites like it are garbage and articles from it should neither be commented or reflected upon anymore than articles from Breitbart. It's stupid click-bait in this day and age and nothing more and the product of bored minds and limited imaginations. However, it's also nothing new. After the 1976 election, the obits were being written for the GOP as well. On paper that may have seem logical (only 18 percent of the electorate identified with the GOP in the wake of Watergate), however the damaged Gerald Ford nearly won the White House, GOP Senate challengers in four western states (Schmitt in New Mexico, Wallop in Wyoming, Hatch in Utah and Hayakawa in California, showing the impact of Reagan's primary campaign in the West) and ousted Democrat incumbents and the Republicans picked up two seats in Missouri and Rhode Island of retiring Dem incumbents. That was not the sign of a dying political party. What it showed was a new party that was growing over the old. The GOP also only lost one U.S. House seat. While they were a small minority, the bleeding after Watergate stopped and they could rebuild. Any reasonable observer of politics could have seen this at the time, but no, we got the same silly "party-is-dying" article that always get produced at this time of year, whether its 1976 or 2024.

      I close with this: I knew a lot of people growing up who became Republicans because of four years of Jimmy Carter. Think about it.

  3. Joseph Harbin

    Agree. It was another margin-of-error election that could have gone either way. This one went the wrong way. The environment is set up so that pretty-darned-good is perpetually within the margin of error of god-awful, and vice versa, and that's a bigger problem than anything Democrats alone are responsible for.

    It's like interviewing the 1% of people who don't like chocolate and then declaring that chocolate is in big trouble.

    I didn't click the link but I imagine some honest focus group participant may have used that exact reasoning for why they voted for Trump and not Harris: "I don't like chocolate."

    1. Austin

      If the country’s future depends on 1.4% of the population voting correctly for the Sane Party in every election forever, the country is already lost and all we’re doing now is delaying its inevitable collapse.

    2. ColBatGuano

      Listening to focus groups responses will make you despair for the future of the country. The participants in the NY Times features come off as utter dolts. My favorite was the Trump voter that thought he was going to take on the big health care companies.

  4. zic

    The tone of both Democratic analysts and MAGA mad men suggests there will be great overreach.

    And it's going to peeve the folk who stayed home greatly.

    I'm expecting a big, very elastic snap back. But maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part.

    1. Austin

      “And it's going to peeve the folk who stayed home greatly.”

      Fuck those people. If they couldn’t be bothered to vote, then none of the rest of us should be bothered to consider their opinions on anything. Shirking one of your basic responsibilities shouldn’t lead to everyone else caring more about your well being.

      1. zic

        Does writing them (and their opinions) off in any way help?

        They stayed home. Why?

        Maybe they didn't like the black woman. Or maybe they were tired of being told they were supposed to feel guilty for not liking her. For not doing enough for the environment. For minorities. For the poor. For their own good health. I don't know.

        but I feel like we lost because we scold.

  5. Dana Decker

    When a business declines it's smart to ask the people who used to be customers why they turned away. That's because it can always get worse.

    1. Ken Rhodes

      Exactly! Kevin derides the focus on voters who voted for Trump or used to vote Democratic but didn’t vote at all this time. Kevin says of course that will make it look like the Dems are in trouble.

      Well, here’s a news flash:
      (1) If the Dems lost voters, WITHOUT making offsetting gains, then yes, the Dems are in trouble. And when those losses occur against a candidate as abysmal as this year, then it’s deep trouble.
      (2) BTW, what the heck did he suppose was the point of “focus groups?” To congratulate the Dems on running a good campaign, and commiserate on their unlucky loss? Bullshit! The point of the focus groups was to find out what went wrong and how to avoid it next time.

      1. tomob

        he did not deride the focus on Trump voters, he decided the [typically] distorted way journalists characterized the results.

  6. Justin

    The new York times says democrats should talk about… religion! 😂

    “You gotta chill out. You know, like the constant … freak out – it’s not helpful,” Fetterman said.

    “The D-brand has been so maligned from the standpoint of – it’s just, it’s toxic,” Manchin told CNN.

    I have no idea how to convince some people that republicans are bad news except to have republicans actually funk up big time. Should’ve shut down the government last week. Stop saving their ass.

    1. spatrick

      except to have republicans actually funk up big time

      Unfortunately that's the only way it's going to happen but after what happened last week, my confidence in Republican fuck-ups has been strengthened.

  7. JohnH

    ". . . except to have republicans actually funk up big time." I'll never buy the old progressive and now even centrist axiom that it has to get worse before it can get better. Surely if Trump and his party do just one more outrageous thing? Maybe wipe out all of life on the planet? Surely then voters will finally vote their self-interest, if only there were any left.

    1. Justin

      Nothing else worked. Good deeds, good policy… they don’t translate to electoral success. But when Bush crashed the economy, Obama won. Go figure. Hopefully something short of extinction. 😂

      1. spatrick

        Yep! And just remember this: Watergate crippled the Nixon Administration at the same time a recession and raging inflation thanks to lifting of wage-n-price controls put on for the 1972 Nixon re-election and the oil shock after the Yom Kippur War took place. The average voter who may not have understood all the ins and outs of the Watergate scandal could at easily understand being unemployed, waiting in line for gas and paying triple for meat in 1973-74 and that did not make Nixon very popular either along with being a crook.

  8. KJK

    It would be a routine lose if the Democrats lost to a normal Republican candidate, you know, someone who is member of the same species as the rest of us. Losing to that vile creature, that pathologically lying, sexual assaulting vicious animal is what is most disturbing.

    1. iamr4man

      Note though that Republicans had the opportunity to elect a person who is every much as vile as Trump (DeSantis) but without most of the baggage. But they overwhelmingly picked Trump. Has there been a survey like this one in which Trump supporters said why they. Hose Trump over DeSantis? And what could De Santis have done to win over Trump voters?

  9. n1cholas

    Doing anything more than providing undocumented immigrants shelter before their immediate deportation is a losing issue.

    Running a minority woman against a white man is a losing issue.

    Running on issues that don't benefit everyone is a losing issue.

    Note well, I'm not saying any particular group should be abandoned, but RUNNING ON "identity" issues isn't a winner, and if groups that have been and will be protected by Democrats choose to sit at home because Democrats don't make them an issue, well too fucking bad when the leopards come to eat their faces.

    At some point the Democratic Party has to come to terms with the fact that they aren't going to win by running for abortion, trans rights, and increased "welfare" for poor people.

    Note especially well that I'm not a centrist or a liberal, I'm an actual "leftist". Either we're trying to win elections, or what the fuck are we doing here?

    1. Justin

      “The election of donald trump this year shattered a long-standing piece of conventional wisdom in American politics: that Latinos will vote overwhelmingly for whichever party has the more liberal approach to immigration, making them a reliable Democratic constituency. This view was once so pervasive that the Republican Party’s 2012 post-election autopsy concluded that the party needed to move left on immigration to win over more nonwhite voters.

      If that analysis were true, then the nomination of the most virulently anti-immigration presidential candidate in modern history for three straight elections should have devastated the GOP’s Latino support. Instead, the opposite happened. Latinos, who make up about a quarter of the electorate, still lean Democratic, but they appear to have shifted toward Republicans by up to 20 points since 2012.”

      Immigration activists should be kicked out of the Democratic Party right along with the transgender ones. They have the moral high ground, bless their hearts, but have been a political disaster.

    2. spatrick

      "and increased "welfare" for poor people.

      Show me the part the 2024 Democratic Platform which states: "more welfare for poor people".

      If you're going to use Republican talking points to critique the Democrats, please make sure they're truthful first, okay?

      1. n1cholas

        Oh, I'm sorry, did Harris not talk about giving people money to buy a house and start a business?

        If that isn't "welfare", I guess I don't know what is.

        Oh, it's X, Y, and Z and not "welfare"?

        It doesn't fucking matter to voters because it didn't fucking work, did it?

        Yikes.

        Do you want to win elections, yes, or no?

        If yes, then stop promising to give people money and talk about how you're going to make the economy fair again, because that what populism is.

        Thanks!

        1. spatrick

          "Oh, I'm sorry, did Harris not talk about giving people money to buy a house and start a business?"

          And Trump gave actual billions to farmers to pay for their losses for tariff policies he created, so don't talk to me about "welfare" ever again.

          He bragged about signing the checks that gave thousands to people? Was that welfare?

          Do you know how many government programs there are that help you buy a house or start a business? Hmm? Programs created by Republicans and Democrats alike?

          Again, enough with the "welfare" talk. Get serious please.

          You know how to make the economy fair? Tax the rich. Close loopholes, go after rich tax cheats. Worked for Bill Clinton and Barak Obama and Joe Biden. All election winners thank you very much.

          1. n1cholas

            You're really laser focused on the welfare thing.

            I'm an anarcho-syndicalist. You're to my far right.

            I'm not talking about what is and isn't reality.

            I'm talking about how Democrats message to rurals and working class people.

            But spend more time screaming at me, it's helping win over the rurals.

          1. n1cholas

            I'm to your far left. You're wasting your time trying to gotcha me on corporate welfare.

            This isn't about reality, it's about messaging.

            Democrats lost the message in 2024.

    3. ConradsGhost

      This sounds harsh, but it's not. Richard Rorty warned the left in Achieving Our Country about the reductionist trap of identity politics. It's not about kicking anyone to the curb; it's about gaining and building the power you must - must - have in order to realize your goals. Being "right" means nothing when being "right" results in ceding power to a neo-authoritarian mindset that's become increasingly malevolent on a decadal timescale. Power first; change second. There's no other way.

  10. tomob

    Democrats need to be willing to offend people. everything they say seems to have gone through a rinse cycle set to knuckle under to every conceivable sliver of the electorate including people who will not in a million years vote for them. many people, me included, hate that. it almost killed me to vote for HRC, but there was no choice for me.

    1. ConradsGhost

      This is exactly right. People know when they're being talked at instead of being talked to. Harris did a pretty good job of this, from what I saw, leaving behind the risk averse, focus group tested, meaningless and impersonal pablum speak that's plagued Democrats since Clinton, and it has everything to do with the 'consultants' they keep turning to over and over. If you want to connect with people you must talk in the language people feel, which carries risk but without it you're just a faceless robot mouthing platitudes. It's a big, big problem with Dems. Fetterman recently showed exactly how to do it in the recent defense authorization vote; Dems need to take note and kick the don't-ever-offend-anyone speak and the consultants who push this to the curb.

      If you don't speak from the heart, in ways that connect to people where they are, even if you get their votes you lose them in one way or another. Dems are incredibly bad at this, for a lot of reasons, some forgivable and some not, and they need to fix it.

  11. spatrick

    "Democrats need to be willing to offend people

    Willing to offend who? You're saying you really didn't want to vote for Hilary Clinton because she wasn't offensive enough? Does that even make sense? Why didn't you vote for Trump back then? He was plenty offensive.

    People can say what they want. All I ask if you're going to offer political commentary, please make it coherent. Thank you.

  12. Talphon

    The democrats chief mistake was winning the 2020 election. Had Trump won that election, we would be in a very different world today. The pandemic, the response to it, the inflation afterwards and everything else would have been hung around Trump's neck and there is no way he or the republican party would ever have recovered from it.

    The cycle for the last 20 years has been: Republicans lose when some major catastrophe happens, but are out of office before the actual pain of recovery hits. Recovery is unpleasant for rank and file Americans. Media hangs recovery pain on Dem necks. Republicans get reelected. Rinse, repeat.

    The great recession and the Pandemic inflation are the two biggies, but I'm quite sure there's more.

    While it would have been fatal for Ukraine if Trump had been in office in 2021, I kind of wish he had been reelected and faced the results of the pandemic he did so little to mitigate.

    1. spatrick

      The democrats chief mistake was winning the 2020 election. Had Trump won that election, we would be in a very different world today.

      Yeah, we'd all be dead.

      Agree with your comment though

  13. Pittsburgh Mike

    Yes, we barely lost the presidential election, but we also lost a lot of smaller elections. And for what it's worth, the presidential election should have been winnable by Democrats. We lost to a brainless prat.

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