Eighty million people didn’t bother to vote last election.
Four million Americans are explicitly disenfranchised under felony voter laws. Meanwhile, Texas alone, removed one million names from its voter registry on the eve of the 2024 election. These purges are common throughout the American south and midwest, from Arizona to Ohio to North Carolina.
Assuming I don’t want to run down every last person legally disenfranchised by one method or another, we’ll be conservative and leave the total at 75M. The biggest single gap in turnout by volume is California, with nearly 10M eligible voters failing to show up on election day (conveniently, California only disenfranchises felony inmates, so there’s not much double counting here). It might also be worth noting that New York State has some of the strictest voter registration laws in the country, explaining its own dismal annual turnout, accounting for another 7M no-shows. Illinois have similarly mediocre figures, accounting for another 5M.
But these folks “don’t matter” from the perspective of a Democratic campaign strategist, because these are already safe blue states. The so-called apathy doesn’t hurt Democrats in the slightest. In many ways, its a benefit.
The states where “apathy” matters are the swing states. I single these out because you otherwise have to assume apathetic voters are all Democrats. And Greg Abbott neatly disproved this claim between 2014 (one of the worst turnout years of Texas history) and 2018 (one of the best) by adding nearly as many Republican voters to his total as his Democratic opponent, during a liberal wave election. Clearly, the apathy gap is not one-sided. It does not, alone, decide elections for conservatives.
But lets assume Dems win on the margins. In 2024, there were really only five swing states - Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. New Hampshire went blue (and its very small) so we don’t really give a shit about apathetic voters here. The remainder are peculiar because in two out of four cases, Democrats won statewide at the Gubernatorial and Senatorial levels, but lost the Presidential bid. Michigan and Wisconsin both sent Democrats to the senate (Slotkin and Baldwin, respectively). Pennsylvania handed its Senate seat to McCormick by 15,000 votes while Trump took the state against Harris by over 120,000 votes. Georgia didn’t have a statewide race in 2024, but its notable that they’re hosting two Democrat Senators neither of whom came within 200k votes of the Trump 2024 win, four years earlier.
So how do you square this circle? Why are Republicans losing down ballot even with Trump coat-tails pulling the party out of the 2018/2022 doldrums? And why would states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania - which regularly host some of highest turnout figures in the nation - still voting Republican?
Four million Americans are explicitly disenfranchised under felony voter laws. Meanwhile, Texas alone, removed one million names from its voter registry on the eve of the 2024 election. These purges are common throughout the American south and midwest, from Arizona to Ohio to North Carolina.
Assuming I don’t want to run down every last person legally disenfranchised by one method or another, we’ll be conservative and leave the total at 75M. The biggest single gap in turnout by volume is California, with nearly 10M eligible voters failing to show up on election day (conveniently, California only disenfranchises felony inmates, so there’s not much double counting here). It might also be worth noting that New York State has some of the strictest voter registration laws in the country, explaining its own dismal annual turnout, accounting for another 7M no-shows. Illinois have similarly mediocre figures, accounting for another 5M.
But these folks “don’t matter” from the perspective of a Democratic campaign strategist, because these are already safe blue states. The so-called apathy doesn’t hurt Democrats in the slightest. In many ways, its a benefit.
The states where “apathy” matters are the swing states. I single these out because you otherwise have to assume apathetic voters are all Democrats. And Greg Abbott neatly disproved this claim between 2014 (one of the worst turnout years of Texas history) and 2018 (one of the best) by adding nearly as many Republican voters to his total as his Democratic opponent, during a liberal wave election. Clearly, the apathy gap is not one-sided. It does not, alone, decide elections for conservatives.
But lets assume Dems win on the margins. In 2024, there were really only five swing states - Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. New Hampshire went blue (and its very small) so we don’t really give a shit about apathetic voters here. The remainder are peculiar because in two out of four cases, Democrats won statewide at the Gubernatorial and Senatorial levels, but lost the Presidential bid. Michigan and Wisconsin both sent Democrats to the senate (Slotkin and Baldwin, respectively). Pennsylvania handed its Senate seat to McCormick by 15,000 votes while Trump took the state against Harris by over 120,000 votes. Georgia didn’t have a statewide race in 2024, but its notable that they’re hosting two Democrat Senators neither of whom came within 200k votes of the Trump 2024 win, four years earlier.
So how do you square this circle? Why are Republicans losing down ballot even with Trump coat-tails pulling the party out of the 2018/2022 doldrums? And why would states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania - which regularly host some of highest turnout figures in the nation - still voting Republican?