‘What a circus’: eligible US voters on why they didn’t vote in the 2024 presidential election
‘What a circus’: eligible US voters on why they didn’t vote in the 2024 presidential election
Nearly 90 million Americans didn’t vote – which is more than the number of people who voted for Trump or Harris
The 2024 US presidential election had been widely characterized as one of the most consequential political contests in recent US history. Although turnout was high for a presidential election – almost matching the levels of 2020 – it is estimated that close to 90 million Americans, roughly 36% of the eligible voting age population, did not vote. This number is greater than the number of people who voted for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.
More than a month on from polling day, eligible US voters from across the country as well as other parts of the world got in touch with the Guardian to share why they did not vote.
Scores of people said they had not turned out as they felt their vote would not matter because of the electoral college system, since they lived in a safely blue or red state. This included a number of people who nonetheless had voted in the 2020 and 2016 elections.
While various previous Democratic voters said they had abstained this time due to the Harris campaign’s stance on Israel or for other policy reasons, a number of people in this camp said they would have voted for the vice-president had they lived in a swing state.
“The Dems are out of touch on social issues, and have tacked too far to the left to appease a minority of progressives.”
Asshole.
And ignorant - they fell for the conservative talking points too
And us progressives feel ignored by the Dems. Wild
For those who aren't aware already, "a minority of progressives" means "queer people," specifically trans people.
This asshole is saying the Dems went too far in trying to make things more equal.
I think there are a lot of progressives, but I think not enough of them live in swing states. I'm one, and I know there are some around in the college crowd. When Michigan went blue trifecta in 2022, I thought the pendulum was swinging, but now it looks like I was wrong.
This guy might be an asshole, but I'm not certain that he's wrong.
Progressivism is further-left than liberalism.
U guys need mandatory voting like what we got here in aus. And by mandatory it doesnt mean u have to pick someone (its ur right to spoil ur ballot) it simply means u have to attend a polling booth.
Voting is a duty not a right
We need laws that make it illegal to spread election misinformation. We can't function as a society with this level of manipulation and outright falsities. Nobody knows what is up or down anymore and this is just the start of what AI and propaganda news media are gonna make possible in the very near future.
Misinformation or misdirection for how to vote or voting practices? The AEC will have you for that.
Misinformation or straight up political lies to convince you to vote for them?
Thats allowed.In Aus politicians can say whatever they want to get you to vote for them/not for the other parties, but they cannot trick you into filling out your vote cads to vote in a way that you didnt intend.
Is even easier than that. They will mail the ballot to your house months in advance and you can study everything especially all local initiatives and then mail it back at your leisure and people still don't do that. It's madness.
The problem is that the powers that be used wedge issues and the cowardice of half the citizens to sway the elections however they see fit.
Do you think they would wound their own ability to game power from the system to serve the citizens?
Ranked choice voting would be nice as well. So would having more than two political parties.
Yes Aus has both of those things too.
Voting should also be easier.
We should be able to vote with our phones.
Their are problems with that see the multiple tom scott videos on voting.
I didn’t find Harris compelling, just more of the same.
Well you're sure not going to get more of the same now. Good job, shithead.
the problem is, we still gotta beat Trump.
I dont think anyone knows if actual leftist messages will actually work, but holy shit it's gotta be better than diet, no caffeine, low sodium fun size Bill Clinton Zero.
Good job, shithead.
Yeah, keep blaming the people "not falling in line" instead of just running a candidate that supports them.
That's how we got 2 Trump presidencies and people like you still haven't learned from it.
If anything, this should teach people like you that expecting people to "fall in line" no longer works and you should support different tactics to prevent further conservative blowouts.
I don't think people like you are capable of learning from this, though. You're just going to get angrier and keep repeating the same mistakes expecting different results.
You're right. I do blame people for "not falling in line" and letting a genocidal fascist dictator who made no secret of that gain control of a nation because they didn't find the opposition "compelling."
And as far from not having learned, I think what you haven't learned is that 2024 was the last real election in the U.S. in your lifetime.
Harris lost. You got what you wanted. Be happy about it.
Well when you get Biden pardoning a judge who literally took bribes to send kids to jail to benefit a for profit jail, I'd question how compelling the Democrats are.
Instead of voting 3rd party and trying to change things, many Americans seems to be locked in a pointless argument over which party is the least shit.
“What is the point [of voting]?,” he asked. “Aside from a handful of weaponized issues, the parties are nearly identical. They both hate the poor and serve only their donors.”
We can yell at them that the handful of issues should matter enough, or we could actually try to get a popular candidate past the party itself and I to the general.
But shit isn't going to change until we all admit the DNC isn't automatically on our side. I'm more hopeful than I should be for the DNC election in February, but I'm ready to be disappointed.
I really wish we had a unified left because there are enough of us to make a serious push to take over the party, but we're too interested in bickering amongst ourselves
to make a serious push to take over the party
No theres not. This is the effect of the lemmy echo chamber. America is A LOT more conservative than ppl here like to admit. The actual left of the Democratic party are ppl like Bernie and AOC and they're definitely not celebrated inside the DNC
too interested in bickering amongst ourselves
That's because three Democratic party is a coalition of liberals and conservatives
Surprised not to see some self-unaware someone arguing that this position is somehow too far to the right or something
We 100% don't agree on everything, and I don't know how unified we can be given the number of diverse interests under the umbrella. Feminists don't have any natural overlap with folks who want to eliminate cars or with atheists. The only unifying goal that makes proponents allies is opposing conservatives.
You've got black folks who are going to live their entire lives oppressed by systemic racism being told to just go along with getting rights excruciatingly slowly and trust their grandkids will have it great.
I'm afraid as much sense as your point makes, it isn't realistic.
Problem is that leftists like money, too, and aren't afraid to exploit others in order to get it.
The person in the quote is a big indicator that schools are failing to teach civics properly, and people don't understand what voting is (locally, state, or federally.) Also, they are a fucking idiot.
He's referring to the illusion of choice.
Your comment is textbook irony.
"What a circus" say eligible voters who didn't vote in the 2024 election:
The clowns are the ones who fall in line believing that things will improve.
One guy said this “VP Harris failed to demonstrate she was ethically or intellectually capable of executing the office, repeatedly failing to detail out her policies..." It's infuriating that people continue to believe Harris never detailed her policies despite the fact that all she talked about was policy. All they had to do was pay attention to her and she would talk about her policies, it seems like they just didn't want to even pay attention to her. Or that because she didn't detail alllll of her policies then that wasn't enough. Add on that this person calls her intellectually incapable of talking about her policies, basically calling her stupid and it's just exhausting.
This whole article continues to make me believe in the fundamental problem with Democrat voters which so many people have shown. The democrats have to run the perfect candidate with the perfect policies or the charisma of Obama who promise the world, while the Republicans can run a guy who says immigrants are eating cats and dogs and because the Democratic candidate wasn't perfect, the Republicans win.
And then when the Democrats do promise signficant change and it doesn't immediately happen, Democrat voters punish them for it, they lose the midterms, and any change that was in the process of happening gets stopped dead. But when Republicans promise the world and don't deliver, Republican voters reward them for simply promising it.
"Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line."
Institutional vs anti institutional. Dems are institutional and the institution sucks. Trump is a sledgehammer. He promised alot of sledgehammering. Not good, but that's irrelevant. The Dems need to stop protecting the broken system of neo liberal economics that fucking Regan invented and chasing the phantom center right vote.
Aka. swing left or die.
What if we make not voting an official vote and, if it wins, all the parties have to try again with new candidates?
Why not. Maybe I would cap it at some number of elections.
Yeah, we don’t want to have a politician de facto in power because no one else better comes along and/or no one still wants to vote.
I blame my peers who didn't vote just as much as my peers who voted for Trump for what is to come.
I'm done giving a shit. We had a chance to stop this, and we sat on our ass.
I blame everyone who hasn't learned from 2016 that expecting voters to "fall in line" is not a winning strategy.
Unfortunately, you're showing us that you still haven't learned from your mistakes so I expect more conservative victories in the future.
Anything to avoid helping out poor people at the expense of the rich, right?
All I got from this is that Democrats, progressives, and Americans are fucking absolutely stupid regardless of education level.
Yeah, I feel like this last election was an awakening for me of exactly how stupid, selfish and ignorant this country is on average. This country is just dumb as shit and proud of it.
Why are you lumping progressives in with them?
Trump won 2 presidencies because democrats actively work against progressive agendas which would actually benefit regular people.
Progressives work against progressive agendas by naming pro-safety policies like "don't have police respond to mental health patients" as the Fox-news like "defund the police".
Non voters are almost as dumb as the trump people.
Not voting takes less energy than voting for someone that doesn't represent a potential voters interests. That's not stupid, that's just taking the path of least resistance.
Lol this was a 1:1 repeat of 2016.
I voted and sat back as the Dems threw away their election by willingly ignoring their constituents in exchange for AIPAC money.
the only conclusion is this is the model for both parties into the foreseeable future.
I live in a blue state but that doesn't mean I'd be justified in believing that I should sit it out. Even if that insane logic about not needing to was valid, there's other shit on the ballot. And even if my vote for or abstaining against an uncontested incumbent is irrelevant, there's still ballot measures that need to be understood.
The large number of eligible non-voters is primarily a result of those individual’s responses to propaganda. This did not happen by accident. I don’t blame the person that got conned, I blame those running the con job.
Not according to the article. Lots of voters in solid red or blue states didn't see a point, and who am I to argue. Thanks to gerrymandering, this is often true even for local races. Why vote for a party that supports genocide when your vote is nothing but virtue signaling for a party bereft of virtue?
I’d be the one to argue ….. I mean, fine if you really don’t see the point, but the reasoning on half of these people in the article is flawed. Either they were speaking out of ignorance or using excuses for poor citizenship, but when their reason contradicts reality, they should be argued
And even if you’re in a solid red or blue state (like I am), your vote counts. Maybe it won’t change the results but they do pay attention. At the very least we could always say the Democratic candidate would win the popular vote. Not this time.
If there’s ever going to be a chance at reforming the electoral college system, t starts by having the popular vote be consistently different from the electoral vote. From this election, there’s no reason for reform, because both had the same result
Local elections matter a lot. If the government shits its pants and nominates total morons who literally have no idea how to perform their job, it falls to state elections and officials to pick up the slack. And if your state elects fucking idiots, your last line of defense are your city officials. And you better pray they are damn good at their job.
You only want the best state officials, and the best only get elected if people vote. Out of 8,000,000 people in our state, 54 decided an election for a massive role during nov 2024. Four of those were from family, so a difference of about a block or three changed the outcome for millions of people. And we are deep blue. 50 votes away from a red candidate.
What propaganda? Running a shitty candidate that doesn't represent the interests of working people is not propaganda.
If anything, this derision towards those who refuse to "fall in line" reads like propaganda. It makes sense that people like you would peddle it without even knowing.
In the USA, How you vote is private. If you voted is public.
"It doesn't matter" (and they're right) is always going to be the number one answer. Very few states actually have meaningful voting rights with respect to the presidential election. Lower races are sometimes more meaningful, but even then they're frequently forgone conclusions. The only votes I had that weren't a forgone conclusion was some municipal ballot measures.
And yet doing something is better than doing nothing. Everyone can't just assume that everyone else will do the right thing.
The whole reason theyre foregone conclusions is because people stay home. Someone link the map that shows non voters win most of the country.
No, they aren't. I know my local community. We're a blue state and going to vote blue. Just because someone is a non-voter doesn't mean they have radically different political beliefs than the rest of their community. They're usually listening to the same broadcasts, having the same social networks, and growing up with the same pervasive political biases. Some will diverge from the norm, but by and large non-voters simply don't care enough to form a new political opinion. For every besieged opposition voter with learned helplessness there are ten who if they were forced to make a decision will just reference the general prevailing opinion.
So wait, if your state wins, the excess votes don't matter towards the presidential candidate?
Nope, they just go to the popular vote as bragging rights. It's a stupid system.
i guess it's similar to our system here in canada, however many ridings the party has dictates their position in the house. its really dumb because some reps might be great people, but the leader is a total dingus. I don't know what party i am voting for because i have lost faith in all the parties in my county.
I despise humanity's current timeline. Can it fuck off, please!?
Meteor 2028!
Rejoice!
Well, they may have actual made it so about what they fear about their vote “not counting” by putting the fascists in power
The idea that your vote doesn't count in a strongly red or blue state is total propaganda to get people to not vote and make it so that they don't have to spend money on campaigning in those places. There are way more people who don't vote than there are people who voted for either candidate in most places. If everyone voted it could easily overcome any perceived majorities. Especially if city people voted. Problem is that there isnt enough capacity to vote. And cuts to funding that capacity in red states have been a big way to discourage voting in cities. Most people can't afford to take an entire day off of work to wait in the lines and employers wouldn't allow it. They're only required to give 1 hour which is barely enough to get to a poling place and back with no lines. And that isn't enforced so many don't even give that hour. And mail in and early voting has been framed by Republicans as unreliable with fake movies and such as propaganda even though it works great in many Blue states.
The left is dealing Left-out. And journalism standards are very low.
It looks like the "they're both the same" disinformation from the hexbear side of the internet made a pretty strong impression. I'm not going to call it determinative by any means but it put some weight on the scale.
I think attempting to court Never Trump voters and Haley voters was penalty the biggest mistake. They could've spent that time and energy trying to win workers, getting their messaging to be more "real person" instead of focus grouped.
Like, the real solution was for Biden not to run for re-election at least, and at most to resign in February 2023 or right after signing the Infrastructure Law or chips.
Its not disinformation to say the obvious, that people are completely dissatisfied with the Democratic Party's ineptitude and corruption. They blatantly refuse to listen to the will of their voting base. I can also guarantee nowhere near 90 million eligible voters were influenced in any way by hexbear or related sites. Those users were just telling you what you refused to listen to. That the democratic party needs to change its tactics and stop their shady money laundering and pandering to corporate interests and ruthless support of imperialism, or they wont win. But keep blaming some random internet forum, and palestinians, and anybody but the ones who made the actual decisions during the election. Decisions that alienated tens of millions of eligible voters.
Did they interview anyone in a swing state at all, or just people who lived in solid states and suggested that if they lived in a swing state they’d have voted?
The only reasons they gave were Israel and gesture vaguely in the direction of other policies.
Did these non-voters not consider the downballot candidates that dems also lost their asses on?
Pivoting from Biden to Harris guaranteed a Trump victory.
We need a replacement for the democrat party.
Biden had been showing his age for almost a year before he dropped out. That debate was his last chance to show he wasn't having a massive mental decline, and he failed. There was no way he could have won against Trump after that.
I actually disagree. I think the debate was blown way out of proportion and most people who would've voted for him prior would've still voted to him after.
It's important to acknowledge that there are a lot of liars on the internet. It's easy to make it appear that a bunch of people jumped ship from biden after the debate when you see waves of trolls saying "yeah, I was gonna vote for Biden but not after that debate!" Meanwhile, they were going to vote for Trump all along.
That said, I still don't think Biden had a great shot at winning because he doesn't serve the working class or exploit their emotions.
Pivoting to Biden in 2020 is what really sank the party in 2024. Covid won 2020 for Biden, but he thought he was something special so in 2024 he desperately clung onto power until his mental decline was too obvious for even party diehards to deny and then the party scrambled to push through Harris who was forced to adopt that bonehead's general rhetoric. Biden would've lost things even harder. The party really fucked itself with Biden, but I'm sure the party thinks it was all worth it to prevent a Bernie victory.
Harris overtook Biden's polling numbers quite quickly. Also, I find that Biden's pardoning of the "kids4cash" judge demonstrates some extreme incompetence and tone deafness".
"I'm a retarded piece of shit" -all sources
/thread
While various previous Democratic voters said they had abstained this time due to the Harris campaign’s stance on Israel or for other policy reasons, a number of people in this camp said they would have voted for the vice-president had they lived in a swing state.
In a group of absolute morons, this is the only rational stance. It makes sense not to vote if your vote doesn't matter and by doing so you're only symbolically supporting a genocide. This is of course very different from voting for Trump because of Gaza (completely irrational) or abstaining in a swing state because of Gaza.
I cannot in good conscience vote for the two party system anymore. A trillion dollars went into the coffers of both sides to market “old” to the people. That money wants returns and it often means Bill riders that make billionaires richer at the sacrifice of us.
Until the people realize this and vote other parties instead of Democrat or Republican, I’m out.
So you really don't find Trump any worse than Harris?
If you're serious about ending the terrible two party system (which is really one party and a cult), you'd vote for the one party, the democrats, and crack fucking skulls trying to get ranked choice or similar passed.
First past the post guarantees third parties can never exist, mathematically. Voting third party under first past the post is supporting the two party system.