I note that they did not break out the 18-21 year olds from the 22-26 year olds, even though I'm convinced there's something to unpack there.
This might be because previous studies didn't break them out and they want the results to be comparable? But I agree it would be interesting.
What really struck me is that Harris lost support relative to Biden in pretty much every group. She lost men, she lost women, she lost whites, she lost Asians, she lost Latins, she lost blacks, she lost graduates and non-graduates. And, as the report says, Harris lost several states and districts which the Democratic candidate won.
The report says "No single demographic characteristic explains all the dynamics of the election; rather we find that the election is best explained as a combination of related factors" and, well, that's true, but there is one common non-demographic factor to all of them which is that they were all being asked if they wanted to vote for Harris. Maybe she just wasn't a very good candidate. Or maybe the election was decided by inflation, which knocked out incumbents all round the world, and there was nothing that could be done about it.
I asked Kid One (who is in the 18-21 group) if he could say when, or more interestingly why, he stopped being an Elon fan. "I don't know, I guess I just sorta grew up." Which is gratifying and a relief, but also doesn't necessarily replicate and certainly doesn't scale.
If there is One Weird Trick that I can think of, it's that during the pandemic he and his friends played online games rather than just watched videos (though I'm sure there was plenty of that, too). Ok, there is also a Second Weird Trick: Once people were allowed to meet up outside again, he and his friends Took Walks. They laughed at themselves and said they were turning into their grandparents and look how cheesy and old-fashioned and uncool, but they did it anyway and kept doing it.
Don't worry, though, I still hate plenty of things.
there is one common non-demographic factor to all of them which is that they were all being asked if they wanted to vote for Harris
If I may be the bold Yglesiasian truth-teller to all of you clueless liberals: Your use of the word "non-demographic" fails to acknowledge electoral facts. Change "non-demographic" to "demographic" and you've got it right.
1: Maybe she just wasn't a very good candidate was black and a woman.
Fixt.
If I had to rank causes, I would say inflation, sexism, racism. Actually reading the link might help me refine my thinking on the order of the second and third. I don't know where to put media, both the Fox Cinematic Universe and the mainstream media's barely explicable love affair with Trump. Sometimes I think that tops everything else.
Because anecdotes from old white men are now data, I will say that in canvassing in a swing state I found that black women were the only ones who seemed worried that Harris wouldn't win.
5.1 to 4.
6: Some people are better equipped, demographically, to understand the politics of this country. There is a reason that a particular South Carolina demographic chose to provide Biden a lifeline in 2020.
South Carolina in 2020, per Wikipedia, also turns out to be the answer to an electoral trivia question: In Biden's first three presidential runs, what was the first primary he won?
If I had to rank causes, I would say inflation, sexism, racism.
I agree with this, but somehow I want to include malicious enablers, from Joe Rogan to Russian Troll Farms and social media algorithms, as well as obvious things like Fox News.
It's a secondary cause - they drive up the sexism, racism, and fears of inflation on that list, and they soothe away fears of Trump's depraved madness. So it doesn't quite go in a linear ranking. But it amplifies everything.
In a different world, we could have had a media environment that was blunt about Trump's unhinged madness and constantly put Harris's plan into context in discussions of inflation or whatever.
Because anecdotes from old white men are now data, I will say that in canvassing in a swing state I found that black women were the only ones who seemed worried that Harris wouldn't win.
You can see that in the data as well ("Figure 14. Democratic Support Among Black Voters") black women were one of the few groups that did not show a drop in support between 2020 and 2024 (but do show a 5-6% change from 2016 to 2020).
You're probably old enough that you could have just said that instead of pointing to the data.
History has shown us that Americans will vote for a Black man to be president. Its also shown us that a woman can win the popular vote.
I think Kamala's loss is less about demographics and more about the problems you get when you switch out your candidate deep into an election cycle.
Have been seeing bits of this via social media, but too for me to plunge in and wallow in the depressing reality of it all.
My high-level analysis is that my during campaign fear came true; that anyone the least inclined to not vote for Harris could find a reason for not doing so.
5.last, 9.last: At this point the whole information space is so inextricably warped that it is hard to know where to even start. I of course ride my media hobbyhorse a lot, but their failings are as much a symptom as a cause. We are in a maze of twisty little communication channels, all of them fucked.
6: I will say that in canvassing in a swing state I found that black women were the only ones who seemed worried that Harris wouldn't win.
I am still haunted by this canvassing anecdote from Dayton in 2016:
Look, I get it, you white people had a hard time with Obama being president so you need to racist president. I get it. I don't like it but I get it. But what I don't get is why you needed a racist who is so goddamn crazy and stupid! Couldn't you find a racist who could actually know how to run the damn government? I mean, I wouldn't vote for him-he'd still be bad for people like me-but at least he'd know what he's doing? What good does it do the damn white people when Trump shits the bed? It's not like there's some other special country they move to when he takes this country down. We get a black president and he does a pretty good job, and your response is murder-suicide? You white people need to get smarter about how you do this racism thing.
Observation from my daughter last night.
"Covid reminded people they lived in a society, and they hated it."
Harris lost support relative to Biden in pretty much every group
Sure, but '24 Biden was going to lose support relative to '20 Biden in every group as well. It isn't really knowable whether she widened or closed those margins.
Inflation and general covid-related societal anger are the main thing, Harris ran well ahead of most incumbents, largely because Trump is an unusually unpopular opponent.
Losing young men is pretty grim. Algorithms are of course a big part of that, but there also seems to have been a pretty broad decrease in dating post-pandemic which is driving a lot of anger.
6: They have the wisdom of lived experience. I also heard in NH that o,d black women Democrats loved Biden - even more than Obama - and they felt that they didn't know Harris who cam in at the last minute. This was from a seasoned operative running the GOTV for NH Dems.
23: When Trump is one of the 2 major candidates, how much do you need to know about the other major candidate?
Not stupid? Check
Not crazy? Check
Not a convicted felon? Check
Not a sexual offender and proud of it? Check
Not an extreme bigot and proud of it? Check
Not an extreme narcissist? Check
As we all know, the list could go on and on, but I'll stop here.
25: I mean, of course. And they didn't vote for Trump. Did they get out, I don't know.
"Sure, but '24 Biden was going to lose support relative to '20 Biden in every group as well"
On what basis? Presidents normally increase their margin of victory when they get re elected IIRC (Obama in 2012 was about the only exception in the last century)
Polling. Every other election result in the world for the two years leading up to the election.
increase their margin of victory when they get re elected
Yes, but not so much the ones that don't get re-elected. Which sure looked like an inevitability after the debate where he vowed to defeat Medicaid.
That last shot of NyQuil before hitting the stage was a questionable idea.
You need something to take the edge off.
If you don't count W before he couldn't hold his liquor, just because fuck him, I wonder how far back you'd need to go to get a president who could hold his liquor? Johnson?
Cocaine is for assholes. Meth is for something I don't want to have to learn about. Bring me back an America where the leaders can have six doubles while still remembering that starring a nuclear war is bad. There were war crimes, but at least the bribery was more crimes controlled.
That might have made sense at some point.
33 sounds like it could have been Nixon.. .
Though, apparently not: https://www.alcoholprofessor.com/blog-posts/blog/2017/02/20/drinking-with-the-presidents
Legally, there is nothing in the United States that specifies what to do if the President is hammered. Richard Nixon, though not a crook, had a criminally low tolerance for alcohol. Henry Kissinger once told a story where Nixon was intoxicated and trying to decide what part of southeast Asia was ripe to see the business end of our nuclear arsenal. Cooler heads prevailed, and they allowed the president to sleep it off and reconsider in the morning. Fortunately, Nixon was more of a drunk dialer, calling anyone on his staff and speaking with them until he fell asleep. Gerald Ford was an old-school gentleman who enjoyed the three-Martini lunch even as he transitioned into his new role as president. At the urging of his advisors, he gave up the habit of the lunches, but not the Martinis.
Perhaps Ford was the last president who could handle alcohol well?
Is Obama a shitty drunk or something? I'd like to see tape.
||
"During my birthday retreat, bandits had camped less than two kilometres from where I was staying. This underscores the seriousness of the situation," the governor stated.|>
Trump doesn't drink. The really scary part is that he's like this stone cold sober.
38: is that about Ohio?
Here in Columbus, for the second year in a row Taco Fest had to be shut down early because of fights.
It's illegal to use the metric system in Ohio.
Ohio is where law enforcement holds that drinking mineral water is sufficient prove homosexuality.
Mineral water is what they drink, Mandrake. And for good reason!
17. Stormcrow's daughter is wise beyond her years. Even if she's 50.
42: Oh, come on, a lot of people drink mineral water!
If you don't have a brewski in your hand, you may as well be wearing a dress.
Cocaine is for assholes
Takes a lot of practice using the straw that way though.
Cocaine is for assholes
It's not for men
They say it'll unclog you
But they won't say when
Is Obama a shitty drunk or something?
Yeah, I wondered why there's a need to go back to Nixon. Obama drank fairly regularly. Well, he drank American beer, which was conclusively shown to be an alcoholic beverage in 2002 thanks to the tremendous advances in gas chromatography mass spectrometry over the 1990s.
Clinton didn't drink very much IIRC, neither did Carter.
Apparently real names of northern Brooklyn youth gangs in 1974:
Jolly Stompers
Latin Secret Bachelors
B'nai Zaken, Inc.
Spanish Knights
Driggs Boys of Justice
Imperial Survivors
Trouble Bros
And my personal favourite, the refreshingly straightforward "Black Stabbers". ("Why did we pick that name? Two reasons, really.")
52.last is wrong, there is an unsuspected ambiguity. I had assumed that the Black Stabbers were a gang who a) stabbed people and b) were black. Like you'd expect a Grey Wagtail to be something grey with a tail that it wags.
But it's just occurred to me that they might be a gang who stabbed people and the people they stabbed were black - like an Oystercatcher is not, in fact, a sort of oyster, but something that theoretically catches oysters.
This is very poor branding! Imagine some black guy turning up to join, thinking "well, I am black and I do like stabbing, sounds like this might be exactly the place for me"! He'd get a terrible shock.
It's like Apo's gang, the Cocaine Assholes. You might think "hey, I'm an asshole who likes cocaine! what a great fit!" But you really wouldn't be understanding where the great fit occurs.
Like the meme going around of the guy who joined the "Black Jeep Owners" Facebook group and posted a photo of himself with his black Jeep, with the caption "I totally misunderstood the group name but I'm just gonna roll with it".
We should've gone with Johnny Unbeatable. Who surely would have finally emerged once Biden declared himself a lame duck in year 3, and made his favor irrelevant for half his term.
We should've gone with Johnny Unbeatable. Who surely would have finally emerged once Biden declared himself a lame duck in year 3, and made his favor irrelevant for half his term.
58: yeah, his floor exercise is decent, and he's good on the balance beam, but he sucks at the uneven bars.
And no perky, distinctive wedge haircut.
And no DUI arrests in West Virginia.
You know how American culture has been destroyed by capitalism to the point where nothing is sacred? And how you can now get very detailed pictures printed on gravestones? There's now a headstone on a currently unoccupied grave near my parents' grave that has picture which includes a very clearly labeled can of Coors. It's a wedding picture of the pre-dead couple, the beer in the groom's hand. I'm not one for writing letters, but I'm tempted.
Oh right! I'm now remembering how she went off the deep end, didn't she? Some tirade about how no one deserves health care but also can you please fund her GoFundMe?
The DUI is new. A couple of weeks ago, but the news is new.
A funny thing is that when your kid is gay, they come out to you in a tender moment which you then feel like you can't turn around and cause conflict over, because you wouldn't want to seem like you were weaponizing it. So when they have run-of-the-mill slumber parties, you have a weird choice. You can either actively shut down something that you've previously allowed, on the basis of that tender intimate knowledge you now possess, or you can allow your middle school kid to have sleepovers with their crush(es).
Furthermore, our sleepovers have always involved opening the pullout couch in the pit, and having everyone just dogpile into it. (Some kids opt for sleeping bags on the carpet, and others just crowd in on the pullout couch.)
This is how it came to be that my 6th grader slept next to their two crushes all night long, the other day. (I guess they're technically now a 7th grader.) I choose to be an ostrich.
(Also half the Geeblets are out, now.)
66: That isn't something I would have thought about, but the dynamic you describe makes sense.
A few more thoughts about the OP. I think Saiselgy is generally correct that it's good to understand how vote shifts from 2020 to 2024 were different in various groups, but it doesn't look like an election in which either candidate had an appeal which was notably stronger or weaker, compared to the pre-existing political landscape based on appealing to specific demographics. The one notable exception is the gender gap; it did seem like Republicans were specifically courting men in the 2024 election, and were able to make gains. It is somewhat surprising that Democrats didn't make significant gains among women in the first presidential election post-Dobbs.
Second, the more I think about it the more the 2020 election results seem like a really bad sign -- that it was so close. At the time it was easy to think that many incumbents did will in elections held during the initial stage of the pandemic, and that Trump had an appeal which was still strong in 2020 but which seemed like it would fade. From the perspective of 2024 both of those look like overly optimistic interpretations. You'd have to say that there is a consistent pattern from 2016 to 2024 that either or both of the following are true (1) Trump has a durable political appeal and (2) the electorate is wary about the Democratic party.
I don't say that to kick the Democrats while they're down; just noting that my prior reasons for optimism have not born out.
I would also add this: https://goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/p/rehashing-2020
The flip side of this is that a ton of things matter a whole lot to governing and public policy that aren't at all likely to affect election outcomes. That Bernie Sanders ran a strong nomination campaign in 2016 really did have serious effects on the Democratic Party's policy positions and priorities. Choices that Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and others made after being elected in 2020 had huge consequences for policy - and therefore, massive effects on people's lives. Even if most of those choices probably didn't really affect the 2024 presidential election.
It's a bit of an exaggeration, but it's not totally wrong to think of elections as blunt instruments, while policy formation contains nothing but nuance.
66 is both inevitable and, frankly, adorable.
I remember there was some parental asymmetry around the out-ness? How is that going?
half the Geeblets are out
You put your geeblet in
You put your geeblet out
You put your geeblet in
Then you shake it all about
(Actually don't do that)
I though it was only babies and Polaroid pictures you shouldn't shake.
And bottles of fine vintage port. Your valet will have a complete meltdown.
69: I talked to Pokey shortly after discussing it here, and a few days later he came out to Jammies, so everything is open here, which is nice.
Ace formally came out to me at some point this year, but Ace's whole personality has been wearing rainbows and bracelets that say GAY on them, so this was not exactly shocking. I don't know if they've had a formal conversation with Jammies, but I don't think it's needed, either.