This hurts. It was always a possibility. Heck, it was a near certainty as Summer 2024 started, but it felt like we caught a second wind. And then the voting started and it went downhill through Election Day. The Early Vote was the canary in the coal mine (and I won’t rehash it as I’ve already dedicate posts to it, but it you want to read the last part…).
As a very painful reminder, let me put up the outcome (as it stands on 11/8/2024).
Current count is:
70,109,483 for Kamala Harris, 74,029,897 for Donald Trump.
There are still 6 states with less than 90% of votes counted (California is just over 60%), so to get close to a final number, we will project forward with current margins on where they land:
75,236,483 for Kamala Harris, 77,704,891 for Donald Trump.
Let’s remember what the margin was in 2020, with Biden and Trump
81,284,666 for Joe Biden, 74,224,319 for Donald Trump.
When you compare the vote outcomes for the two elections, we went from a D+ 7,060,347 to an R+ 2,378,169. The total votes cast dropped by almost 2.5 million, but the Republicans gained 2.5 million, Dems lost almost 6 million.
To try and illustrate what happened, let me use Texas (which I know really well) to illustrate a few things.
Texas had almost 17 million registered voters in the last Presidential election and with a margin of just over 5 point for Republicans, with 18.6 million registered voters going into the 2024 election, hopes were high.
Coming out of the midterms, I did a lot of analysis and tried to lay out a path Democrats could leverage to win a statewide race. I wrote it up in two parts, which you can read here
The big thing to know is I broke the state into four groups, with the real focus on 11 counties Blue in 2020 and trending bluer each cycle. The Dark Blue on this map are Tier 1
When you look at Registered Voters coming into this election, 9.7 million voters are in Tier 1 counties, over HALF of registered voters in the state.
How did things go in Texas? Not well. Not well at all. Here is a comparison of 2020 and 2024.
From R+5.6% to R+13.9%, Texas went more red than ever. And the reality is every county in Texas (and every county in the country which is horrifying) had a higher % of the vote for Donald Trump in 2024 than they had in 2020. The vote gap in 2020 was 630k, in 2024 it was 1.5 million. What is interesting is the net overall difference in the votes was 32k LESS votes in 2024. But I thought we had 1.6 million more voters this year! How could we end up with less votes in 2024. Yep, it was a turnout problem.
With 18.6 million registered voters, 7.3 million decided to sit out the election. The chart below shows you how the vote has been split each Presidential cycle since 2000, with Republican, Democrat, and “Didn’t Vote”. 7 million non-voters and in the previous election, 5.6 million non-voters.
The next chart is built on % of Registered Voters, rather just % D or % R, as I think it is important to understand the real % of people voting or not voting.
The % of Registered voters in the 2024 election reverted to 2016, with almost 40% sitting out the election, down from 33% in 2020. The impact was felt the worst on the Democrats side, losing 5.3% of registered voters. Republicans dipped too, but just 0.5%. And with a lot more registered voters, the smaller dip means they kept a lot more votes.
Looking at the Yellow / Blue, which election was the aberration, and what is the “norm”? And look how consistent the Republicans have been, even in 2020.
Let’s come back to the Tiers. Remember I said to win a statewide race, Democrats needed big turnout in Tier 1, as that’s where voters are, and that’s who votes for Democrats.
In the place Democrats needed the most turnout, they failed to even get to the 2020 vote, and saw 4.1 million non-voters. Tier 2 (red but getting bluer) saw the same Dem votes, but got more red, with 1.1 million non-voters. Tier 3 got more red, but is a very small vote count. No Focus (221 counties) did exactly what was expected - got more red.
To illustrate the specifics in key counties, I’m going to just drop in the same charts for the 5 biggest counties in Texas, which all were a part of Tier 1: Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar, and Travis.
In all 5, Democrats got less votes in 2024 than 2020, even with a LOT more registered voters. And in all 5, Republics got slightly more votes in 2024 that 2020. The Non-Voter counts surged in the places turnout was desperately needed. This trend played out in varying degrees across the country, but a few % points can make a HUGE difference. Dems just didn’t have it.
It’s also worth looking at two counties from Tier 2 that folks thought had a great shot at flipping in 2024 due to massive growth and a getting more blue trend: Collin and Denton counties
For the most part, they held steady, with slight growth of Republican votes in both, Collin with a slight dip and Denton with a slight rise in votes for Democrats. But again, look at the non-voters.
Another trend we’ve heard about across the country was the move of Latino voters toward Trump and the Republican party. That is crystal clear in two of the biggest counties in the Rio Grande Valley that are big majority Latino: Hidalgo and Cameron counties
Both counties had been reliably blue since 2000, and were included in my Tier 1 listing. Both went red in 2024. Yes, you can see the dip in votes for Democrats and the uptick in the votes for Republicans, but look at the size of the non-voters. If someone actually did the work of connecting and listening to non-voters, giving them a reason to support Democrats, the numbers are there to turn it around.
If you want to see the results in any one of the 254 counties in Texas, I’ve got you covered. Feel free to screenshot and share.
Here you can see them by votes
Here you can see them by % of registered voters
So much of the focus of these past few elections as been this push for Democrats to appeal to Republicans and get them to vote for Democrats. Entire campaigns have been built around going to rural and semi-rural spaces to convince those voting more R every cycle (as that is where my No Focus group pretty much all lands) that Democrats are ok and you should vote for them. Based on the exit polls, yeah, that ain’t working in the slightest.
Kamala Harris was definitely trying to appeal to Republicans. You saw her campaigning with multiple, and even got the endorsement of Dick Cheney. Colin Allred was doing the same thing. Heck, he even stayed away from Kamala Harris for a while, as it seemed he thought she was too radical (hahahaha). How did Allred’s appeal to Republicans and the middle work out?
Worse than Beto in 2018 is the answer. Yes, his margin was better than Kamala Harris, but c’mon, nobody really likes Ted Cruz.
And when you think about the state level elections, Democrats had talked about needing three Texas House seats to flip to stop vouchers. They obviously didn’t get it. But what is more amazing and speaks to how throughly gerrymandered our state is, a 14 point loss at the top of the ticket for Democrats resulted in exactly ZERO party changes in the Texas House and just one Texas Senate seat flipping from Dem to Rep. The redistricting after the 2020 election meant there are almost no competitive seats.
That means vouchers and the resulting harm to public education will be pushed and likely passed by Greg Abbott, the Republican members of TXLege, and the billionaires behind them
A whole lot of the pundits are trying to say this was an election all about the economy, and that’s why Democrats lost. I won’t argue it was a part of the issue, but there are so many other factors that played into it. Mendi really broke it down earlier, so I won’t rehash too much of it, but I will link it so you can read it if you haven’t.
Big thing to remember is it was less about the economy and more about an eco-system. As the media landscape has fractured, where people consume information has changed dramatically. Online influencers, both political and politically adjacent, are where younger generations consume content. These influencers appear on both the left and right. Wired did a really great article discussing it a few months back. I’m borrowing their graphics to illustrate a point.
And when you look at the two different groups on a relative scale, the dichotomy between the two is striking.
And unless you are a Gen Z or Millennial, you might not know ANY of these names. But know they are where people are getting their news. And when we are talking about the right, they are focused on driving fear of the other, especially towards young men.
The same way the Church has been infusing their message with politics to move entire congregations (really Gen X and older) towards Christian nationalism, the influencers on the right are moving younger generations the same way, just coming at it with the other aspects of the ideology, embracing the nativist, homophobic, racist core of CN.
There comes a point when everybody has had a chance to know better, and if they still don’t know better, we have to assume they don't want better. There comes a point when you've joined what you’ve joined. ~A.R. Moxon
This quote just cuts right to it. At this point, the folks voting for this have done it multiple times. They know what it’s about. We need to stop chasing them. Let’s get people who believe in the same things we do, but don’t believe their vote matters. Let’s show them it does.
Because of the folks who joined what they’ve joined, the next four years are going to be a fight. Less directly because of Donald Trump himself (although that will be bad as the strongman wannabe cozies up to other legit strongmen), but because of those behind Trump, those who will be setting the agenda of the administration. Mendi and I have talked about Project 2025. You can read a whole lot about it here:
Project 2025 (and its cousin Agenda 47) will be driving the administration. This quote from Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, taken from the introduction in the Project 2025 book, lays out their goals, which is basically the destruction of government as we know it, and imposing their wants and desires on everyone.
The solution to all of the above problems is not to tinker with this or that government program, to replace this or that bureaucrat. These are problems not of technocratic efficiency but of national sovereignty and constitutional governance. We solve them not by trimming and reshaping the leaves but by ripping out the trees—root and branch. ~ Kevin Roberts
The people behind Project 2025 are Christian nationalists. They don’t want a society where women, LGBTQ, or minorities have voice or real autonomy. They don’t want free and fair elections. They hold up Hungary as a model that we should leverage. No joke. You can read about it here.
There isn’t someone coming to save us. We are the heroes we are waiting for. Each and every one of us has to decide this isn’t what we want our country to be. We have to start making noise now. We have to know that surrender to the bullies can’t be the answer, as they will know the next time they just have to push enough and we will back down.
Our country is too important to give up on.
Our neighbors are too important to give up on.
Our schools are too important to give up on.
Our communities who are right now living in fear of what is to come are too important to give up on.
Now is the time to catch your breath. It’s gonna get crazy soon. We need you ready to roll.
See It. Name It. Fight It.
Thank you for your insights, as they are valuable. I do wonder why so many people didn't vote, though. I know an election worker who said fully 10% of the people who tried to vote, who had a valid Voter ID card and a valid photo ID, were not coming up in the system, and thus not allowed to cast their vote. A few did provisional ballots, but many just left. And provisional ballots are not actually counted unless the race is close. She also said a woman came in bragging she had gotten 1600 people tossed off the rolls. I wonder if anyone is looking into how bad the voter suppression was this year?
Also, the press has become complicit and will continue to bend to the will of the people in power. We see them "obeying in advance." by failing to endorse Harris. But the Mainstream Media is dying - the eyeballs are elsewhere, and we are not there. The right-wing media universe has dominated eyeballs in many different ways. And all the big social media systems are complicit and mostly owned by right-wing billionaires, who allow Russian propaganda and lies to spread virally.
We need a way to catch up, and soon.
Thank you for this post with the great graphics and real data that is easy to interpret. I am sharing this widely.
I like your closing, with concrete strategy and tactics. Increasing voters in Texas💪