Why did democrats lose so many presidential votes in 2024 in safe democratic states

Politics & Elections
1

Examples:

California
2024 Dem - 9 million votes
2024 Trump - 6 million votes

2020 Dem - 11 million votes
2020 Trump - 6 million votes

New York
2024 Dem - 4.6 million votes
2024 Trump - 3.6 million votes

2020 Dem - 5.2 million votes
2020 Trump - 3.2 million votes

Illinois
2024 Dem - 3 million votes
2024 Trump - 2.4 million votes

2020 Dem - 3.5 million votes
2020 Trump - 2.4 million votes

So in 3 large, non-competitive blue states, the democrats managed to lose about 3 million votes. in 2024 vs 2020. Meanwhile Trumps vote was the same in 2 of the states, but only a few hundred thousand votes higher in the third state (NY).

The votes didn’t go to Trump. They didn’t go to a third party or Jill Stein. Stein only got 860k votes nationwide in 2024. The Greens got 400k in 2020 though, so the dems lost some votes to the Green party. But thats nationwide, I think in CA the greens only got an extra 80k votes in 24 vs 20.

I know that voting was supposedly easier in 2020 vs 2024 because more states had mail in voting. But California makes voting very easy. They mail your ballot to you and you mail it back. They had this system in both 2020 and 2024. So it wasn’t ease of voting from what I can tell.

Was it people be disillusioned from Gaza?

Was it disillusionment due to Harris being an ex-prosecutor?

Was it people not being motivated for the incumbent party? People for the incumbent party tend to get demoralized. But still, the democratic vote in California dropped 20% from 2024 vs 2020.

A 20% drop in voter turnout for the democratic candidate is pretty extreme. If California’s drop off in voter turnout had happened nationwide, then Harris would’ve only gotten 65 million votes, instead of the 75 million she got.

I know Harris has a political background in California and maybe shes not popular there. But it still doesn’t explain the voting drop off in NY or IL.

2

On another note, in NJ the dems lost 400k votes and Trump gained 100k votes.

In 4 safe blue states alone with a combined population of 81 million people (total people, voters probably make up closer to half that number), the democrats lost about 3.5 million votes.

3

One possibility is that it didn’t happen.

Here’s a undisputable fact. Republicans in general and Donald Trump in particular have a history of trying to rig elections.

Here’s a second fact. There were some unexpected results in the 2024 election. These unexpected results went in favor of the Republicans.

So here’s a possibility. The unexpected results that favored the Republicans and Donald Trump were the result of the Republicans and Donald Trump rigging the election. Successfully this time.

Now I want to clearly state I do not know that this is the case. I am pointing out that it is one possible explanation that fits the evidence.

4

(Flagged for a moderator to move this to P&E – I suspect that @Wesley_Clark didn’t actually mean to post this thread in Cafe Society. :wink: )

5

I think the OP already nailed two of the main reasons - Gaza and the lack of political energy due to being the incumbent.

The third reason would be that the D’s failed to take people’s economic pain seriously - or, at least, failed to make voters feel that they were taking it seriously. The federal minimum wage is still at the same place it was nearly twenty years ago. Income inequality exploded. Skyrocketing rent, food, etc. squeezed many millions of voters like a vise. Millionaire Democrat pundits kept preaching about “we need to preserve our democracy”, not realizing that democracy ranks lower in many people’s Maslow Heirarchy of Needs than making household ends meet.

6

I agree thats possible, but thats why I’m referencing safe blue states. What did the republicans gain from rigging the election in these states?

All these states went for Harris. They all have 2 democratic senators. Their represenatitives are overwhelmingly democratic.

43/52 reps in CA are dems
14/17 reps in IL are dems
9/12 reps in NJ are dems
19/26 reps in NY are dems

If the GOP did rig it, what did they gain? If the goal is to elect Trump, then you rig the swing states.

Also wouldn’t California authorities notice 2 million missing democratic votes?

7

Why would Republicans bother to rig the vote in blue states, as opposed to spending all that effort in swing states?

Edit: Wesley Clark beat me to it by a millisecond.

8

I meant this to be a post about pie crust filling and my mind started to wander

9

Probably played some factor, especially for younger voters, and maybe some voters of Arab descent.

Maybe some broader dissatisfaction with how the Democratic Party handled the whole primary process, and Biden staying in the race despite criticism about his aging.

And, probably, some unhappiness with inflation, but not enough to get them to vote for Trump or a third party.

It would not surprise me if they felt that it was “OK” to sit it out, as they were in states which were “safely blue.” But, it might have cost the Democrats in downballot races.

10

So what would you see as a possible sign of Republican election fraud? The Republicans carrying a bunch of swing states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin?

11

I’m open to the idea of republican fraud. I would not put it past them. I’d like to see full auditing of the 7 swing states. Also the fact that bomb threats tied to Russia were called in on election day in some of the swing states also needs to be investigated.

I’m just saying that when you engage in fraud, you do it with the goal of gaining something of value. If the GOP did hack the elections in CA, NY, NJ & IL, they gained nothing. Why invest in the risk if there is no reward? Its like committing a felony to rob an empty bank.

12

Joe Biden is a white man. Kamala Harris is a Black woman.

There are plenty of Democrats and Democrat-leaning Independents that will not vote for a woman, especially when you tell them that their vote won’t matter.

As a point in support of my claim:

Hillary Clinton vote totals in 2016:

California - 8.75M
New York - 4.5M
Illinois - 3M

Harris got almost exactly the same number of votes as Clinton did in these “safe Blue” states. Because she is a woman.

13

Here’s a possible bank analogy. Think about ransacking the safety deposit boxes. The robbers are going to develop a plan to break into the vault and then they’re going to crack open as many safety deposit boxes as possible. The central goal of the plan was to steal the contents of the boxes that containing valuables that could be fenced. But a lot of those safety deposit boxes they broke into only contained items that had value to their owners.

If you focus on the safety deposit boxes in the second group, you’re going to be asking “Why did the robbers design a meticulous plan to break into a safety deposit box that only contained some wedding pictures?”

The plan wasn’t to break into the safety deposit boxes that contained wedding photos. The plan was the break into the safety deposit boxes that contained diamonds and steal the diamonds. But it was easier to just break into all the boxes and see what was inside them than to make a plan for figuring out which boxes contained valuables worth stealing and only breaking into those.

So the Republicans might have been committing election fraud all over the country even though the goal was to steal enough votes to swing the election.

14

I’m still not convinced it was much more than just the change in voting procedure. In 2020, a lot of states made it easier to get a mail in ballot. Here’s a breakdown of every state from the Brookings Institute. Voting by mail in a pandemic: A state-by-state scorecard

15

True, but I mentioned in the thread how in California they make voting extremely easy. In CA they mail you your ballot along with info about the candidates. Afterwards I think you either mail your ballot back or drop it off at a drop off location.

Despite CA having easy voting in both 2020 and 2024, about 2 million democrats didn’t vote in 2024 vs 2020.

16

If you want to steal something from the safety deposit boxes in a couple of banks it might make sense to rob as many safety deposit boxes from as many banks as you can, empty or not, to obscure what you’re doing.

Swing states moving red while blue states also moving red is less suspicious than only swing states moving red.

17

The Democrats’ response to broken norms, constitutional violations, the fall of the rule of law, etc. was to clarify that the VP only has a ceremonial role during the certification procedure and vow to prosecute grocers for making more of a profit than some citizens would prefer that they had by some secret amount.

If someone makes good and reasonable points and then acts like they’d only been saying it for the lolz, it certainly doesn’t inspire confidence.

18

Maybe, but the numbers you posted don’t show that. You can’t just assume that 6 million = 6 million and therefore they’re all the same people.

19

They switched candidates too late in the election process and picked a candidate that had no broad support in the previous election and had not distinguished herself as VP. Joe should never had run in the first place and believed the premise that only he could defeat Trump because he had done so once before. Thus, not allowing for another Democrat to take up a grass roots campaign that was needed to properly rise to the challenge.

Bidens ego failed us and our democracy. His holding onto to power believing he was the only one capable of defeating Trump, despite his advanced ageing was flawed logic. And picking a replacement that was obvious a DEI pick just played into one of the Republican bases strong complaints about the Democrats and gave them a reason to go out and vote.

In short, Joe didn’t realize that he could not win until too late and Harris did not inspire people to get out and vote.

20

Indeed, Biden waiting so long to drop out had the effect of forcing Kamala to try to take off from a too-short runway. If he’d dropped out sooner he’d have given her more time to make the case for herself to the public, which might have boosted D turnout.