I honestly don’t think any more than 10% of the voters Kamala “lost” were because of Gaza. Otherwise there would be millions more votes for the third parties that ran almost exclusively on ending the genocide. The vast majority of these voters abstained from the presidential election and voted down ballot either because they did not like Harris or Trump, or more likely they didn’t know anything about either of them and did not feel confident casting a ballot for them.
As much of a farce as 2020 was, the political divide was quite clear. Trump represented COVID and racist cops murdering people. Biden seemed to represent something else. The mass mobilisations and the initial response to the pandemic taught people that and many more of them voted accordingly. The Democrats didn’t even try to reach the masses this time around though and so the masses were left confused and aimless and did not vote.
in some places you can vote by mail pretty easily, but with all the barriers around voting in general, it’s not a good assumption that people (in the millions) will necessarily give up valuable labor time to wait in line to vote for a third party candidate they know cannot win, purely for symbolism…
At most Kamala only “lost” 2.1 million voters to other candidates this election (realistically it’s probably around a million). If that’s the case then 5.9 million voters voted for Biden in 2020 and nobody in 2024 but still casted a ballot. Now maybe that’s because of Gaza but from my experiences with the American electorate I highly doubt that the majority of those people are refusing to vote for Harris because of Gaza, refusing to vote third party, and yet still voting. I think if Americans had coherent anti-genocide politics then the anti-genocide candidates would have seen more growth than 5% of Harris’ losses. I don’t believe Americans have coherent politics though so I doubt most of those voters were taking a principled anti-genocide stance when they didn’t vote for anybody.
This isn’t to say that abstentions or votes for other candidates because of the genocide could not have played a significant role in the fucked up math of the American electoral system, merely that it didn’t drive her huge loss in the popular vote from Biden’s victory in 2020.
I honestly don’t think any more than 10% of the voters Kamala “lost” were because of Gaza. Otherwise there would be millions more votes for the third parties that ran almost exclusively on ending the genocide. The vast majority of these voters abstained from the presidential election and voted down ballot either because they did not like Harris or Trump, or more likely they didn’t know anything about either of them and did not feel confident casting a ballot for them.
As much of a farce as 2020 was, the political divide was quite clear. Trump represented COVID and racist cops murdering people. Biden seemed to represent something else. The mass mobilisations and the initial response to the pandemic taught people that and many more of them voted accordingly. The Democrats didn’t even try to reach the masses this time around though and so the masses were left confused and aimless and did not vote.
this does not follow
Yeah, not voting is also an option
in some places you can vote by mail pretty easily, but with all the barriers around voting in general, it’s not a good assumption that people (in the millions) will necessarily give up valuable labor time to wait in line to vote for a third party candidate they know cannot win, purely for symbolism…
That’s what’s going to happen. Fewer and fewer people will find any kind of justification to vote in future elections as time progresses.
But to libs not voting is voting for trump, so it doesn’t matter anyway.
At most Kamala only “lost” 2.1 million voters to other candidates this election (realistically it’s probably around a million). If that’s the case then 5.9 million voters voted for Biden in 2020 and nobody in 2024 but still casted a ballot. Now maybe that’s because of Gaza but from my experiences with the American electorate I highly doubt that the majority of those people are refusing to vote for Harris because of Gaza, refusing to vote third party, and yet still voting. I think if Americans had coherent anti-genocide politics then the anti-genocide candidates would have seen more growth than 5% of Harris’ losses. I don’t believe Americans have coherent politics though so I doubt most of those voters were taking a principled anti-genocide stance when they didn’t vote for anybody.
This isn’t to say that abstentions or votes for other candidates because of the genocide could not have played a significant role in the fucked up math of the American electoral system, merely that it didn’t drive her huge loss in the popular vote from Biden’s victory in 2020.