142
An American tragedy: how Biden paved the way for Trump’s White House return
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2025
142 points (87.8% liked)
politics
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When Biden 2020 voters cast a ballot for someone besides Harris in 2024 were asked “Which one of the following issues was MOST important in deciding your vote?” they selected:
What I'm pushing back on is "it wasn’t even close"
Maybe Gaza wasn't the deciding factor, and obviously we can't know for sure because this is all hindsight and because polls aren't necessarily always perfectly accurate for the reasons you said, but I don't think it should be dismissed. It was close.
By not recognizing that it was both you kind of are dismissing it.
If it boiled down to groceries and perceptions of the economy, then nothing else matters. That's definitely failing to recognize it.
It was the economy and the genocide. It was both.
That's what that phrase means!
Also, you did it again. "I said it was not a deciding factor." This, again, is failing to recognize that the genocide was a factor.
Wild. When you dig into those poll results it is sadly clear that Kamala only would’ve won by pivoting right.
You mean beyond supporting genocide and campaigning with the cheyneys?
Except these people didn't decide the election, because almost nobody who voted where it matters did this and if every one of them had shown up the outcome would have been the same. Across the six states that flipped from 2020 to 2024, Harris lost less than 80,000 votes combined. She was less than a percent off Biden's record setting performance. Trump gained more than 800,000 votes in the same places. The block that decided the election was not Democrats 'staying home,' it was independant and irregular voters showing up—for Trump.
She got 7 million fewer votes than Biden.
Now I'm not saying the economy wasn't important, I'm just countering the claim that "it wasn't even close" - it clearly was.
Good job pretending like you don't understand that the electoral college exists and why that matters.
And in order to figure what was most important to voters you also have to consider the ones that actually, you know, voted. Which that poll almost entirely ignores.
Okay, so the poll I linked were people that voted. They cast ballots for someone other than Harris.
Yes, some of the questions in the poll address the fraction of the poll who did vote for someone other than Harris. Which is why I wrote 'almost'. The poll completely ignores the question of actual fraction of voters that those questions are attempting to represent (not many) as well as what the much, much larger fraction of voters who voted for both Biden and Harris thought. You have to go to the other poll for that and the answers about the influence of Biden's policy toward providing weapons to Israel become less clear.
More likely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14%
Less likely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9%
Make no difference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77%
More enthusiastic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35%
Less enthusiastic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5%
Make no difference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59%
Forcing one to wonder how exactly the translation between enthusiasm and voting likelihood works. The only thing that does seem to be clear is 'makes no difference' was by far the most popular opinion, which is pretty easy to read as people cared most about something else.
None of that reads as "wasn't even close" to me. That looks like, actually, it was significant and it did influence a lot of voters and it shouldn't be dismissed. 35% is not insignificant - even if, as you say, it's hard to translate [more enthusiastic, less enthusiastic] into actual tangible votes. What we can clearly see, though, is that siding with Biden on Gaza definitely didn't help. Only 5% of voters would have been turned off by her deciding to break with Biden on Israel. She'd have lost almost nothing and gained a lot.
Would Harris have won if she broke with Biden? I don't know, and I'm not saying she would! I only want to push back on the implied claim that it was irrelevant.
Lol
So they polled people who were chilling on the internet over the holidays, like 6 weeks after the election
Pardon me if I find Pew more trustworthy
IMEU and YouGov are generally considered credible sources, but okay.
You give them sources they agree with and they still ignore the facts of reality.