“This is a collapse of the Democratic Party.” Consumer advocate, corporate critic and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader comments on the reelection of Donald Trump and the failures of the Democratic challenge against him.
Despite attempts by left-wing segments of the Democratic base to shift the party’s messaging toward populist, anti-corporate and progressive policies, says Nader, Democrats “didn’t listen.” Under Trump, continues Nader, “We’re in for huge turmoil.”
I think that if you’re looking at the Presidential race in particular, you probably want to look specifically at turnout in swing states, where the vote could have been realistically shifted.
Probably a lot of post-mortems happening. I want to see some material from Five Thirty Eight on what shifts happened from 2020. In the runup to the election, for example, I remember reading that young non-college-educated male blacks polled had swung dramatically more Republican between 2020 and 2024. That suggests that division around education is becoming more-important along party lines. A majority was still voting Democrat, but the shift was large, something crazy, like twenty percentage points. I remember reading another article in the runup that Trump had gained slightly among females, also kind of a surprise to me. Now that we’ve got voting data, though, we can look at county level stuff and try to get an idea of which demographics actually shifted their votes and how.