Kamala Harris Lost Because She Was Terrible, Not Because of Low Turnout

Along with Harry Enten , a senior writer and analyst for CNN Politics, The  New Times’s chief political analyst Nate Cohn provided (in my opinion) the best, most unbiased coverage of the topsy turvy 2024 presidential contest. I meant to get to this yesterday, because Cohn’s conclusions were so counter-intuitive, or perhaps better put, so counter-conventional wisdom, but here we are.

Whoever wrote the headline very neatly summarized Cohn’s analysis: “It Can’t Be Assumed That Higher Turnout Would Have Helped Harris :Voting records suggest Democrats who stayed home were less likely to support her, with no equivalent drop-off in Trump support among Republicans.”

Just to be clear, as Cohn writes, the assumption is that because Kamala Harris won so many fewer votes than Joe Biden did four years before, “it’s tempting to conclude that Democrats simply didn’t turn out this year — and that Ms. Harris might have won if they had voted in the numbers they did four years ago.” That’s bolstered by the fact the largest drop off was in big cities, where Democrats traditionally harvest huge numbers.

Simple, right?

Nope: “This interpretation would be a mistake,” Cohn writes.

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He only devotes a paragraph to it but it’s very much worth noting that

[T]he story doesn’t apply to the battlegrounds, where turnout was much higher. In all seven battleground states, Mr. Trump won more votes than Mr. Biden did four years ago.

What else explains this conclusion, which runs against the narrative? Well….

Harris was a horrible candidate and excited practically no one besides the Abortion Industry. The “low turnout among traditionally Democratic-leaning groups — especially nonwhite voters — was a reflection of lower support for Ms. Harris: Millions of Democrats soured on their party and stayed home, reluctantly came back to Ms. Harris or even made the leap to Mr. Trump,” Cohn writes. Then the pivotal sentence:

And if those who stayed home had voted, it wouldn’t have been an enormous help to Ms. Harris, based on Times/Siena polling linked to validated records of who did or didn’t vote.

And

There’s no equivalent pattern of a drop in support for Mr. Trump among Republicans who stayed home. Indeed, many high-turnout Republicans are the kind of highly engaged, college-educated “Never Trump” voters who have helped Democrats in special and midterm elections.

Let’s back up a second. Remember (obviously) there is a much lower turnout for mid-term elections which means if “one party gets its vote out [it] can be the whole ballgame.” But, Cohn writes,

in a presidential election, turnout and persuasion often go hand in hand. The voters who may or may not show up are very different from the rest of the electorate. They’re less ideological. They’re less likely to be partisans — even if they’re registered with a party. They’re less likely to have deep views on the issues. They don’t get their news from traditional media.

Throughout the cycle, polls found that Mr. Trump’s strength was concentrated among these kinds of voters. Many of them were registered Democrats or Biden voters four years ago, or they hailed from Democratic-leaning constituencies. But they weren’t acting like Democrats in 2024. These voters were more concerned by pocketbook issues than democracy or abortion rights. If they decided to vote, many said they would back Mr. Trump. [Underlining added.]

Cohn goes into minute detail to make the point that “Our polling data suggests many of these nonvoting Democrats were no lock for Ms. Harris if they had voted.”

Writing for HotAir, John Sexton goes through Cohn’s deep dive and concludes

Americans everywhere have decided there is such a thing as too far to the left. Unfortunately for Kamala Harris, she ran as a far-left progressive in 2020 which left her open to those attacks.

LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.

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