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In 2018, he voted for Beto for senate and for the longshot Dem House candidate while staying Republican in his state and local races.
In 2020, he voted for Biden.
By 2024, the only Republican he backed was the sheriff candidate.
Which is just to say that while abstentions matter (obviously) it’s a mistake to think of them as conceptually distinct from the general phenomenon of persuasion.
It’s often a halfway house, a way station on the road to realignment, because switching sides is hard.
The way for Republicans to “win him back” after 2016 wouldn’t have been to pound the table with Mobilization Secret Sauce, it would have been to treat him as a persuasion target — he didn’t like the GOP’s new isolationist/nativist/protectionist positions.
Now of course Republicans won most of these races so who cares.
But when Democrats look at Biden voters who “stayed home” in 2020 or Trump 2024 voters who voted Dem downballot they should see the same thing — ex-partisans halfway persuaded by MAGA who need to be re-persuaded.
Do you think Joe Biden is one of our greatest presidents ever?
- Yes13.5%
- No86.5%
333 votesFinal results
He has a son-in-law who's a political pundit and a committed Democrat so he's not going to be typical. The typical story is that many lifelong Democrats voted Republican for the first time in 2024
Are any of you guys old enough to remember when Beto was a thing??
Many people are saying that persuasion and turnout go in the same direction most of the time
As Steve Sailer points out Republicans have gains in the fringes - anti-vax, etc good example is the Amish.
Where do you get the majority of your news?
- TV/Cable3.3%
- X/twitter84.7%
- Newspapers1.4%
- Websites10.7%
215 votesFinal results
I realize this isn’t your point. But you trigger an intersting question. Did Trump figure out that there were way more votes to be gained amongst the disaffected milllions, than he would lose with middle of the readers who were not single issue (or primary issue) voters?
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Your father in law was never a republican. Ever. I think you are making this whole thing up. Dems love cosplay
Never seen so many lifelong Republicans flee their presidential nominee. Overcoming that historical backlash is unbelievable.
The republicans have large largely traded that kind of voter for a larger number of younger people and minorities. Sometimes you have to make trade offs like that. But I’m open to believing he could be persuaded differently.
This describes in a mirror image a lot of the Dem reg voters in PA who voted for Obama twice but in 2024 made Dave McCormick a Senator & gave Trump the White House. All the “base mobilization” culture war tactics from Democrats pushed them into the “halfway house” then out.
For every Matt Yglesias dad we pick up in the suburbs, we lose 2 working class miners in Pennsylvania... Wait a minute
FIL electoral hx starts w: W?
Age, ethnicity(ancestry), religion, location of birth & jr/sr high school, ed, loc of college if went, for whom did parents vote, do you like candidate?
These are salient predictors - not so much issues.
Who am I & to whom do I belong? Sociology
From your tone, Matthew, it's clear that you think you are much, much smarter than the people who cleaned your clock in the last election. If you think about it just a little, you might see the problem with that.
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