Given the levels of alarm that were being raised by the media and politicians across the aisle, I doubt people were too apathic to vote. It’s hard to feel like that when every person on your screens tells you that Trump is a fascist threat to democracy. It’s more likely that so many people sat out because they didn’t like the direction that both parties were taking. Less “I don’t care,” more “I can’t support either side.”
Er. No. That’s not what happened. When you look at vote totals from 2020, you can see that Biden got 81M votes to Trump’s 74M. Looking at vote totals from 2024, Harris got 74M votes–the same as Trump in 2020–and Trump eked out a slightly improved performance at 77m. This isn’t a ‘mandate’; this is fewer people showing up to the polls. If the same number of people had voted in 2024 as voted in 2020, it’s probable that Trump would have lost again. That isn’t people saying the left is “too extreme”, that’s apathy.
Given the levels of alarm that were being raised by the media and politicians across the aisle, I doubt people were too apathic to vote. It’s hard to feel like that when every person on your screens tells you that Trump is a fascist threat to democracy. It’s more likely that so many people sat out because they didn’t like the direction that both parties were taking. Less “I don’t care,” more “I can’t support either side.”
Could it be that some people found the left to be too extreme but they weren’t ready to vote for a Republican yet?