The 2024 US presidential election had been widely characterized as one of the most consequential political contests in recent US history. Although turnout was high for a presidential election – almost matching the levels of 2020 – it is estimated that close to 90 million Americans, roughly 36% of the eligible voting age population, did not vote. This number is greater than the number of people who voted for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.
More than a month on from polling day, eligible US voters from across the country as well as other parts of the world got in touch with the Guardian to share why they did not vote.
Scores of people said they had not turned out as they felt their vote would not matter because of the electoral college system, since they lived in a safely blue or red state. This included a number of people who nonetheless had voted in the 2020 and 2016 elections.
While various previous Democratic voters said they had abstained this time due to the Harris campaign’s stance on Israel or for other policy reasons, a number of people in this camp said they would have voted for the vice-president had they lived in a swing state.
You have it backwards - not voting because of a single issue is the real virtue signaling. Voting for the lesser of two evils is simply pragmatic.
You’re just making assertions, not arguments. You’re also not paying attention because this makes zero sense as a response to my argument.
My entire point was that signaling is all than many voters can do because their vote is irrelevant. Skipping the presidential race is a signal too.
Also, fuck referring to the mass slaughter of civilians as just a “single issue”.
No - fuck handing the government to a criminal and his fascist cronies in order to prove a point. The USA is nearly completely lost to the oligarchs and we played right into their hands. The war in Gaza is diespicable and awful and we just elected a group who will strip away even more of the power we had to try and stop that atrocity and future atrocities.
Know why Democrats lose so many damn elections? They don’t know how to fucking listen to what people are saying. That you think this has anything to do with my comment is absolutely bizarre. Neither I, nor the voter I’m talking about cost the Democrats a damn thing.
No fucking kidding. You’re half way to the truth. Now you just have to embrace the reality that “oligarchs” includes the Clintons, Obamas, Pelosis, Schumers, and (to a lesser degree) Biden’s. Then you will really understand how truly fucked this country is.
Who’s “we”? The main difference between Republicans and Democrats is that the Republicans have no shame. Democrats feel kind of bad about screwing us for their handlers, so they throw us a bone from time to time. In that dynamic, what’s happening now was inevitable and it was just a matter of when.
We should have overthrown the Democrats in 2020 to create a new dynamic, but we missed our chance. Nobody knows when or if we will get another. The Republicans will never be any better than they are until they have to face an emboldened and left-populist Democratic party. The party we have is light years from being that.
In spite of your rather insulting way of putting things I actually agree with most of what you’re saying, and yet even still voting Kamala was the easiest and most obvious choice voters had to make in decades and somehow still failed.
I didn’t react well to being implicated in “handing the government to a criminal and his fascist cronies in order to prove a point”. Criticism of voters in general gets under my skin because it’s so counter productive.