[This is not an Original Post, But a Repost]
I’ve seen this narrative going around recently saying “16 million people didn’t show up and that’s why she lost” and it’s wrong for two reasons.
1, Half of California hasn’t even been counted yet. By the time we’re done counting, we’re going to have much closer vote counts to 2020. I’d assume Trump around 76-77 million and Kamala around 73 million. This would mean about 6-7 million people didn’t show up not 18 million.
2. Trump is outperforming Biden 2020 by a pretty significant Margin in swing states, lets look:
Wisconsin:
2020 Biden: 1,631,000 votes
2020 Trump: 1,610,000 votes
2024 Trump: 1,697,000 votes.
2024 Harris: 1,668,000 votes.
Michigan:
2020 Biden: 2,800,000 votes
2020 Trump: 2,649,000 votes
2024: Trump: 2,795,000
2024 Harris: 2,714,000
Pennsylvania:
2020 Biden: 3,460,000 votes
2020 Trump: 3,378,000 votes.
2024 Trump: 3,473,000 votes
2024: Harris: 3,339,000 votes
North Carolina:
2020 Biden: 2,684,000 votes
2020 Trump: 2,759,000 votes
2024 Trump: 2,876,000 votes
2024 Harris: 2,685,000 votes.
Georgia:
2020 Biden: 2,474,000 votes
2020 Trump: 2,461,000 votes
2024 Trump: 2,653,000 votes
2024 Harris: 2,539,000 votes.
Arizona and Nevada still too early to tell, but as you can see, if Trumps support remained completely stagnate from 2020, Harris would’ve carried 3/7 swing states with a shot to flip Pennsylvania too. Moreover, if she had maintained Bidens vote count in swing states she would’ve lost most states even harder with the exception of maybe flipping Michigan and Pennsylvania being closer than it was. These appear to be the only states with a genuine argument for apathy/protest votes.
The turn out is NOT lower where it actually matters. The news articles that said swing states had record turn out were genuinely correct, you were just wrong for thinking it was democrats and not republicans. Almost all the popular vote bleeding comes from solid blue states deciding not to vote and it would not have changed the outcome of this election if they did show up to vote.
You need to compare percentages of votes to determine performance between elections. The size of the voting population grows, so the raw numbers should be higher.
Kinda. If one candidate capitalizes on the growth better than the other, then OPs thesis still stands.