Defending Democracy Young and Old Voters
Should Republicans be worrying?
Yes because turnout among MAGA supporters may be less important than how many MAGA voters there are in the 2024 election and in which states they are.”
Over 56 percent of self-identified MAGA voters are over the age of 65 as of 2020. By 2024, the proportion of MAGA voters over 70 will be greater than 50 percent and will put these voters in the likely category of voters leaving the electorate, dying, ill and unable to vote.
It may be the case that the absolute number and share of the electorate that are MAGA voters is diluted in 2024 by their own exit from the electorate and the entry of new and younger and non-MAGA voters.This generational change will be a key factor in the election.
Between 2020 and 2024, “about 13 million adult citizens will have died” and “these lost voters favored Trump in 2020 by a substantial margin. My rough estimate is that removing these voters from the electorate will increase Biden’s national popular vote margin by about 1.2 million votes.
The aging of the electorate works to the advantage of Biden and his fellow Democrats. So too does what is happening with younger voters at the other end of the age distribution.
Gen Z. (roughly between 11 and 26 years old are on fire.
This g
Dobbs, climate, homophobia, gun violence are all driving this generation away from the G.O.P. 15 million young people will become eligible to vote between 2020 and 2024.
How many of them will vote and how they will vote is a key uncertainty that could determine the election. Given recent patterns, there is little doubt that those that vote will favor the Democratic nominee. But by how much?
There are some developments going into the next election that defy attempts to determine whether Democrats or Republicans will come out ahead.
The greatest uncertainty on the G.O.P. side is the potential impact of the Trump trials. An acquittal, especially in the first case to go to trial, would almost certainly strengthen him. But what about a conviction, especially if it involves jail time? That may be the greatest uncertainty in American politics in my lifetime.
One of the most critical variable in the 2024 presidential election could be Cornel West’s Green Party candidacy swinging the election to Donald Trump? He may be able to garner even two to five percent, and that could doom Biden and the country.”
Meanwhile, abortion will continue to be a major issue — as it was in 2022, when abortion rights voters turned out in large numbers, lifting Democrats in key races.
The fact that red states move more and more to extremes — including banning abortions for rape and incest, watching women bleed with untreated miscarriages, seeing doctors flee, criminalizing going to another state — will fire up suburban and young voters.” Republican state legislators are not helping their own political fortunes by muting discussion of abortion; instead, they have been unrelenting in their efforts to elevate the prominence of abortion.
And then with the government shutdown pending, which suggests that it would be damaging, and this time Trump has chosen to get involved directly, which is a mistake. Republicans’ dysfunction in recent weeks has occurred in broad daylight, which increases the odds that they’ll get the lion’s share of the blame.
The G.O.P. is talking about shutting down the government, impeaching the president, removing the Speaker, and crippling the military by blocking vital promotions. Their brand is chaos. Like Clinton before him, Biden is well positioned to use a government shutdown to jujitsu the G.O.P. and win re-election.
There is one issue that has been increasingly troubling for Democrats: Will the modest but significant shifts among Black and Hispanic voters toward the Republican Party continue and will they increase? Republicans could make significant inroads with Latinos in the Southwest, they could change the dynamics” in states like Arizona and Nevada.
But in order to do so, shifts to the Republican Party among minorities “would need to outnumber the pandemic-era arrival of left-leaning transplants from coastal urban cities. To the extent that these transplants have settled in their new homes, they can solidify Democratic support.”
Interestingly, data shows how the pandemic drove urban professionals who were able to work remotely — disproportionately Democrats — out of coastal, progressive cities to seek more space or recreational amenities in the nation’s suburbs and Sun Belt. This moved liberals out of electoral districts where Democrats reliably won by large margins into many purple regions that had the potential to swing.
Meanwhile. I think it is unlikely the media could inflict much more damage on Trump, given that the extensive coverage of the 91 felony counts against him does not seem to affect his favorable or unfavorable rating. Biden, in contrast, has much more to gain or lose from media coverage. Will it focus on his age or his legislative and policy achievements? On inflation and consumer costs or economic growth and high employment rates? On questions about Biden’s ability to complete a second term or the threats to democracy posed by the ascendant right wing of the Republican Party?
This is an election, about whether this country will preserve the rule of law in an independent justice system; whether women will be respected as autonomous decision makers, whether this country will continue to hold free and fair elections.
The GOP believes that white supremacy across all U.S. institutions needs to be protected, even at the cost of giving up on democracy. The NABWMT decries this since we are an anti-racism organization committed to fostering supportive environments wherein racial and cultural barriers can be overcome and the goal of human equality realized.
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