The Voters Who Keep Voting for Candidates Who Back Things They Oppose
We’ve reached a point where people vote for parties without having a strong idea, or in some cases maybe the slightest idea, of what policies those parties would implement. To me, this is an indication that many voters still fundamentally do not understand the stakes of the 2024 election. Nor do they understand that the GOP intends to prevent them from fixing things in the future with ballot initiatives. Republicans in Missouri, Mississippi, Arizona, Florida, and Ohio have all tried to make it even harder for voters to overturn the unpopular laws that were passed using gerrymandered legislatures.
There’s also substantial evidence that voters have no idea of the threat they face. Only 31 percent are aware of Trump’s most egregious comments describing minorities and immigrants as “vermin” who are “poisoning” the nation. Additional polling indicates that if they knew about these quotes, a small but substantial number would be less likely to vote for him.
Democratic voters assume that the polls are wrong, or that the guardrails will hold. Independents and some Republicans assume that the GOP wouldn’t go that far, no matter what the policy is, because they believe it is so unpopular that the GOP just wouldn’t dare. Both groups are mistaken; in reality, we’re dealing with a Christian nationalist movement that doesn’t care what people think, because they intend to seize power permanently. And the American public is likely to hand it to them because Biden is old and didn’t give them a pony for Christmas.