Needless to say, the election did not go the way that many had hoped.  But it’s important to take a clear look at the numbers.  It is always hard to tell for sure, and it varies from state-to-state, but it looks like in the swing states, the issue is more voters who were willing to vote for Joe Biden in 2020 were not willing to vote for Kamala Harris.  How much of that is based on inflation and myopic hindsight (thinking the Trump years were better than they actually were) and how much on other factors is unclear.

Looking at the individual states, in Georgia, there were 243,000 additional votes this year.  In Michigan, it looks like something on the order of 71,000 more votes were cast this year than in 2020.  In Nevada, there were about 28,000 more votes this year.  In North Carolina, there were about 177,000 more votes this year.  In Pennsylvania, there were about 5,000 additional votes.  In Wisconsin, there were about 86,000 additional votes.  While we do not have the final numbers from Arizona, the reports seem to suggest that the final count will end up with around the same number of votes.  Even if we end up with fewer votes, it looks like it will be within 100,000 of the 2020 totals.  In short, in the swing states, while almost certainly some people who voted in 2020 did not vote in 2024, they were more than replaced by additional voters.  Admittedly, within the states, we had some shortfall in the areas where we are strongest, the loss is not entirely due to Democrats not voting.

But people who are saying that the Democrats need major changes are missing the story of this election.  There is a lot of economic pain in the country even though, at the general level, the economy is in decent shape.  Since the Republicans do not have a sound economic plan, we are likely to see several elections in which the White House keeps flipping back and forth. Continue Reading...