Two Somewhat Weird Ideas about the 2024 Election

 I have heard much talk about this Trump-X voter, X being a Democrat, and how that seems strange.  I agree, though that there are some such people, I don't doubt.  But here are two hypotheses about them: 

1) There are quite a few (a million or so?) who just left the President line blank!  I've not heard anyone say this.  It is not logical to conclude that the difference in the partisan margin of two races is made up entirely of people dividing up their vote by party, but it could simply be the effect of voters not selecting in every race.  

There should be data to confirm or refute this hypothesis, but I haven't seen it.  It's the sum of the difference, precinct by precinct, of the total number of valid votes submitted and the sum of all entries on the President line (including all party lines, but also all write-ins).  

On the one hand, I could see voters who are dissatisfied with all their listed choices voting for no one.  On the other, if it were a desire to have divided or limited government, as I have often heard suggested,  a voter's choice would have made more sense the other way:  a Republican Congress to control a Democratic President.

The bottom line is that there is a gap of several million votes for Biden-Harris that did not accrue to Harris-Walz.  They did not (all) go to Trump-Vance, and the 3rd-party vote appears quite similar to that of 2020.  The gap does not appear to be in the number of voters, either.  Maybe they didn't stay home, after all. Understanding where those blank-liners are, and what their particular concerns are, would seem to be extremely valuable--perhaps they are persuadable.

  (I have to think a bit more about the fact that turnout was higher in the swing states, and how that affects this hypothesis, though surely it shows that swing voters were responding to the constant stimuli, It goes back to the difference between the national vote and that of the individual swing states.)

2) Those Trump-X voters may have been in large part those upredictable RFKJr fans. Who can know what they are, collectively, thinking or doing beyond that weird predilection?  Democrats looking for someone to demonize could do worse than targeting the Kennedy pariah:  apart from getting zero Democratic Senator votes, there is plenty of oppo to feed Republican Senators about his abortion and climate change views.  It's one time when it makes sense, even if the substitute would only be worse (having made the current DH-elect person angry),  Behavior like his should be punished.   You know, "it's going to hurt me more than it will you,"  the old lie.

Social Media OK?

We have just moved to open up a bit to other channels: 

Bluesky:

j1stoner.bsky.social

 and Substack chat

 https://open.substack.com/pub/stonerj/p/join-my-new-subscriber-chat?r=33u6d&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=tr

Yes, I am a "slow adopter".   You never saw me referencing X, or Twitter, or Facebook, as far as I can remember.  They don't matter in The Bigger Picture, which will be the next post.