Bacon's Rebellion

Democrats Stayed Home

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by

James A. Bacon
in

by Joe Fitzgerald

17,993 people voted in Harrisonburg in 2016.

17,086 voted in 2020.

15,051 voted in 2024.

Another 2,351 voted provisionally on Election Day, meaning they were allowed to register and vote but their registration must be recorded and confirmed before their vote is counted. If they are all accepted, that could bring the total to 17,402. For comparison purposes, those 2,351 would have been turned away in 2020 because they were not registered.

The 2,351 are the voters who didn’t know they needed to register, or didn’t know if they already were. It will be interesting to see the split among low-information voters or, less charitably, whose voters are more low-information. (There is also charity in calling them low-information.)

To complete the comparison, 64.5 percent voted for the Democrat nominee for president in 2020, and 62.4 voted for the Democrat nominee this year. Biden got 11,022 four years ago, and Harris got 9,327 this year. That’s 1,695 fewer votes for Harris. (Trump got 5,591 last time; 5,244 this time.) Roughly, before the provisionals are counted, 15 percent fewer Democrat voters turned out. Similar numbers prevailed statewide, with 193,288 fewer for the Democrat, 28,141 more for Trump, and turnout, excluding third parties, down 165,147.

With the nation polarized, persuading voters was not an issue. It was purely a turnout election. Democrats didn’t.

Joe Fitzgerald is former mayor of Harrisonburg. This column is republished with permission from his blog Still Not Sleeping.

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14 responses to “Democrats Stayed Home”

  1. Stephen Haner Avatar
    Stephen Haner

    Henrico still has not posted the early votes by precinct, but when they do that is one the things to look for — lower D turnout due to lower D enthusiasm. Probably a factor. You could definitely see it on the VPAP data showing early vote turnout by precinct.

  2. Jim Loving Avatar
    Jim Loving

    I have not looked at the larger numbers, but I was sent an email that said overall, the total US vote count was 18M less than 2020. Again, not verified, but if true, incredibly significant. Actually, any number of fewer voters compared to 2020 is significant, given population growth and seemingly increased intensity and anxiety with the outcome this time.

    But, I think for our democracy it will be useful for sociologists and political scientists to study why people chose not to vote. Understanding that can help explain a lot.

    1. walter smith Avatar
      walter smith

      Do not exclude the possibility that the 81 million number could be suspect…
      Turning out non-existent "voters" can be tough!

      1. walter smith Avatar
        walter smith

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f1d13b36920c82f08053a78938bc45748f5548e4b4d5f0c136759af6cd293790.jpg
        I haven't done Stats for a while…but I am pretty sure that would be called an "anomoly."

        1. James C. Sherlock Avatar
          James C. Sherlock

          Remember the “no rules’ voting in 2020 during COVID. Drop boxes. Ballot harvesting. Etc. that is where the “votes” came from.

          1. WayneS Avatar
            WayneS

            I agree with you. While I do not think Donald Trump won the 2020 election, I also do not think Joe Biden got 81 million legitimate votes.

          2. walter smith Avatar
            walter smith

            Conspiracy theorist! Ignore what yours eyes see and your brain says!

    2. walter smith Avatar
      walter smith

      And here is another "anomaly"
      https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1854064784351678941 So CommieLa did 3% better than Biden in ZERO States and only 58 of 3144 counties. That could imply something very strange about 2020…

  3. DJRippert Avatar
    DJRippert

    A candidate that never received a primary vote ran a campaign telling voters that it was time to "turn the page" – when she had been in office for the past four years and publicly stated that there wasn't anything she would have done differently during those four years.

    Turn the page on what … herself?

    And you wonder why people weren't excited to vote for her?

    1. Stephen Haner Avatar
      Stephen Haner

      But looking ahead….the early D enthusiasm for A. Spanberger is freaking off the charts. A year is a long time, but safe to bet she will learn from the pathetic Harris campaign.

      1. Matt Adams Avatar
        Matt Adams

        Well she's already been hot mic'd telling them to turn down the rhetoric it wasn't helping her the last time she ran for election.

      2. DJRippert Avatar
        DJRippert

        I may vote for Spanberger. She has radio commercials up in NoVa where she provides an example of a vet who couldn't get his records so he called her office. The vet says her office intervened and got the records to him.

        The commercial then states her office's phone number and URL.

        No politics.

        A politician who says she's there, at least in part, to help her constituents navigate the ponderous Federal bureacracy?

        Definitely a step in the right direction.

        We'll have to see about her policies, of course.

    2. Chip Gibson Avatar
      Chip Gibson

      Great point and agree, yet so many misguided Virginia souls did vote for her, though she ran on nothing of substance, however “unburdened by what has been”. The Commonwealth made a noticeable ground gain on the 1st down, but then faltered and fumbled the football of fortitude. We must learn to once again play on the Intangible Team.

  4. Clarity77 Avatar
    Clarity77

    Along with a propensity to drink the Koolaid democrats easily fall victim to voter turnout scammers. Birds of a feather……………….

    https://www.leefang.com/p/democratic-consultants-deceived-donors

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