There are two ways of lawfully winning votes. You can either organize your present voting bloc and get them to the polls or persuade those who are not already in your current voting bloc to support your applicant. Over the past ten years, Democrats have come to prefer poll strategies based on voting mobilization rather than persuasion.
Liberals are already having enough difficulty with Joe Biden’s disappointing poll results and indications of a deteriorating business. Democrats in November could face serious problem if they are committed to a foundation recruitment strategy when the foundation is fragile or shrinking. The factor that gives them the coup de grace in their 2024 vote plans could be the dissolving of the college-age youth voting on the stones of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
An increasingly anxious youth group in school exposes the weakness of the Democrats ‘ formidable “nonpartisan” voter registration and mail-in ballot-gathering organizations. These institutions are very effective at mobilizing a stable or expanding voter basic, but these tactics become even more ineffective as the basic becomes more fragile. Democrats have largely abandoned the persuasion techniques needed to resurrect their foundation in the interim.
How Do Democrats Build Their Support Center?
Scientists like Cass Sunstein, Sasha Issenberg, and a growing army of fresh information experts employed by think tank and charitable organizations that give intellectual and practical advice to Democrats in managing votes have been the guiding lights of the Democrats ‘ voter mobilization techniques over the past ten years. They have encouraged the use of cutting-edge social science and data analysis to better understand electors and increase turnout, helping Democrats upgrade their vote strategy.
The most crucial issue Democrat data scientists have done over the past ten years has been to lower changing attendance as a concern for Democrats in federal elections, especially with their data and statistics-driven expansion of mail-in election and ballot harvesting.
A major part of the Democratic center is the consequently- called” New American Majority” partnership, which consists of minorities, university- age youth voters, and young women. Liberals anticipate counting on this segment of the public to be strong Democrat voters in the ordinary course of events.
The issue with New American Majority voters is that, while they may be steadfast Liberals, they are extremely unsatisfactory when it comes to going to the polls and casting ballots in person. Democrats have been very loyal to them for the past 75 years in terms of political affiliation, but their attendance rate is frequently low in comparison to another demographics and subject to a degree of variability, which has been a source of concern for Democrats for decades.
Attendance concerns are substantially diminished under the routine of mail- in voting that Democrats then manage in important swing states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona. Instead of voters, who can be incredibly difficult to get people to vote in person, they must use the initiative and energy of election activists to shepherd mail-in ballots through the system.
Big nonprofit money and ideologically motivated election activists are substituted for voter initiative in this scheme, and voter enthusiasm is largely eliminated from the “turnout” equation as “voters” become passive participants in a vote- by- mail election, guided and directed by Democrat” shadow party” functionaries, community organizers, and neighborhood political bosses.
Democrats will benefit greatly from this approach in 2020 and 2022. Our analysis suggests that the$ 335 million Center for Tech and Civic Life blowout and mail-in ballot free-for-all in 2020 played a significant role in swaying the 2020 election toward Joe Biden. James E. Campbell’s” Breakwater” theory of the 2022 election convincingly suggests that the Democrats ‘ mail- in ballot regime stanched the expected red wave in key states in 2022.
Gathering Clouds
When the base is unstable, efforts to chase mail- in ballots ( or register voters ) using the “nonpartisan” techniques required of 501 ( c ) ( 3 ) nonprofits by the U. S. Tax Code expose Democrats to some intractable vulnerabilities.
Over the last month, some Democratic strategists and donors have begun to acknowledge these vulnerabilities. Democratic adjacent journalist and statistician Nate Silver succinctly sums up the Democrats ‘ problem of being stuck in base mobilization mode as the election draws nearer and the Democrat base is threatened by restless college-age youth and minority voter defections in a recent blog on his website. He adds:
Democrats typically believe they can win elections through voter turnout rather than persuasion. It’s not a crazy proportion, by any means. However, it appears to be a losing strategy for 2024.
However, it seems that Democrats ‘ generalizations about how to implement their 2020 strategy or borrow from the Obama 2012 playbook are flawed. There are still plenty of swing voters, and they’re swinging toward Trump.
In the interim, a surprising story about panicked Democrat donors emerged in The Washington Post about realizing that some of the lavishly and opulent nonprofits they use to register voters and, in this case, to collect and canvass mail-in ballots are rendered ineffective when voters are switching sides, in this case from Joe Biden to anyone else.
The party’s internal memo raised questions about whether to continue using nonprofits to register unregistered voters because it feared it might benefit Trump by registering potential Trump or third-party voters. This is the same issue that arises when mail-in votes are cast with an unstable, changing base. As opposed to Trump ballots or those of a third-party candidate, ballot harvesters cannot be nearly as certain that the mail-in ballots they are harvesting in a particular location are Joe Biden ballots.
Nonpartisan ballot harvesting and voter registration efforts may be ineffective, if not counterproductive, in significantly increasing Democrat vote margins if the number of Biden and Trump voters is even beginning to approach parity in a particular location.
That is what the party seems to be able to stop with regard to minorities and college-age youth defections from the Democratic base, which is what appears to be happening right now in national polling. Even if unpopular youth do n’t vote for Trump, it will suffice for a small minority of them to vote against Biden to give Donald Trump the 2024 election.
Democrats are currently in desperate need of anything that will convert their beloved deep-blue university towns to more vibrant demographics, but it is starting to look like that is what they will get in 2024.
Reality Bites Democrats
After the disappointments of 2020 and 2022, Republicans are perhaps too much in awe of Democrats ‘ ability to swing elections through the activation of their” shadow party” of activist lawyers, high- powered media scribes, community organizers, and process- oriented election nonprofits and foundations.
Election-integrity advocates have repeatedly argued that the Democrats ‘ election activists have built a formidable electoral apparatus over the past ten years, but that it is not unbreakable. As the election draws near, I think the fundamental issue of unanticipated partisan shifts within the base will become the focus of Democratic strategists.
Democrats will ultimately have to accept reality and accept the delusion that” saving our democracy” or some other form of magical thinking will save them this fall. The ROI of ballot harvesting a D+29 student demographic, such as existed in the 2020 election, is far higher than the ROI in a D+5 student demographic, which is more reflective of the reality that Democrats are likely to face this fall.
Democrats are actually weaker than they have been for at least ten years, and they will only get weaker as a result as the economy’s current events and an increasingly intransigent cadre of far-left activists slash their support. Do n’t anticipate a 2020 rerun when Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., somehow persuaded his supporters to trail Joe Biden and avoid causing trouble for party leaders.
Democrats ‘ mail-in ballot canvassing and harvesting machine will have to do without the$ 335 million in potential “dirty tricks” from Republicans, who are reportedly more interested in organizing their own rapid-fire legal campaigns against provocative Democrat interpretations of election law.
Republicans who have been “blackmailed” into losing out on future elections may find it unexpected that Democrats have the almost miraculous ability to win through mail-in ballots.
William Doyle, Ph. The Caesar Rodney Election Research Institute in Irving, Texas, has a research director named D. He is particularly interested in economic history and the private funding of American elections. Prior to joining the University of Dallas, he served as chair and associate professor. He can be contacted at doyle@rodneyinstitute .org.
