Protest votes are probably overstated, I think most of it comes down to people staying home. Everybody in America already knows what side they're on, and they either vote for that side or not at all. Virtually all political messaging is either trying to moralize your side or demoralize the other, to manipulate the relative ratios of who stays home on election day.
> I think most of it comes down to people staying home
Obama was able to get people motivated. Neither Biden nor Harris had anywhere near that motivating ability. I don't know that the Dems have anyone as motivating as Obama line up. The Dems seem to be hoping that enough people will be repulsed by the current admin to show up.
2024 was a massive outlier. First black woman ever, and the first time a candidate got swapped out mid-campaign. You can't extrapolate much from that one.
I think people were highly motivated in 2020 because of Trump, not Biden. The turnout would have been similar for any credible candidate running against Trump.
What's weird to me is that a lot of people lost that motivation over the next four years. If they found Trump scary in 2020, they should have found him scary in 2024.
And then in 2024 they were 100% opposite motivated for Trump to win popular vote, increase with every demo except for white women, and move almost every single county in the country to the right?
Why would Trump be so unpopular to boost Biden in 2020, then do so much better in 2024?
Newsom is an extremely strong candidate. Vance has several critical vulnerabilities that can demoralize right wing voters if the election is handled properly, and the Republicans really don't have anybody else. Rubio maybe, but Rubio won't be able to get ahead of Vance.
