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The impact of voter apathy on the 2024 election
What happens when voter indecision grips a nation during a high-stakes election featuring two well-known incumbents? Join Bryan DeAngelis, Partner at Penta, as he sits down with Daniel Cox, Director and Founder of the Survey Center on American Life, and Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, to dissect this unprecedented scenario through the lens of new polling. They explore how the dynamics of this election are shaping voter sentiment, contributing to a growing sense of pessimism about America's future among citizens.
Bryan and Daniel also focus their attention on voter behavior. They analyze Biden's focus on abortion and reproductive health in contrast to voter concerns about the economy and inflation. Additionally, they discuss the public's evolving views on immigration policy and changing demographics within the Democratic party, and how these factors could influence the upcoming election.
Welcome to this week's episode of what's at Stake. I'm your host, brian D'Angelois, a partner here at Penta in our Washington DC office, and I'm joined today by my good friend, dan Cox. Dan's the director and founder of the Survey Center on American Life and is a senior fellow in polling and public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute. Dan also holds the prestigious title of, I think, being our most frequent external guest on what's at Stake in our podcast, so we're thrilled to have him back and we're going to dive into some of his latest research on the election, as well as kind of what we're seeing in society and some of the movements and trends. So, dan, thanks for coming back on.
Speaker 2:Always a pleasure.
Speaker 1:Dan, I always love having you on around elections because I think you know what you guys study and your work in particular around. You know different segments of society, different populations. It goes, you know way deeper and, if I can almost say, more real than what we see from a lot of other polls of just demographic splits. So I want to start there. You just released a new report. Tell us a little bit high level what you guys were looking at in this one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so one of the things that I think is really interesting about this election and there's been a slew of polling really really early is that there's so much indecision, despite the fact that the candidates are very well known, so there's there's not a need to introduce these guys to most of the voters right.
Speaker 2:I was talking to a gen z voter the other day and she said something kind of profound to me that I just didn't realize. She said you know, for our generation it's been trump and on right, this is his third presidential election and so they've known anyone else, right, you know, in 2016, it was versus Hillary in 2020, you know Biden, and now it's a rematch. But it's kind of unbelievable to have, you know, two candidates who are, you know. First of all, you know where we've seen them, uh, in this position running for president. They've been around forever. You know, biden has, it was you know, first elected, I think in his twenties and which is a million years ago. And you know, trump, uh, was, uh, you know, a fixture in the eighties, right In the New York real estate scene and it and so like.
Speaker 2:Again, like, these are not unknown quantities. We, you know, a lot of americans know, I think they know, but there's just so much uncertainty about which way selection is going to go. Most of the polls have them neck and neck, and the other thing I think that's really kind of unique is how disliked both these guys are. I think for different reasons, but there's such incredible apathy in the presidential race so far, and something I tell reporters when I talk to them, or groups when I speak to them, is that the campaigns are really going to be important. Groups, when I speak to them, is that the campaigns are really going to be important, the kind of ads that are run, the decisions that are made, how candidates approach voters, and they both have really significant weaknesses that they'll have to address.
Speaker 1:And they're to your point, they're really well known. I mean, I think this is probably the first time in at least a hundred years we've had two incumbents running against each other. So all of the normal rules of, you know, defining your opposition before the voters get to know them are completely out the door. These guys are, you know, well established on both sides and, to your point, deeply unpopular. And you know, one of your main findings really struck with me. This is not a hope or future or aspirational election. This is about, you know, a few, maybe 100,000 voters in suburbs in a couple of states deciding kind of which one is going to be worse for the next four years and voting for the other one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's pretty incredible. We asked this question about to what extent do you think if Biden is elected, things will get better or get worse. If Trump gets elected, things will get better or get worse, and even people supporting Biden or Trump the majority are saying that either things will stay the same or get worse, and so you're not seeing the kind of hopefulness and optimism. And if you have a new candidate who's offering a different vision or a more positive vision and both of them, it seems like what voters are trying to think about is how do we avoid the worst option here and are uncertain about which? You know which candidate that is.
Speaker 1:And as you guys dug into that, I mean, I imagine from what I follow in politics and the news, it's it's two different definitions of what's worse. Right, there's obviously a lot of concern around Trump and his I'll say it lack of respect for democracy and norms and kind of the government structure we have. And then there's a lot of concern around Biden, certainly around age and the economy, and people aren't feeling well. Are you seeing anything else as you kind of dig deeper into it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. Something that we also asked in this poll was just to get a sense of of pessimism right that we we are hearing so much from. You know particularly the right, but the right and the and the left. You know how bad things are in the country, and it's not just about economics. There's, you know, concerns about sort of the shift in culture and you know the increasing loneliness and social isolation. So we asked this question about whether people think America's best days are ahead or behind us. And for most of the 15 or so years that we could find that this question has been asked, Americans have been, on balance, optimistic that America's best days lay ahead, but we found a 20 point gap, with the majority of Americans now saying America's best days are in the rear view mirror.
Speaker 2:And you know, when you see people scratching their head, and you know economists and and folks who follow these issues or say we don't understand why america's so despondent about the economic situation in the country, because the macroeconomic indicators are are really quite positive, right, and they're really uninformed People are. People think we're in recession and things are like the job markets is worse than it's been in 50 years, none of which is true, right. That's true, right. We're actually doing quite well, at least in aggregate level, and I think it goes.
Speaker 2:You know the answer to that is it goes further than than just a sense of economic malaise. Further than just a sense of economic malaise, there's a sort of political and social malaise too, and I think part of that is the way the parties have decided to run against each other, and it's a lot of. It's like. You know, we don't have a lot to offer, but we're just going to tear down the other side so much and scare you so much about how terrible things are. Tear down the other side so much and scare you so much about how terrible things are that that's how we're going to get you to vote for us.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And so you know you had. You know Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan offer really positive visions for the country, even when things weren't weren't going so well. You know, think of Reagan in 1980. Weren't going so well, think of Reagan in 1980. And that's just so far from where we are right now. And Trump basically saying that the country is about to fall into the ocean, right, and you have liberal activists talking about climate change is like it's going to end everything. It's going to wipe out humanity. You shouldn't even bother having kids because things are going to get so bad. And that's such a. It's such a change Like presidents are supposed to be. Not only you know the commander in chief and you know our chief administrator and all these important positions, but they're also kind of cheerleaders for the country, right, they, you?
Speaker 2:know, we don't like people who who aren't proud to be American and have faith in the country. But then you have someone like Trump who comes from outside the system and says, hey, things are terrible and you are right to be miserable because things are terrible, and they're terrible particularly for you and in a time when we've seen a long decline of public trust. There were a number of folks who were ready to hear that message.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you said something at the beginning of that answer where you know they're hearing that message and they're hearing it more and more, kind of in very isolated pockets of you know, others that then just repeat that message over and over again. And so you know there were a few things you said there that that resonated with me. I mean, we have moved to a place where we don't have presidents that run to unite the country anymore, and I would even say you know Bush and Obama, you know they. They tried to do that as well at different times and you know they put that as kind of number one. And now the political parties are so focused on setting up who is the bad guy, who's the worst, and it's flipped. It's not a. I want to vote for this candidate, it's. I don't want to vote for that candidate.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, we have this saying that political science is called affective polarization, and if you look at partisans right now, one of the the reasons people identify as democrat, republican, is not so much that they believe in the party and the issues it stands for although on some they do it's that they're terrified of the other guys, and then they they're Democrat because they know for a fact that Republican party is evil, or they're Republican because they know that the Democrats are, all you know, crazy socialists, and so that is what inspires them to get involved and to vote, and where their identity, strength of their identity, comes from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I remember the days where my own father would vote Republican for one person on the ticket, democrat for another. It would switch the next year and I mean I think we're down to six digits in terms of, maybe, the number of people in this country that still do that.
Speaker 2:It might be interesting. I wonder and I've seen this discussed a bit about whether we, because both candidates are so unpopular, where we might see more split ticket voting. There are certainly polls showing that Democratic senatorial candidates are doing much better than Biden, and a lot of them are running in purplish states. You know Nevada, pennsylvania, michigan, so it's it may be that this year there may be a little bit more split ticking, split ticket voting in the past, although you know it's hard to know. I mean, certainly the hardened partisans will vote straight, democrat or Republican.
Speaker 2:The other thing as well, and it's something that's making this election particularly hard to predict. I mean they always are, but this year the what we're seeing among the candidates is that the most engaged voters, voters that participate in every election, are strongly supporting Biden. So Biden has a pretty significant advantage among that group and the more apathetic, politically mistrustful, the voters who don't tend to vote in every election. Trump has an overwhelming advantage with those folks, and so it's really difficult to predict who's going to turn out again, particularly when we don't know what's motivating voters, because the candidates aren't all that appealing. So it could be that right if we have a surge of voting on Election Day that we did not expect. We could have an outcome that no one really expected, right.
Speaker 2:Right, so I that that is a really key variable and and I'm glad that people are talking about it now because I think so much of the conversation particularly in the news after elections, it's like all the pollsters missed it, or or you know the you know, we can't trust polling, because they didn't they didn't nail it and I think there's always some, you know that, you know we can't trust polling because they didn't, they didn't nail it, and I think there's always some, you know, always going to be some kind of Monday morning quarterback, you know, yeah, uh, in in a way that right, like pollsters, just gotta, you know, deal with it.
Speaker 2:But but I think having a frank conversation with folks about why we might see this stuff this early on is really really helpful, and then also tracking those folks. Right, it's, it's only june at this point. There's a lot of. In fact, the bulk and the most important months are the ones ahead, certainly September, october, and to the extent that we can figure out where these disaffected voters are going to go, whether they change their mind and how many of them are actually going to turn out, we'll really get a better handle on what's going to happen in November.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it'll be interesting to see, and I also find it fascinating the way that campaigns are responding to this. You know we'll have our first debate in a couple weeks, which is, you know, unheard of, and then, you know, we'll have the conventions, we'll have other stuff, but to me it feels, like, you know, biden understands his base is strong and his biggest, you know, worry is probably around age and then his voters getting discouraged that Trump's going to be back and sitting at home and, to your point, trump's looking for, you know, whatever spark he can light that then gets the folks that probably don't vote as much but fired up to come out and stand in line and cast their ballot for him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that is also a reason why we've seen such anomalous results in some of the polling, with, you know, new York times showing young voters divided between the candidates, and I think you know Biden had something like a 20-point advantage. Yeah, the 2020 election among young voters African-American voters he seems to be slipping with Hispanic voters. The Democratic Party is struggling with. Biden is sort of, you know, the latest to be really challenged there be to be really challenged there, and I think some of that is again an artifact. If it's very early and those voters are are more likely to be tuned out at this stage, and so I think some of that will sort itself out.
Speaker 2:Right, like it's going to be impossible to avoid news about the election in september. Right, just like you're gonna just be even people like in the far reaches of, you know, middle America who have no interest in politics. You know their neighbors are going to talk about it. They're going to hear about it in the grocery store. You know there's going to be signs everywhere, and so I think, like at that point we'll we'll have a far better sense, and I, and I think too, we are pulling so much earlier. You know, if I had my druthers, I would really just say, hey, we can't pull till something like July for the presidential race. You do all the internal polling you want, but poll polls you know they're just not that helpful. Yeah, and I think it it. All they do is get a lot of people who who are, you know, the 10%, 15% are paying tons of attention, will engage with it, and then everyone else is like not really paying attention lot deeper and start to surface, you know maybe, things that are obvious to some once they think about it.
Speaker 1:But but start to explain the different demographics a little bit more, Like I was, you know. You just said two things and I was fascinated to read in the report very low numbers of people paying attention to the abortion debate.
Speaker 1:And this is you know, widely seen as like Biden's biggest strategy. You know he's going to go. You know, just unload television ads, you know, for all of September, october and try to drive his base to the vote. But so many people aren't there yet and they're not paying attention and it's going to require, really that you know, a hundred millions of dollars in ad campaigns to get them moving.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it seems that the campaign is really going all in on abortion, reproductive health and maybe democracy a little bit, yes, and if you, if you look at what that voters are telling Biden, they care about it's not those issues, it's the economy, right, yeah, yeah it's inflation cost of living.
Speaker 2:There's certainly a number of folks who are concerned about immigration, and so I think, like you, will probably see the campaign pivot a little bit. The thing about the abortion finding, too, that's really important is in 2022, we were pulled right before the midterms, and the group that was most engaged and most attentive to what was going on and said that they'd be voting on the abortion question were young women, right. Not surprisingly, they were the group that is most immediately affected by the overturn of Roe, and so that issue was understandably quite salient. But there was a. I was fairly shocked at how much gender divide there was among young voters on that question. It was like 30 points. So for young women, there was no issue that was more important than abortion, and for young men it was kind of a shrug. It was like middle of the pack, lower than most other issues like education and the economy, and is that across parties too?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you get you know. After we saw it started seeing restrictions on on abortion at the state level in the midlife, it's like it, we saw sort of a switch between conservatives and religious conservatives being really engaged on abortion to liberals and Democrats I wrote a piece about it, I think a few years ago for FiveThirtyEight and Democrats. I wrote a piece about it I think a few years ago for FiveThirtyEight. It sort of said now it's. It used to be an issue that galvanized and energized folks on the right, and now it's doing that on the left and even before Dobbs it was doing that because there were concerns about availability.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that Supreme Court spot yeah, right Supreme.
Speaker 2:Court stuff you know happened, that the balance of power moved to the right and you had a lot of Democrats, in particular Democratic women, saying that or believing that that road could be overturned, and it turns out that they were right to be concerned. So the issue is one that I think Democrats believe they have the advantage on. I tend to believe that. But there are certain segments where I think it will work, certain states where I think it will work, where women are facing access issues, where there are laws either about measures that are particularly salient because they're moving, and there are states and communities where I think it's just a non-starter that this is going to energize people. So I'm writing this piece right now that looks at the data on immigration and I make the argument, I try to make the argument that that Biden should be engaging more directly and you know it looks like with the latest executive action he's trying to do something. It seems like he's kind of flailing a little bit, but but I think and I think because he hasn't connected it to his values right, like there's a way in which immigration connects to the values of pluralism and diversity, which are much more strongly held on the left than the right at this point.
Speaker 2:I think Americans generally believe that diversity makes the country better, but there's strong partisan divisions and I think it's why the immigration issue is so fraught.
Speaker 2:And then, particularly on the right, there's a lot of concern about illegal immigration and it's not only economic impact but it's cultural impact and I think there are a lot of young people who would be primed to support a more kind of moderate pro-immigration policy agenda that Biden could embrace. And I sort of walk through all the reasons why. But I think it comes down to identity and experience that young folks you know part of their generational cohort. Identity is being a member of the most you know racially, religiously diverse generation ever, and belief that you know we are better, you know, because of these differences that we have and it's not, it doesn't hamper us from working together and being, you know, a unified country. So I think there is an opening there. Certainly, young people have are far more likely to have friends who are immigrants who would be impacted by any legislation, are far more likely to have friends who are immigrants who would be directly impacted by any legislation.
Speaker 1:Uh, so I yeah, and they're meeting those friends and you know higher education and right in the workplace and, yeah, college, yeah, there's a values message there that I agree with you. I think can easily connect to biden's message around democracy and what america is of. You know, right, most immigrants come here because they want a better life and they're or they're escaping something you know dictatorships, whatever and Americans kind of support that value of we are a place where bring us your best and brightest and come to find an opportunity.
Speaker 2:But the headlines I think this all goes back to the isolation of, you know, social media companies whoever you want to point the finger at of like we're just a considerable amount of concern about the impact of immigrants when it comes to using social services for their impact on certain industries. So I think there is that sort of underlying concern. We're seeing a rising support for even deporting immigrants who came to the country illegally. So, you know, I think that's one reason why the campaigns moved kind of cautiously here. But when you look at Trump's rhetoric on it, it's so extreme and it's so alienating to a broad swath of voters, including young voters. And then his policies right, they were not popular.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Not at all. Yeah, the concentration was. I think they had a huge blowback for that during the Trump years. So again. I think that the immigration debate is one that I find really curious, because Trump does have a if you look at polling a huge advantage over Biden in terms of who trusts him on the issue.
Speaker 2:But he's got some pretty weak spots on this to your point project that I think some Democratic firm ran, where they just shared a number of public statements that Trump has made that are, you know, misogynistic, sexist, certainly could be construed as racist some of them. And they said are you aware of these statements, these things that Trump has said? It's like you know, the immigrants from S-hole countries, that kind of stuff, and a lot of young people had not heard of them. And then they asked well, are you bothered by these statements? And the majority of people, young people, said, for most of them, yeah, these are very troubling. So to think that Trump is unassailable on immigration, I think is not quite right and it would just take a concerted effort from the Biden team to really make it more efficient.
Speaker 1:From Biden and Democrats. You know I think Democrats have candidly probably taken for granted the Hispanic vote for years and you know you're seeing a probably growing population you know growing in age I mean as well as affluence and you know they have some of the same concerns, certainly around illegal immigration, but then also the economy and other issues. And I think, to your point, this action this week is is somewhat maybe flailing, but like trying to figure out how can we shore up a little bit of that base and how can we, you know, take advantage of some of the weak spots on Trump.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's. There's a debate going on and one of my colleagues, rui Tujera, has argued that the Democratic Party has kind of ceded a lot of popular policy ground to the Republican Party when it comes to policies that benefit the middle class and representing the broad interests of those folks interests of those folks. And we see in our data. We asked a question about you know, who better represents the wealthy, middle class, working class and the Democrats have slipped significantly since the 90s and who represents both poor and middle class Americans. It used to be that the Democratic Party, more than the Republican Party, was viewed as the party of the middle class and now they're kind of neck and neck. I mean, there's a significant number of people who don't think either party represents the middle class, but it used to be a really significant advantage for the Democrats, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, We've been having this same debate around the office with you know, a lot of my colleagues who have worked on different presidential campaigns over time of it really feels like we're in a moment. Probably started when we look back, you know, maybe 10 years ago, but the bases are flipping. You know, in the Democratic Party of working class voters, union voters, you know poor in the middle class is shifting more Republican, while Republicans are abandoning a lot more of the kind of pro business, pro growth libertarian economics.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I and I think you're you've really started seeing, uh, you know, growing educational polarization and sorting where the Democratic Party is become the party of college educated Americans and the Republican Party is increasingly a party where non-college folks feel more welcome and it's changing the policy priorities for the Democrats. And I did some analysis a while ago and over the last like 25 years or so, the number of college educated women who are Democrats increased dramatically. It's now one in three Democrats as a college educated woman, Right In the 90s it was like one in 10. And then it's significant changes because they, you know the policy priorities of college educated women are very different than working class men Right, like LGBTQ equality Right.
Speaker 2:That's something that's really important, or far more important, I should say, than to college educated women, and I think it's one of the reasons you have the Democratic policies on that have been far more prominent than they have been in the past. Policies on that have been more prominent than they have been in the past, but it's, you know, in if you look at sort of the constellation of issues, that's not an issue that most Americans say is particularly salient, particularly important, and so you have these kind of cultural questions that Democrats are identified with now in ways that I think that kind of detract from the appealing to your aspiring middle-class Hispanic worker, right, who's that? Well, what? How are you making healthcare more affordable?
Speaker 1:Because that is, one of the most important issues for Hispanics is healthcare and the cost of healthcare.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it is a challenge because there's a real upside to, you know, having a base of college educated Americans. They tend to vote, they tend to donate, so you, you tend to do much better in off year and low turnout elections, and that's exactly what happened. It used to be that the democratic party yeah.
Speaker 1:Like it wasn't that long ago.
Speaker 2:No, I remember well, yeah, yeah that and republicans like no, no, let's not. You know, promote any policies that will help people. You know, increase turnout because that will help the democrats. Well, now you know things have flipped, and so it'd be interesting to see I think I saw trump now promoting uh mail voting yes voting yeah, so yeah I think there's, it's's, it's, you know, there's some recognition that this you know. Things have changed and it'll be interesting to see you know, tactically, how their parties respond.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, I want to ask you one last question and, uh, you know I wish we had more time for this, but you know, I know you're going to do more work on this stuff too, so so feel free to tell us what you have in the queue. But, as you were talking about, you know, the rise of college educated women making it most Democratic voters. You've written a great piece a couple weeks ago of you know, there there is a almost abandonment of men by the Democratic Party, at least as a voting block that they think about, and you know, working class men, college educated men it's. You know. I think both parties are struggling, as probably a lot of them are moving between those bases, as we talked about. So I'd love to hear what you're seeing there and you know, maybe, what else you've got coming up in that regard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we are seeing an increasing gender divide among young folks and they look around and who's helping them? There's some great work by Richard Reeves and others, great document, the way, yeah, of boys and men, the way young men are struggling. And you see it particularly in certain communities, like among African-Americans. The number of African-American women going to college far, far outpaces African-American men. Right, their economic outcomes are far better. And you look at all these different measures and, yeah, I think it's clear that young men are struggling in ways and boys struggling in ways that in the not-so-distant past they weren't. Some of that has to do with dramatic economic changes that have upended a lot of industries that were male-dominated. There's cultural changes as well. So I think you know all that is going on.
Speaker 2:And then you have, you know, the Democratic Party, who is increasingly, you know, focused on gender equality and I think has a blind spot when it comes to the challenges that men are facing. And I think there's there's a trepidation to engage with issues or saying, well, it's kind of zero sum, if we're helping men, then we're kind of giving up on helping women, which has been something that the democratic party you know the war on women to you know other ways that they've. They've really been identified with being advocates for gender equality and I would argue and a lot of folks have argued that well, it's not zero sum Right and it's possible to help both. But I think it's really telling and I'll leave on this anecdote that if you go to the Democratic Party's website and you look at the number of different groups that the party's advocating for, I think there's something like 16 of them, you know, women, native Americans, hispanics, immigrants, old people, young people they cover pretty much every group save one, which is men. Men are nowhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, including boys. I mean, one of the big takeaways for me in Reeve's book was just how young boys we're talking five, six are just struggling in the education system and that obviously wors. And you know you even had a lot of bipartisan work, you know, with Bush and Kennedy and others in the early months of you know what are we going to do for kids and I think, given where our politics are of just the us versus them, that's been kind of cast aside them.
Speaker 2:That's that's been kind of cast aside and it's an issue that cuts right through politics. I certainly had conversations with parents. I had a conversation with a dad who worked for a fairly left-leaning foundation who was just kind of incensed at the way the school was treating his young boys and the kind of the blind spot that they had, and it was like the way they dealt with boys was kind of punitive, whereas girls they were kind of OK, what do you need? How can we support? But it seemed like a very much a double standard and a lack of recognition that you know you can, you can treat boys and girls equally but acknowledge that they may need different things. Right, and then that's something that you know. He's like I vote Democrat in every election, but like now I and the sort of left-leaning administration that at the school he's like I want them out. Okay, they're just, they're not part of the solution here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, we'll. I'd love to dive in more, but we'll leave it there and we'll look forward to more of your research, especially, you know, as we try to unpack what the electorate is going to look like before the end of the year. But, dan, always a pleasure to have you on.
Speaker 2:Sounds great.
Speaker 1:I'm looking forward to coming back and for all of our listeners, thanks again for tuning in. For more episodes of what's at Stake, subscribe to the Penta podcast channel. Wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find us on Twitter X, at PentaGRP or on our website at pentagroupco. I'm your host, brian DeAngelis. Thanks for listening.