Reminder of why the winner of the 2000 election didn't become President () When you have both an electoral college and first past the post voting system, close races get ugly and questionable. If a higher percentage of people would vote, we wouldn't see such a close race.
Reminder of why the winner of the 2000 election didn't become President
Because a criminally corrupt, partisan, captured supreme court stole the election! When you're the highest court in the land, they let you grab em by the justice...
I'm also willing to bet the SC will steal 2024 too and, despite the many threats and objections from Democrats, they and the population will ultimately roll over and accept the Christian fascist coup. Prove me wrong America! I double dare you!
That was the next layer, but they can't get to that point if the voting isn't close. I don't disagree that elections is one of the many reasons why the court got stacked, but way before the SC there WILL be corruption attempts at the voting level. See Steve Bannon's commentary on how they've put people in place in voting areas and have formulated a plan to question voter authenticity. They know they can't win with a fair election, so they're finding more and more ways to subtly cheat. Or maybe not even subtle now, since they keep saying everything out loud.
And the best way to counter this is drown the attempt in voter numbers, so that even if ballots are questioned or tossed or people turned away, the number still are high.
That was the next layer, but they can't get to that point if the voting isn't close.
That's why they're manufacturing excuses to e.g. throw out Atlanta's votes (and presumably planning similar fraud in other swing states).
SCOTUS knew that Gore would win. They found an out by saying that the Secretary of State had a right to cancel recounts when she felt like it and that was that.
Moreover, older Americans punch above their weight because they’re more likely to be registered to vote and to cast a ballot. Recent polling from The New York Times/Siena College put seniors at about 29% of the electorate, compared with only about 13% for voters under 30.
I knew there was a disparity, but over double is a bit more than I expected.
Old folks are retired, thus more free time, and I'm guessing there's a bit of civic duty imprinted on them as well.
I don't know about civic duty. In my opinion seniors are more uneasy about any policy that might change their lives in any way, and they tend to vote to maintain the status quo.
The ol NIMBY/"I got mine, fuck you" combo pack
To be fair, they are older. They don't have much time left on this earth and they don't have the ability to adapt to change as well as younger people. Most of them are not exactly financially stable, and they're worried that their routine could be disrupted by forces beyond their control. That being said, fear has always been a great motivator, especially for conservative/reactionary types.
The last place I lived, for around a decade, my polling station was literally in a senior's centre every time I had an election to vote in.
Everyone loves to bag on boomers, but they’re actually more left leaning than they’re given credit for (more so now after Covid killed a lot of antivax seniors). Gen X is the MAGA stronghold.
I don't think that's the problem. Here's an example of the distribution of voting, and it's sort of what you'd expect from the stereotype. Note that Gen-X is close to 50%, a bit more to the right. What affects things more (and mentioned in the article) is actual voting, or rather the lack of voting from the apathetic or oppressed or mislead. If more younger voters don't vote, the results skew to the right.
Add to that how different the commitment to party is between left and right. Left has lots of differing opinions and the infighting between Democrat and farther left 3rd party voters often result in either spoiler or no votes at all (which is why ranked voting would be a huge change). Right on the other hand, we've all heard the line about party first, no matter what. Liars, rapists, felons, still voting for the candidate because that's what a Republican does.
I don't know if the latter can be easily fixed outside of better education both in voting information and in general. The right really aren't in favor of any of that though, that would hurt their numbers. Trump even said it out loud, they love the poorly educated.
The first part though is powerful. I've heard it said to young crowds many times that if more of them show up they can hugely affect the results.
I'm not denying my generation (Gen-X, and why I felt I needed to reply) has its share of MAGAs. Long ago when I first joined Facebook and started adding friends I found from high school I thought it would be cool to reconnect. It was disappointing how quickly I found so many of them were not the same left-leaning radical free thinking people I thought I knew back then. But MAGA mania isn't solely in one generation, it's a problem shared that will stay around if we don't change some things.
I guess that probably depends whether you're counting by raw numbers or by proportion of each age group. I just looked this up and Pew Research Group has this chart from April 2024 (attached). Proportionately, it shows a fairly consistent shift toward more support for Republicans as the age brackets go up, with the one exception being from 60-69 and 70-79 where support drops 2%. Either way, Baby Boomers are proportionately more supportive of the Republican Party than Gen Xers are.
Moving on from proportion to raw numbers, that's definitely tougher to tell. The Wikipedia articles for each generation cite the latest census data, but that was in 2019, so obviously figures will have changed since then. Still, the census said there were 65.2 million Gen Xers living in the United States, vs. 71.6 million Baby Boomers. Have six million Boomers died in the last five years? Probably not, but obviously the ratios will have gotten somewhat tighter since then.
Ultimately, on raw numbers, I'd say Baby Boomers (currently aged ~60-78) currently outnumber Gen Xers (currently aged ~44-59) and are proportionately more likely to support Republicans, per the Pew chart.
EDIT: I got ninja'd, but I brought a chart.
Definitely! People forget what was going on during Boomer growth years.
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