The way you stated this makes it seem like your conclusion for the reason why the Democrats lost (and by extension, what they need to do to avoid losing in the future) is obviously correct. But the Median Voter Theorem you invoked is a conditional statement, and I don’t think it’s at all obvious that its conditions held for the 2024 US presidential election.
That’s true, and you’re right, the way I wrote my comment overstates the case. Every individual election is complicated, and there’s a lot more than one axis of variation differentiation candidates and voters. The whole process of Harris becoming the candidate made this particular election weird in a number of ways. And as a share of the electorate, there are many fewer swing voters than there used to be a few decades ago, and not conveniently sorted into large, coherent blocks.
And yet, it’s also true that as few as ~120,000 votes in WI, MI, and PA could have swung the result, three moderate states that have flipped back and forth across each of the past four presidential elections. Only slightly more for several other combinations of states. It’s not some deep mystery who lives in the rust belt, and what positions on issues a few tens of thousands of voters who are on the fence might care about. It’s not like those issues are uncorrelated, either. And if you look at the last handful of elections, a similar OOM of voters in a similar set of states could have swung things either way, each time.
And it’s true that Harris underperformed Biden-2024 by vote share in every state but Utah (and 37.7% vs 37.8% does not matter to the outcome in any plausible scenario). If I’m reading the numbers correctly she also received fewer votes numerically than Biden in all but 6 states.
So yes: I can very easily imagine scenarios where you’re right, and the fact that we don’t meet the theoretical assumptions necessary for the median voter theorem to apply means we can’t assume an approximation of it in practice. It’s even possible, if the Dems had really started organizing sustained and wide-ranging GOTV campaigns fifteen years ago, that there could be the kinds of blue wave elections I keep getting told are demographic inevitabilities just around the corner, as long as they keep moving further towards the current set of progressive policy goals. But what I cannot imagine is that, in July 2024, in the country as it actually existed, Harris wouldn’t have done better by prioritizing positions (many of which she actually already said she held!) that a relative handful of people in an actual handful of states consistently say they care the most about, and explaining why Trump’s usually-only-vaguely-gestured-at plans would make many of their situations worse. Would it have been enough? I don’t know. But it is a better plan than what happened, if what you want is to win elections in order to govern.
The way you stated this makes it seem like your conclusion for the reason why the Democrats lost (and by extension, what they need to do to avoid losing in the future) is obviously correct. But the Median Voter Theorem you invoked is a conditional statement, and I don’t think it’s at all obvious that its conditions held for the 2024 US presidential election.
That’s true, and you’re right, the way I wrote my comment overstates the case. Every individual election is complicated, and there’s a lot more than one axis of variation differentiation candidates and voters. The whole process of Harris becoming the candidate made this particular election weird in a number of ways. And as a share of the electorate, there are many fewer swing voters than there used to be a few decades ago, and not conveniently sorted into large, coherent blocks.
And yet, it’s also true that as few as ~120,000 votes in WI, MI, and PA could have swung the result, three moderate states that have flipped back and forth across each of the past four presidential elections. Only slightly more for several other combinations of states. It’s not some deep mystery who lives in the rust belt, and what positions on issues a few tens of thousands of voters who are on the fence might care about. It’s not like those issues are uncorrelated, either. And if you look at the last handful of elections, a similar OOM of voters in a similar set of states could have swung things either way, each time.
And it’s true that Harris underperformed Biden-2024 by vote share in every state but Utah (and 37.7% vs 37.8% does not matter to the outcome in any plausible scenario). If I’m reading the numbers correctly she also received fewer votes numerically than Biden in all but 6 states.
So yes: I can very easily imagine scenarios where you’re right, and the fact that we don’t meet the theoretical assumptions necessary for the median voter theorem to apply means we can’t assume an approximation of it in practice. It’s even possible, if the Dems had really started organizing sustained and wide-ranging GOTV campaigns fifteen years ago, that there could be the kinds of blue wave elections I keep getting told are demographic inevitabilities just around the corner, as long as they keep moving further towards the current set of progressive policy goals. But what I cannot imagine is that, in July 2024, in the country as it actually existed, Harris wouldn’t have done better by prioritizing positions (many of which she actually already said she held!) that a relative handful of people in an actual handful of states consistently say they care the most about, and explaining why Trump’s usually-only-vaguely-gestured-at plans would make many of their situations worse. Would it have been enough? I don’t know. But it is a better plan than what happened, if what you want is to win elections in order to govern.
I have just written a full post inspired by this comment.