If you’ve been reading post-election coverage, you’ve probably seen one of the big takeaways from the returns so far: In counties across the country, Kamala Harris won many fewer votes than Joe Biden did four years ago.
With the vast majority of votes counted, she has more than 74 million; Mr. Biden received more than 81 million four years ago. Donald J. Trump, in contrast, has 77 million votes, up from 74 million four years ago.
The drop-off in Democratic vote tallies was largest in big cities. In places like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, Mr. Trump made significant gains in terms of vote share but didn’t necessarily earn many more votes than he did four years ago. Instead, Democratic tallies plunged.
As such, it’s tempting to conclude that Democrats simply didn’t turn out this year — and that Ms. Harris might have won if they had voted in the numbers they did four years ago.
This interpretation would be a mistake.
For one, the story doesn’t apply to the battlegrounds, where turnout was much higher. In all seven battleground states, Mr. Trump won more votes than Mr. Biden did four years ago.
More important, it is wrong to assume that the voters who stayed home would have backed Ms. Harris. Even if they had been dragged to the polls, it might not have meaningfully helped her.
How is that possible? It’s because the low turnout among traditionally Democratic-leaning groups — especially nonwhite voters — was a reflection of lower support for Ms. Harris: Millions of Democrats soured on their party and stayed home, reluctantly came back to Ms. Harris or even made the leap to Mr. Trump. And if those who stayed home had voted, it wouldn’t have been an enormous help to Ms. Harris, based on Times/Siena polling linked to validated records of who did or didn’t vote.
That may be surprising — it’s not usually how people think about turnout. Typically, turnout and party-switching are imagined as entirely independent. After all, there are millions of voters who are all but sure to vote for one party, and the only question is whether they’ll vote. In lower-turnout midterms and special elections, whether one party gets its vote out can be the whole ballgame.
But in a presidential election, turnout and persuasion often go hand in hand. The voters who may or may not show up are very different from the rest of the electorate. They’re less ideological. They’re less likely to be partisans — even if they’re registered with a party. They’re less likely to have deep views on the issues. They don’t get their news from traditional media.
Throughout the cycle, polls found that Mr. Trump’s strength was concentrated among these kinds of voters. Many of them were registered Democrats or Biden voters four years ago, or they hailed from Democratic-leaning constituencies. But they weren’t acting like Democrats in 2024. These voters were more concerned by pocketbook issues than democracy or abortion rights. If they decided to vote, many said they would back Mr. Trump.
It will be many months until the story is clear nationwide, but the data we have so far — in Georgia and Clark County, Nev., which contains Las Vegas — suggests that the traditionally Democratic voters who stayed home were disproportionately likely to be the ones who soured on Ms. Harris and the Democrats. These records can be linked to voter registration files, which show their party registration. And pre-election Times/Siena polls can reveal what these nonvoters were thinking heading into the election.
In Georgia and Clark County, Democratic turnout slipped. In Clark County, 64.8 percent of registered Democrats turned out, down from 67.7 percent in 2020; turnout among registered Republicans roughly stayed the same. There’s no party registration in Georgia, but voters do identify their race when they register to vote. The data there tells a clear story: Black turnout fell, and so did the Black share of the electorate (yet again).
On its face, the decline in Democratic turnout doesn’t explain Ms. Harris’s loss. In the easier-to-illustrate Clark County case, the lower ratio of Democratic-to-Republican turnout would explain only about one-third of the decline in Democratic support, even if one assumed that all Democrats were Harris voters. The remaining two-thirds of the shift toward Mr. Trump was because voters flipped his way.
But even that back-of-the-envelope calculation probably overestimates the role of turnout. Our polling data suggests many of these nonvoting Democrats were no lock for Ms. Harris if they had voted.
Overall in Times/Siena data for Clark County, Ms. Harris led registered Democrats who voted in 2024, 88 percent to 8 percent. But she led by a much narrower 71-23 among the registered Democrats who stayed home.
Similarly, Ms. Harris had an 87-8 lead among Black voters in Georgia who turned out and voted, but she led by 54-35 among Black Georgians who stayed home.
There’s no equivalent pattern of a drop in support for Mr. Trump among Republicans who stayed home. Indeed, many high-turnout Republicans are the kind of highly engaged, college-educated “Never Trump” voters who have helped Democrats in special and midterm elections.
In Las Vegas and elsewhere, our data suggests that most voters who turned out in 2020 but stayed home in 2024 voted for Mr. Biden in 2020, but about half of them, and maybe even a slight majority, appear to have backed Mr. Trump this year. Regardless, there’s no reason to believe that they would have backed Ms. Harris by a wide margin, let alone the kind of margin that would have made a difference in the election.