Sorry to say this to you, dear readers, but you don’t get to decide the 2024 election. This is not a reflection on you as individuals (I care about you readers very much), nor does it diminish the power of your vote (please vote!). It’s just a fact that the people reading our election politics newsletter in June 2024 are generally not the people who will be making decisions late in the campaign or making any major decisions.
The deciding voters will literally be people who have little to no knowledge of anything you and I have been talking about for the past five months.
It’s an important lesson to take as we begin to see major developments that are likely to seep into the consciousness of rank-and-file voters, such as the conviction of Donald Trump two weeks ago and Hunter Biden on Tuesday, as well as the first presidential debate in nearly two weeks.
And the 2024 election campaign, which appears to be very stagnant, may turn out to be more unpredictable than we realise.
A recent poll brought this home to me. The Yahoo News/YouGov poll asked a series of basic questions about the current political climate.
Among the questions is, “To the best of your knowledge, what of the following has Donald Trump been charged with?”
Only about half of Americans agreed that Trump should be charged with the remaining three counts: just 55% agreed. He had been charged with removing classified documents and obstructing returns, and just under half agreed that Trump faced both federal and Georgia state charges for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Many people said they were unsure, but 16% to 21% said they thought Trump was do not have These are the things he was charged with. These are the things he was charged with.
These numbers deserve some skepticism. Republicans answered these questions the most incorrectly. Surprisingly, the percentage of those who said Trump has not been charged with trying to overturn the election (34%) was nearly as high as the percentage who said he has been charged (35%).
Part of the reason could reflect a lack of attention or a media diet focused on media that doesn’t pay much attention to these things — the people who know least about the indictment are Fox News viewers and people who don’t watch cable news. Or it could be that voters are expressing a strange outcry over an indictment they see as unjust. If the indictment is invalid and a “witch hunt,” is it really an indictment?
But this isn’t the only evidence that many voters are disengaged at the most basic level with the 2024 campaign, and with politics in general.
- In the Yahoo/YouGov poll, one in five voters said they were unaware of Trump’s Manhattan verdict, that he was found not guilty or that the trial was ongoing, including two in five registered voters under the age of 30.
- A majority of independents said they had heard “little” or “nothing” about President Trump’s classified documents indictment, according to a Marquette University Law School poll.
- A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in May found that just one in five voters knew that Trump had said allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election “allows for the repeal of all rules, regulations and provisions, including those enshrined in the Constitution.”
- Republicans, in particular, often tell pollsters things that are completely wrong about Donald Trump and his legal problems.
- Voters also have seriously wrong ideas about the economy: For example, a majority believe we are in a recession and half believe unemployment is at its highest in the past 50 years (in fact, unemployment has been below 4 percent for the longest period in the past 50 years).
None of this means that the 2024 election will necessarily see big changes if voters start paying more attention.
Many people will remain ignorant of these things until November. And we already know that even if people do start to care about the substance of these issues as they make their voting decisions and start to see the campaign ads about these things, the polarization will negate that effect. A majority of Americans are now aware of Trump’s conviction in Manhattan, but the loss is only a point or two at most.
But we should not ignore the fact that in close races, voters with less information to make decisions may act on a little or a lot more information than they do today.
Another moment you may have missed
Don’t look now, but statewide and congressional primary election season is starting to get a little interesting. There were some big contests on Tuesday, which The Washington Post’s Theodoric Meyer, Lee Ann Caldwell and myself take a look back at.
- Republicans have reason to be increasingly concerned about their reliance on infrequent and unreliable voters after Tuesday’s extremely competitive special election in Ohio’s 6th Congressional District, where Democrats lost by just 10 points in a district that favored Trump by 29 points in a very low-turnout election. (Read more about this here.)
- Reps. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and William Timmons (R-SC) have survived hard-fought primaries, meaning we have yet to see an incumbent lose a primary election nearly halfway through the primary season, which is fairly unusual, but their opponent, Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), may lose next week with the backing of President Trump.
- Mace’s relatively easy 57-30 victory was just the latest message to Republicans that despite all the personal and staff problems (Mace’s, make If you maintain a (good) relationship with Trump, you’ll probably be fine.
Politicians are, after all, people who have chosen a profession that requires them to constantly care about their public image, and it’s rare to see any very human moments.
Moments like this seem to come more often for Biden than any other president, but even for him, the felony conviction of his son Hunter on Tuesday appeared to be a heartbreaking moment. After losing his wife, young daughter and son, the president now watches another son be convicted of a drug addiction.
And as The Washington Post’s Matt Beiser and Yasmin Abu-Taleb report, we shouldn’t underestimate the impact of that sacrifice on Biden personally and what it will mean for the future, including the campaign.
“How Republicans attacked Biden with a misleading video in less than 24 hours” (Washington Post)
“How Biden and Trump Want to Rewrite the Tax Code” (Washington Post)
“What Hunter Biden’s Sentence Means (or Doesn’t Mean) for 2024” (Washington Post)
“Some abortion opponents worry about Trump’s rewriting of the Republican platform” (Washington Post)
“Biden loves to talk big. We’ll cut it down.” (The New York Times)
“The orthodoxy that doomed Democrats’ border policy” (The Atlantic)
