Exit polls (for what they're worth) don't really show an ideological connection to reduced voting numbers for Democrats. They suggest that the reduced turnout was fairly broad based.
Obviously self-described labels are far from perfect (i.e. many strongly conservative people consider themselves "moderates"). But based on the numbers, as a percentage of her total votes, Harris received basically identical support from self-described liberals and moderates as what Biden got. The difference was, Biden did much better among self-described conservatives, which pushed his total vote share 2 points higher.
You can probably draw a few things from that:
1) It wasn't necessarily 10-15 million (or whatever) Biden voters staying home and Trump just getting the same voters. More likely, a fair number of 2020 Trump voters stayed home too, but the more conservative Biden supporters shifted towards Trump.
2) Harris' attempt to court Republicans look even dumber and less effective. Without being nearly as explicit and pandering, Obama, Clinton, and Biden got about 15-16% of self-described conservatives; Harris only managed 9%.
3) Given the above 2 points, unfortunately the lesson they'll probably take (and it might even be the right one) is that they need to capture more self-described conservatives.
|