The 2024 Electorate

 Paul Campos notes - via Jon Chait - that Lindsey Graham has argued that you shouldn't prosecute Trump because reasons, but he should be held accountable via democratic processes...and Graham has endorsed Trump for president. Graham is therefore a typical Republican who coddles Trump will hoping some mysterious process will rid him of this boorish idiot.

At the end, Campos asserts that 45% of the electorate doesn't care about Trump's sedition or other myriad crimes. I wonder.

It's true that Trump won 46.8% of the vote in 2020, despite being the incumbent. That was actually a tick upwards from winning 46.1% in 2016 as a challenger. So, I totally get where Campos is coming from. The key word is "electorate" not "population". Who will actually go to the polls in 2024 and what will they then do?

There are several reasons why I think Trump's percentage falls off a bit. In 2020, Trump won voters 50-64 by 6%. He won voters 65 and over by 4%. Put generationally, he won the Silent Generation by 16% and Boomers by 3%. Biden won Gen X by 3%, Millennials by 19% and Gen Z by 20%. Another demographic is important. In 2016, Trump won the suburbs by a scant 2%; in 2020, Biden won the suburbs by 11%. 

So who's going to vote. First of all, we have every election since Dobbs showing hidden or surprising strength for Democrats/Pro Choice measures. Hell, if New York Democrats weren't so incompetent, Biden might have had four years of working majorities in both houses of Congress. Dobbs absolutely matters, and so does 1/6. The non-stop prosecutions of Trump's criminality will help remind people that this poltroon tried to overthrow the election with force and fraud. I have to think there are a non-trivial number of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who will struggle to support him. 

The other issue is grimly actuarial. Trump voters are older; the pandemic still killed a ton of people - mostly older Republicans - after November 2020. Even without Covid, more Trump voters are going to have died since the last election. How many elders will drag themselves to the polls to vote for a guy who's under multiple indictments and perhaps has already been convicted?

Yes, the Trumpenproletariat will crawl over broken glass to vote for their Cheeto Jesus. I would not, like Campos, peg that number at 45%. I think Cult 45 is around 30% of the voting population. The other 15% are simply hardcore Republicans who would rather die than vote for Joe Biden. However, there are going to be fewer of each category. What's more, Gen Z has actually showed up to vote recently. If that continues because of Dobbs and 1/6, then I think Trump hovers more in the low-40s.

Yes, that's optimistic. I know what the polling says, but I think we are right to be skeptical of all polling at this point. Again, ideally he's convicted in the first trial and shit snowballs from there.