11.2 million. That’s the number of American citizens who rank climate change as their top issue but didn’t vote in the 2024 election, according to research by the Environmental Voter Project. For context, Donald Trump won the presidency in 2024 by less than 2.3 million votes. For a little over a decade, EVP has been [...]Read More... from If So Many Americans Care About Climate, Why Don’t They Vote Like It?
I know for a lot of people it’s A. Didn’t feel like their vote mattered, B. None of the candidates matched their desires, I.e. non of the above earned their vote, whether by not lining up on issues, or being perceived to only give stated values lip service, C. Voter suppression, whether that be inability to go vote because work/schedule, voter roll purges, voter eligibility being repressed due to cost of documents, no transportation access to polling place, etc, D. Being too burnt out to even paying attention to politics/voting; or some combination of the above.
I’m thankfully not from anywhere near that place, but I always assumed a lot of people there feel that their vote won’t improve their lives… so it remains a duopoly that rarely ever improves their lives.
I think a more interesting question would be, regardless of someone’s priorities, why they don’t vote.
I know for a lot of people it’s A. Didn’t feel like their vote mattered, B. None of the candidates matched their desires, I.e. non of the above earned their vote, whether by not lining up on issues, or being perceived to only give stated values lip service, C. Voter suppression, whether that be inability to go vote because work/schedule, voter roll purges, voter eligibility being repressed due to cost of documents, no transportation access to polling place, etc, D. Being too burnt out to even paying attention to politics/voting; or some combination of the above.
Report 1: https://www.uniteamerica.org/articles/report-most-americans-votes-dont-matter-in-deciding-elections
Report 2: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy
The second one is the real whale and is from 2014, so extrapolate how much worse it is now.
Thanks for these great links. Some thought provoking insights.
I’m thankfully not from anywhere near that place, but I always assumed a lot of people there feel that their vote won’t improve their lives… so it remains a duopoly that rarely ever improves their lives.