I’m going to assume that all of you know who David Hogg is. “March For Our Lives” came from what he and his friends did following the Margory Stoneman Douglas school slaughter in 2018. There are hundreds of MFOL chapters around the country. And the individual in the picture went to her 106,000,000 Instagram followers over months and roughly doubled the MFOL yield for first-time voters. That’s Billie Eilish.
Their work for Election Day included outreach to all of them.
And without their efforts — MFOL plus Billie Eilish — 2022 would have seen an utter debacle for the Democratic Party. First, let’s have a look at the national voting totals for the House of Representatives for each of the years 2016-2018-2020-2022:
MAJOR PARTY VOTING
2016 |
D-61,765,832 |
R-63,182,073 |
2018 |
D-60,572,245 |
R-50,861,970 |
2020 |
D-77,529,619 |
R-72,760,036 |
2022 |
D-50,790,432 |
R-54,150,415 |
Who’s kidding whom ??? With the Republicans still worshiping at the Donald Trump altar and hundreds of election-deniers running on their tickets, if not out-and-out Christian Fascists, the national Democratic Party failed utterly at getting their voters registered and then getting out their vote.
This failure amounted to losing more than a third of the Democratic Party vote total from 2020.
If you’re into numbers, Democrats lost 34.5% of their vote vs. 2020. Same time the Republicans lost 25.6% of their vote.
That is an enormous difference. Obviously. Please, allow me to see this as an indication that the Democrats’ registration & GOTV efforts are not being run at full efficiency.
And it wasn’t the kids who failed. Their numbers went from 20% midterms participation to 31%.
We can look at the MFOL and Billie Eilish efforts to see what competent outreach achieved in 2022, though neither one had any real money behind it. Eilish spent exactly nothing. They follow her.
Without them, you have to distribute their 1,500,000 new voters over the House races. Democrats lose at least another 2 dozen seats. That’s at least.
We saw the 18 — 29 tranche come in pro-Democrat overall. Brookings has it at a +28 point edge based on exit polls 2022. That’s the only age group we won.
And finally, the Biden campaign and Harris’s people took Eilish seriously in 2020. Both internet ads with Harris and critical television ads to aid GOTV. Harris worked with Eilish this time. Still, this time around, DNC / DSCC / DCCC as much as avoided her. Same as they damn near avoided Hogg / MFOL.
I’m waiting to see DNS / DSCC / DCCC take credit for all these new young Democratic Party voters. Tell us how they made it happen. Decry letting amateurs get their dirty hands on the cake….