The Democratic Turnout Myth Unravels

[Celerity]

It was long thought that surges in voting would help Democrats. So how does the party explain Glenn Youngkin’s victory?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/us/politics/democrats-turnout-virginia.html



Ever since Barack Obama swept into the White House on the strength of record turnout, it has been an article of faith among Democrats that the more people who vote, the better the party will fare.

When turnout sagged, during the 2010 and the 2014 midterm elections, Republicans won wave elections. In 2016, fewer people voted than in 2012 and Donald J. Trump won the presidency, shocking Democrats and turbocharging a more explicit Republican argument that making voting harder would make it easier for the G.O.P. to win elections.

Then turnout jumped again in the Trump years — in Virginia four years ago, in special elections and in the 2018 midterms. Joseph R. Biden Jr. ousted Mr. Trump in a national election with record-high turnout. Republicans spent the next year, in states they control, fighting to make it harder to vote and promoting lies that the 2020 turnout had been stocked with fraudulent Democratic votes.

How then to explain the election on Tuesday in Virginia, where Glenn Youngkin, now the Republican governor-elect, beat former Gov. Terry McAuliffe in a contest in which at least 25 percent more votes were cast than in any governor’s race in the state’s history? (The number will go up; mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day will be counted as long as they are received by this Friday.)

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