Do you not think the enthusiasm for Trump was bigger than the enthusiasm for Biden though?
Sure. But enthusiasm doesn't equal votes. Trump significantly increased his turnout between '16 and '20, but a lot of it just went into states he'd already won four years earlier or states he was hopelessly behind on. Florida went from swing-state to landslide. He added over a million votes in Texas. He added an extra 300k in Ohio. He added 1.5M votes in California and 400k more votes in NY.
He also lost the two critical historically hard-red states of Arizona and Georgia (not something you can really blame the Democrats for) and despite adding over 400k in Pennsylvania it still slipped through his fingers by about the same margin he won it against Hillary.
I think the enthusiasm around Trump was double-edged. He provoked historic turnout by raw numbers nationally. And this backfired in a bunch of states that had historically kept control by tamping that turnout down.
In the same way Obama '08 gave Dems a landslide victory by raising turnout across the board (and lost it all again in '10 with a historic turnout sag), Trump fucked the GOP by causing entirely too much enthusiasm.
Sure. But enthusiasm doesn't equal votes. Trump significantly increased his turnout between '16 and '20, but a lot of it just went into states he'd already won four years earlier or states he was hopelessly behind on. Florida went from swing-state to landslide. He added over a million votes in Texas. He added an extra 300k in Ohio. He added 1.5M votes in California and 400k more votes in NY.
He also lost the two critical historically hard-red states of Arizona and Georgia (not something you can really blame the Democrats for) and despite adding over 400k in Pennsylvania it still slipped through his fingers by about the same margin he won it against Hillary.
I think the enthusiasm around Trump was double-edged. He provoked historic turnout by raw numbers nationally. And this backfired in a bunch of states that had historically kept control by tamping that turnout down.
In the same way Obama '08 gave Dems a landslide victory by raising turnout across the board (and lost it all again in '10 with a historic turnout sag), Trump fucked the GOP by causing entirely too much enthusiasm.