Keywords

voter turnout; abstention; alientation; indifference; voter defection

Abstract

In the 2024 U.S. Presidential election, Donald Trump slightly increased his vote total compared to 2020 while the Democratic ticket led by Kamala Harris received several million fewer votes than Joe Biden had received four years earlier. Since third-party voting remained relatively flat, most of the Democratic decrease seems to be explained by voters who previously supported Biden but abstained from voting in the presidential race in 2024, though some appear to have switched support to Trump. This paper studies why some who voted for Biden in 2020 chose not to support the Democratic nominee four years later. Drawing on spatial voting theory and the alienation–indifference framework developed by Adams, Dow, and Merrill, this study evaluates whether loss of support among prior Democratic voters is better explained by alienation from the candidates or indifference between them. The analysis uses data from the 2024 American National Election Study and restricts the sample to verified respondents who reported voting for Biden in 2020. Multinomial logistic regression models are used to estimate the effects of political attitudes, candidate evaluations, identity-based attitudes, and demographic characteristics on three possible outcomes in the 2024 election: voting for Harris, voting for Trump, or abstaining from the presidential vote. The results show that partisan identification and favorable evaluations of Harris strongly predict continued Democratic support, as expected, while negative candidate evaluations increase the likelihood of both abstention and vote switching. Negative retrospective economic evaluations are associated with abstention, while racial resentment and sexist attitudes are more strongly associated with switching to Trump. These findings suggest that Democratic vote loss in 2024 reflects both reduced candidate utility and a mix of indifference and alienation leading to defection and disengagement among prior Democratic voters.

Completion Date

2026

Semester

Spring

Committee Chair

Knuckey, Jonathan

Degree

Master of Arts (M.A.)

College

College of Sciences

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

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