Sounds like historically low turnouts. It's entirely possible that the Democrats' behavior the last four years was so demoralizing and dispiriting that a couple million of their voters didn't bother.

Turns out the 'moderate republican White women upset over abortion' that Harris kept casing were at the end of the day.......still White Women gasp

The only reason Brandon ever won was because of covid. If 2020 had been a "normal" year, this would have been how 2020's electoral map looked.

Because yeah, as others have said, the Dems just have nothing to offer. It's the same as 2016 - Trump does represent an alternative, it just happens to be barbarism.

Democrats had nothing to offer beyond not being Donald Trump. They copied his policies, celebrated endorsements from hardcore republicans, and bragged about wanting to put republicans in positions of power in Harris' cabinet. Every vote for Harris was a vote for Trump. Trump has been the center of the democratic party since he won the 2016 primary. The two cornerstones of democrats strategy have been that they are not the person Donald Trump and that any criticism of the democratic party is Russian propaganda. It works better than it should because most Americans have the memory and political literacy (and sometimes even the literal literacy) of a goldfish, but it doesn't work well enough to win elections unless their opponents do an even worse job campaigning.

As a non-american I don't quite get it. People must think their lives will materially improve under the republicans, but why?

the american people are unintellectual. we laugh at trump's conception of tariffs but his silly economic rhetoric and proposed policies sound good and correct to a lot of fools.

The ‘economy’ is a big thing. That doesn’t mean GDP in this case, but that there is inflation and no rise in wages that follows. When the message from the incumbent side is that things are great actually and you’re wrong if you don’t think so the viability of the policies from the other side stops mattering as much. The big problem is that history didn’t end and neoliberal policy is failing right left and centre all over the world.

Also that Kamala is a historically shit candidate, there is a reason she immediately ate shit in the 2020 primaries.

Somewhere between forty and seventy percent of American adults do not demonstrate comprehensive English literacy meaning they can technically read and write but the ability to recall, analyze, reference, or think critically about text is at or below the level we expect twelve year olds to read at. This is not a matter of them being able to read words on a page, it's a matter of them being able to think. America makes a lot more sense when you realize this.

Final tallies aren't in but it seems like significantly over half the population also did not participate in this election.

NBC exit polls

dems look like a party of over-educated weirdos who failed to message on the economy -- the Important Thing. losing 2nd and 3rd income quartiles, only 10 point margin for union families, trounced with first time voters and those who think the economy is Not So Good or Poor, and those who are Dissatisfied and Angry. lost latino men and those without any college. Few voted chiefly on foreign policy and those who did swung for Republicans (no one gives a fuck about Gaza, obviously). And abortion wasn't salient-- nearly half of those who though abortion should be legal in nearly all cases still voted GOP.

More upshots: Harris may have reduced the number of "double haters" but the remaining haters swung clearly to Trump. Vance salvaged his favorable/unfavorables and appears at par w/Walz. Those who decided late (within the last week) broke clearly to Trump (RIP squirrel).

Same as it always was, the answer is material interests

This is just what happens in a declining country with an enforced two party system: people blame the decline on the incumbent party and vote for the other party in a desperate attempt to right the ship. But the decline continues and people blame the decline on the new incumbent party and vote for the old incumbent party back in a desperate attempt to right the ship.

At the end of the day, Harris couldn't distance herself from the Biden administration by virtue of being part of it. Her not invoking the 25th amendment meant that she either cosigns to everything the Biden administration has done, including genocide in Palestine, or lacks the leadership qualities to make decisive decisions. Factor in her being a terrible candidate in general and the (truthful) perception that she didn't earn her spot as the presidential candidate (ie she lost the only primary she participated in and was only handpicked at the last minute) and it shouldn't be that surprising that she got BTFO.

I honestly think any Democratic candidate that isn't working directly for the Biden administration like Gruesome Newsome would beat Trump because Trump is also a known quality and a shadow of his former 2016 self, but it goes back to what I said in the first paragraph. The US is going to be worse off in 2028 than in 2024, people will blame it on the GOP, and whoever is the Democratic candidate would BTFO their Republican rival. The smarter political operatives like Gruesome Newsome understand this and are setting themselves up to run in 2028. He's probably going to push some ghoulish "liquidate the homeless" initiative in California to show how he's "tough on crime." I guess this also shows Harris's poor political instincts. In a way, the DNC pretty much set her up for failure whether they realized it or not.