this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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I am European, so, an outsider perspective, but....
I'd love to know actual numbers, because I get the feeling "commies who voted third party" are too small a group to swing elections. Just a quick look at the numbers on Wikipedia give 0.11% for the Socialism and Liberation candidate. Jill Stein got more, as did RFK even after he had withdrawn already, but I doubt they were the popular choice of the communists arguing here on Lemmy during the election campaign. (Where I, personally, argued for voting for first Biden, then Harris, because I did not see the left in the US as organised enough to react to the kind of oppression Trump would bring early, whereas I'd wager a Democrat would not have escalated like this. Just to root my own bias for context.)
I am not saying it is impossible that they could have swung a very close state, but I admit, I do think it is very improbable.
So, this feels very much like impotent rage to me, directed at the annoying but ultimately equally impotent agitprop people on here. They are loud on here, but do you really think they were that influential during the election?
i think they were given a big megaphone on platforms like TikTok or X by bad state actors like China, Russia, or Republican billionaires, and were used to sway a larger body that would have ultimately voted for Democrats to simply stay home and not vote because they were repeatedly pushed the idea that Democrats were "just as bad".
Hmm, maybe, it is always hard to prove an effect like that. Best one could do is exit polling with specific questions of what influenced the decision, and other polls in general. I was interested what polling was available there, most I found was just non-voters as a larger group, which seems to be predominately non-politically engaged and mostly centrist. One article I have found seems to indicate the non-voting Democrats don't really fit the narrative of being swayed by radical left influencers and agitprop either.
I am also unsure how visible those kind of influencers were on mainstream social media, as I am not active there at all. I always had the feeling they were mostly visible in their own bubbles and by people who got angry at them, thus also getting them served by the algorithms. Their effect on motivating people to stay home, I'd be genuinely interested in seeing in polling numbers, but I sadly could not find any polls with questions like "who influenced your decision to not vote".
In general, psychology-wise, I think motivating people to stay home that would have voted otherwise is I believe a much lower effect, than the failure in motivating people to get up and vote, who would have stayed home otherwise. Which was not the responsibility of those commie influencers the way I estimate it. However - I admit there may have been an effect: By inducing fatigue in activists that had to argue with them, taking away time and resources for trying to reach and motivate properly undecided non-voters.
We kind of take it for granted that right wing people are hugely influenced by bad faith "news" channels and right wing ~~jackasses~~ influencers.
Why couldn't people be moved to not vote along the same way? Especially by people claiming they're normal people and totally not people with ulterior motives?