Twenty-nine percent of non-voters who supported Biden in 2020 said U.S. support for the genocide was the top reason they sat the 2024 election, according to a survey by YouGov.
It’s doubtable this poll has uncovered something that countless other post-election polls have missed.
It’s more likely that the pollster is biased. This is the first sentence of About section of the pollster’s website: “Palestinians, like all people, are entitled to live in freedom and with their human rights respected. Yet, for too long, the US government has funded and enabled Israel’s denial of Palestinian human rights.”
But other polls have found similar results?
I dug into the survey and it appears they intentionally skewed the results by the word choice and order of the questions.
For example: “5. Do you [favor or oppose] the Biden administration approving taxpayer-funded weapons and other military support to Israel, even if the U.S. government has no control over whether the Israeli military uses those weapons on innocent civilians in Gaza, or are you undecided?”
The wording in that question will predispose a respondent to view the Biden administration negatively, even if that wasn’t the main reason that a respondent chose not to vote.
Worse, they asked that question before they asked about sitting out the election, predisposing the respondent to view that topic as more significant in their decision to sit out the election.
If the purpose of a poll was to figure out the reason for not voting, this is not a scientific way to do it. It predictably would skew results as it appears to have done.
I need to read the article, but I’m going in skeptically. I think progressives - especially younger, more idealistic ones - are ignorant of just how much money and influence AIPAC wields.
Maybe she could have gotten those 29% (however many actual votes that amounts to), but it AIPAC would have turned actively hostile against her, my guess is those votes would have been overshadowed by the loss of pro-Israel votes she did get.
I think centrists - especially older more cynical ones who are less idealistic and more transactional in their politics in a selfish way are ignorant of how being too afraid to fight, or to have solidarity, or to draw red lines in the sand about GENOCIDE is the reason fascists took power.
Young, idealistic progressives who are willing to actually fight to defend what they love are our only hope and if you are an older jaded centrist, keep your mouth shut and listen, you have a lot to unlearn and not much time left to do it before the violence y’all helped normalize consumes us all.
