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The CES is a high-quality survey with a sample-size large enough (60,000 respondents) to permit fine-grained comparisons between subgroups in the US adult population. With it, we’re able to get a clearer picture of who voted and how they felt about the issues.

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while “energize the base” advocates are right that more Democrats stayed home than Republicans, they assume that these nonvoters abstained because Democrats didn’t run a sufficiently progressive campaign. To get a sense of whether Democrats who sat out the 2024 presidential election might have been moved to participate if the party had offered a more left-wing policy agenda, we can compare the policy preferences and demographics of voting and nonvoting self-identified Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.

Contrary to what left-wing optimists had hoped, Democratic nonvoters in 2024 appear to have been less progressive than Democrats who voted. For instance, Democratic nonvoters were 14 points less likely to support banning assault rifles, 20 points less likely to support sending aid to Gaza, 17 points less likely to report believing that slavery and discrimination make it hard for Black Americans, 17 points more likely to support building a border wall with Mexico, 20 points more likely to support the expansion of fossil fuel production, and, sadly for economic populists, 16 points less likely to support corporate tax hikes (though this group still favored corporate tax hikes by a three to one margin). Overall, nonvoting Democrats were 18 points less likely to self-identify as “liberal” or “very liberal.” Here is a point for the centrists.

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