One of the most conservative states in the nation had 41% of registered voters with no faith in either Trump or Harris, and another 25% for Harris. That leaves roughly a 1/3rd of Texans actually in support of Trump, and I imagine this trend follows for most states Trump won the popular vote in.
there was a hilariously low voter turnout this year compared to 2020. If you take a look at Texas:
Not to necropost, since I'm a few days late, but the data is interesting to me.
Texas is of course not one of the most conservative states, it's just one of the larger populations that goes Red. But lots of states routinely get won by far higher margins by the GOP, and so are far more conservative. Texas is a lean conservative state.
As to Texas GOP turnout, Trump has actually done quite well. The largest vote gain in decades was George Bush gaining around 700,000 votes between 2000 to 2004. Trump destroyed that by winning Texas by 1.2 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016, and this year Trump gained another 480,000 votes on top of that already high result.
Compare that to Bush getting 4.5 million votes in Texas in 2004, and McCain, Romney, and Trump 2016 all getting right around 4.5 million, with Trump the only one to break 4.6 million. That's about 100,000 votes of GOP growth in Texas over 12 years.
Whereas Trump's 2024 vote is 1.6 million higher than in 2016.
As for Texas having lower turnout than 2020, Texas actually averages pretty low turnout in Presidential elections compared to most states, and 2020 was an unusually high turnout year for Texas. So it's hardly alarming it would go down to normal levels this year.
That said, statewide, the counties that Trump won actually saw an increase in turnout from 2020's already record levels, while Harris' counties had lower turnout than Biden got, which is why total turnout ended up down. So Trump didn't win just because Harris is unpopular and depressed turnout, he also actively gained substantial support.
From what I can see, this is also generally true nationwide; Harris' counties are down in turnout, with suburbs seeing gains from the record 2020 turnout.
Trump has gained roughly 10 million votes since 2016, holding on to his record level gains for an incumbent President in 2020. If we assume that Biden's 81 million spike in voters is not a real permanent increase, then Democrats have seen a largely flat growth nationwide since 2008 or so, while the GOP has gained significantly.
