Democrats stayed home

In H'burg alone, almost 1,700 fewer for Harris versus Biden

17,993 people voted in Harrisonburg in 2016.

17,086 voted in 2020.

15,051 voted in 2024.

Another 2,351 voted provisionally on Election Day, meaning they were allowed to register and vote but their registration must be recorded and confirmed before their vote is counted. If they are all accepted, that could bring the total to 17,402. For comparison purposes, those 2,351 would have been turned away in 2020 because they were not registered.

The 2,351 are the voters who didn’t know they needed to register, or didn’t know if they were. It will be interesting to see the split among low-information voters or, less charitably, whose voters are more low-information. (There is also charity in calling them low-information.)

To complete the comparison, 64.5 percent voted for the Democratic nominee for president in 2020, and 62.4 voted for the Democratic nominee this year. Biden got 11,022 four years ago, and Harris got 9,327 this year. That’s 1,695 fewer votes for Harris. (Trump got 5,591 last time, 5,244 this time.) Roughly, crudely, before the provisionals are counted, 15 percent fewer Democratic votes turned out. Similar numbers prevailed statewide, with 193,288 fewer for the Democrat, 28,141 more for Trump, and turnout, excluding third parties, down 165,147.

With the nation polarized, persuading voters was not an issue. It was purely a turnout election. Democrats didn’t.