There are two ways of legally winning elections. You can mobilize your current voting base and get them to the polls, or you can persuade voters who are not in your current voting base to go to the polls and vote for your candidate. It is no secret that Democrats have come to favor election strategies based on voter mobilization rather than persuasion over the last 10 years.
Democrats have enough trouble with Joe Biden’s dismal poll numbers and signs of a worsening economy. But being committed to a base mobilization strategy when the base is unstable or shrinking could spell serious trouble for Democrats in November. The factor that administers the coup de grace to their 2024 election plans could well be the fracturing of the college-age youth vote on the rocks of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
An increasingly restless college-age youth cohort exposes the Achilles heel of the Democrats’ mighty “nonpartisan” voter registration and mail-in ballot-harvesting cartels. These institutions are highly effective in mobilizing a fixed or growing voter base, but such practices become increasingly ineffective as the base becomes more unstable. In the meantime, Democrats have neglected the persuasion strategies needed to rebuild their base.
How Democrats Mobilize Their Base
The guiding lights of the Democrats’ voter mobilization strategies over the last decade have been scholars such as Cass Sunstein, Sasha Issenberg, and a growing army of young data scientists employed by think tanks and philanthropic institutions that provide intellectual and practical guidance to Democrats in managing elections.
