What a circus’: eligible US voters on why they didn’t vote in the 2024 presidential election
Nearly 90 million Americans didn’t vote – which is more than the number of people who voted for Trump or Harris
The 2024 US presidential election had been widely characterized as one of the most consequential political contests in recent US history. Although turnout was high for a presidential election – almost matching the levels of 2020 – it is estimated that close to 90 million Americans, roughly 36% of the eligible voting age population, did not vote. This number is greater than the number of people who voted for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.
More than a month on from polling day, eligible US voters from across the country as well as other parts of the world got in touch with the Guardian to share why they did not vote.
Scores of people said they had not turned out as they felt their vote would not matter because of the electoral college system, since they lived in a safely blue or red state. This included a number of people who nonetheless had voted in the 2020 and 2016 elections.
While various previous Democratic voters said they had abstained this time due to the Harris campaign’s stance on Israel or for other policy reasons, a number of people in this camp said they would have voted for the vice-president had they lived in a swing state.
“I’m not in a swing state, and because of the electoral college my vote doesn’t count. I could have voted 500,000 times and it would not have changed the outcome,” said one such voter, a 60-year-old software developer with Latino heritage from Boston.
Having voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, he voted in 2020 but left the presidential slot blank “as a Quixotic protest against the electoral college and my preference for Bernie Sanders”, he said.
He said he felt “heartbroken” over Joe Biden and Harris’s stance on Gaza. “If I were in a swing state I would always vote for Dems, though,” he added, echoing several others.
A 40-year-old carpenter from Idaho who voted in the previous two elections because he then lived in the swing state of Arizona – giving his vote to Clinton and Biden – also said he did not vote this time because he felt his vote did not matter due to the electoral college system.
“I didn’t find Harris compelling, just more of the same. Politicians from both parties seem unwilling to make the kind of fundamental economic and political changes that would make a meaningful difference for all people, namely a move towards a more democratic socialist system. That being said if we didn’t have the electoral college I probably would have voted for Harris,” he said.
A large number of people said they abstained because no candidate represented working- or middle-class interests and people such as themselves, including several people who voted in the previous two elections but did not vote this time.
Some people from swing states said they did not vote because both parties were too similar and did not address concerns of the common voter, among them John, a 29-year-old financial professional from Pennsylvania who is a registered independent, but voted for Clinton and Biden in the previous two elections.
“What is the point [of voting]?,” he asked. “Aside from a handful of weaponized issues, the parties are nearly identical. They both hate the poor and serve only their donors.”
A number of former Trump and Biden voters said they had not voted in this election as they disliked both candidates, among them Jared Wagner, a 34-year-old from Indiana who works in the trucking industry and said he had voted for Trump in 2016 but had abstained in both the 2020 and 2024 election.
“I refuse to put my name on either candidate when I know neither of them are truly the best we have to offer. We need a major overhaul to the two-party system,” he said.
“As a man with young children I worry about what kind of country they will grow up in. It terrifies me; we deserve better.”
John, a 58-year-old from West Virginia, said he had voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, but had decided that not voting this November “felt most authentic and appropriate”.
“I wasn’t apathetic about this election, I followed it closely,” he said. “But most of the candidates and issues left me cold and disinterested and seemed to be simply perpetuating the existing system, especially the status quo of authority and law and order, or rampant human development on the land.
“On the presidential level, I was shocked and disgusted that the Harris campaign chose to completely ignore discussing climate change. Fundamentally, this election seemed to have very little to do with my interests and concerns.”
Anne, a 65-year-old retired white woman from California, was among various people who said they had voted but not for any presidential candidate.
She said she had always previously voted for the Democratic candidate, but could not bring herself to do so this time.
“I did vote for all other down-ballot candidates and initiatives,” she said. “I would have voted for Harris had my vote made a difference, but I could not vote for a president who will continue the complete destruction of Gaza and annexation of the West Bank.”
Various people said they did not vote for a presidential candidate in the 2024 election because they had only wanted to cast a positive vote for a candidate rather than merely an opposition one, and that neither candidate had offered a compelling vision for change.
Among them was a 62-year-old professional working in process planning from Texas, who said he had voted for the Republican presidential candidate at every election between 1984 and 2016.
“In 2020 I voted Libertarian as a protest vote,” he said. “This year I was so turned off by Trump’s low character, economic ignorance, disregard of our national debt, hostility to Ukraine and so on that I was trying to convince myself to vote for Harris. But her economic policy was just a grab bag of voter payoffs and she doesn’t care about the debt either.
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