And because the turnout drop off was smaller in swing states, Gaza may not have been decisive on its own

Not only was it smaller, in many of the swing states Harris actually received more votes than Biden did. Trump’s win comes down to his success in convincing people who supported him to vote, far more than Harris’s own failures. Here are the numbers:

(all numbers in thousands)

Only 3 out of the 7 key states saw a drop in votes for Harris. Which, as the article says, could be attributed to Gaza, but is more likely a combination of factors including Gaza, and even if Harris had promised to put strong measures in place to prevent the genocide, those voters may still not have voted.

Even if October 7 and the resulting genocide had never happened, it’s fair to assume some number of those non-voters still would not have voted, and would have cited a different top reason for not voting. Citing a top reason for not voting is far different than it being the only reason not to vote.

And of those 3 that did see net negatives for Harris, Trump would have won even if Harris’s vote had stayed flat in every one of them.

The argument being made in this post works both ways. Liberals love to blame leftists because they “didn’t turn out to vote”, and in this post we see leftists blaming liberals because they supported genocide so of course some people didn’t vote for them. But the reality is far worse than either of those. The American people, in the places that it mattered, voted for Trump. That’s a difficult thing to reckon with, but both liberals and leftists need to reckon with it if they hope to avoid the country spiralling into full-on fascism. The blame game and scapegoating among those who didn’t vote for Trump might feel satisfying, but it’s not actually constructive.