The big story of this election that I see very little discussion about, is the fact that Trump won 10 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016.
Bush 2004 got 12 million votes than in 2000. It's a high turnout election
There's a hypothesis I want to explore, which is, to what extent did COVID galvanize Trump voters because Trump successfully framed COVID as an attempt by elites in the scientific and public heath establishment to intrude into the lives of "ordinary Americans," causing undue economic harm? If you're outside the Trump bubble, this looks insane, but the best I can tell from talking with rural folk, is that Trump actually did a masterful job of controlling the discourse.
It's possible that if 2020 were an ordinary year, the blue tsunami would still have happened, but there wouldn't have been a red tsunami to cancel it out.
