State of Apathy 2024: Texas – Electoral results if abstaining from voting counted as a vote for “Nobody” [OC]

Posted by delugetheory

3 comments
  1. Preemptive defense of my use of the word “apathy” in the title: I humbly beg the pardon of anyone who takes offense at my use of the word apathy to describe the phenomenon of bipartisan candidate unpopularity as it is not my intention to shame conscientious objectors. I am using the word not in the corrupted sense of “lazy” but in the original sense of “indifferent”. Apathy comes from the Greek, *a pathos*, meaning literally “not feeling it”. To deliberately abstain from voting due to indifference toward the outcome meets the classical definition of *apathy*.

    Methodology: Counties won by “Nobody” do not necessarily represent counties in which a majority of eligible voters abstained, but rather those counties in which no single candidate earned more votes than total abstentions. In total, out of 19.2-million eligible voters in Texas in 2024, 33% voted for Donald Trump, 25% voted for Kamala Harris, and 41% abstained.

    Sources: Number of total eligible voters derived from [US Census Bureau Citizen Voting Age Population (CVAP) data](https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/about/voting-rights/cvap.html) (2018-2022 5-Year American Community Survey). Elections results from [Texas Secretary of State](https://results.texas-election.com/county) (November 6, 99.98% of polling locations reporting).

    Tools: [QGIS](https://www.qgis.org/), [GIMP](https://www.gimp.org/), [LibreOffice](https://www.qgis.org/).

    (edit: typo)

  2. I mean you need to compare this to historical elections. This one is particularly bad. But every election has a huge lack of participation if you measure by those who could but don’t vote

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