Well, first of all, you've moved the goalposts quite a bit. 14 million down to 7 million cuts the supposed problem in half. I don't think it's particularly com

Well, first of all, you've moved the goalposts quite a bit. 14 million down to 7 million cuts the supposed problem in half. I don't think it's particularly complex, most people vote based on the tangible issues they're experiencing. It shouldn't be surprising that they voted against the incumbents each time. In 2020 they didn't like Trump's handling of COVID so they voted against him. In 2024 they didn't like Biden's handling of inflation so they voted against his VP. Just as some people were motivated to vote for those reasons (among others), many people lost their motivation to vote at all. Regarding the difference between 2012 Obama and 2020 Biden, Trump also received more votes in 2020 than Obama did -- in fact, he surpassed Obama's vote total in 2024 as well. Trump in 2020 and 2024 even surpassed Obama's vote totals from 2008, even though Obama received 3.5 million more votes in 2008 than in 2012. Really, it's pretty simple, there were 16 million more people in the US in 2020 than 2012. Of course the raw vote numbers went up. The vote totals aren't a strong point. In 2020 there were 152,320,193 votes cast between the two main candidates; in 2024 there were 155,508,985 votes cast. That is, more people voted in 2024 than in 2020, so claiming that 2020 was some statistical outlier with a bunch of extra votes doesn't really make sense. This all feels like motivated reasoning.