Data on who didn’t vote for the Dems is finally coming in and it’s clear that they have a problem. Can Hasan Piker be the solution? This episode was produced by Amanda Lewellyn and Travis Larchuk, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members Hasan Piker at a 2018 event in Washington, DC. Photo by Kris Connor/Getty Images for The Young Turks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why is the 2024 election still relevant?
Today Explained here with Eric Levitz, senior correspondent at Vox.com to talk about the 2024 election. That can't be right. Eric, I thought we were done with that. I feel like I'm Pacino in three.
Just when I thought I was out.
Why are we talking about the 2024 election again?
The reason why we're still looking back is that it takes a while after an election to get all of the most high quality data on what exactly happened. So the full picture is starting to just come into view now.
And you wrote a piece about the full picture for Vox recently, and it did bonkers business on the Internet. What did it say? What struck a chord?
Yeah, so this was my interview with David Shore of Blue Rose Research. He's one of the biggest sort of democratic data gurus in the party. And basically, the big picture headline takeaways are... Coming up on Today Explained.
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Chapter 2: What key trends are emerging from the 2024 election data?
Chapter 3: How did young voters shift in the 2024 election?
I think that what is most striking, perhaps, in his data is the movements among younger voters for the entire time that i've been covering politics there was a basic narrative where the republican party was essentially facing a ticking time bomb where they were going to have to fundamentally make more peace with social liberalism and with the welfare state
because the rising generations in the United States, millennials and Zoomers, just weren't buying what they were selling. And yeah, they can cobble together these electoral college majorities for a little while, but this is just a matter of time before we get to the progressive majority.
Between December 2015 and March 2017, among Republicans aged 18 to 29, 23% left the party.
This is an existential crisis for the Republican Party and we have to have a brutal discussion about it. We alienate young voters because of gay marriage. We have a policy problem. We alienate Latinos, the fastest-growing voter group in the country. There is a demographic time bomb.
What happened in 2024 completely upends that sense of demographic destiny. Voters under 30 were narrowly pro-Trump, even after going for Biden by huge margins in 2020. Every demographic group under the age of 25 is more Republican than the millennial generation was.
The youth vote traditionally goes to the Democrats. Not so much in this one.
And while Harris underperformed with voters under 30, Trump gained compared to 2020. The biggest driver for Gen Z? The economy.
Young people have gone from being the most progressive generation since the baby boomers to becoming potentially the most conservative.
What did we learn about why Youngs went for Trump?
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Chapter 4: What explains the conservative shift among young males?
There's kind of this folk theory of politics, which I think actually has some truth to it, that, like, every election has its own dominant medium. And, you know, 1960 was the TV election.
Good evening. The television and radio stations of the United States and their affiliated stations are proud to provide facilities for 2016 was the Twitter election.
Times listed all the people in the places and things that Donald Trump has insulted. I mean, just on Twitter. This is 282 people since the start of this campaign.
So there was kind of this Monday morning quarterback consensus that 2024 was the livestream election or the long-form podcast election. And there was kind of this easy narrative, which was, if only there were a Rogan of the left, the Democrats would have pulled it out. And so I sort of wanted to examine how true that was.
And as we've covered on this show before, Trump has spent a lot of time in 2024 going... on podcasts that, you know, most people in America have never heard of. Totally. But were probably helpful to his campaign.
Definitely. I mean, especially because these were pretty easy interviews, right? I mean, he wasn't really being grilled.
So you're way up with cocaine more than anything else you can think of. Cocaine will turn you into a damn owl, homie. I have two segments I want to do with you. The first one is use one word that comes to mind to describe that person. Okay? It's a fun game. Let's start. All right, who is the first picture? And we got the Milk Boys. One word. Great.
What they did for those audiences is just expose them to a kind of humanized version of Trump. You've heard about the supervillain, you know, glowering from the Fulton County Jail or whatever. Well, here's the version of Trump that just seems like kind of a chill, approachable dude. And, you know, maybe he's not as bad as all that.
Alabama. And we like the Beach Boys. We always like the Beach Boys. We do like the Beach Boys. Who doesn't like the Beach Boys?
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Chapter 5: How do social factors influence young voters' political views?
Yeah. So, Hasan Piker is really the only major prominent leftist on Twitch, at least the only one who talks about politics all day.
What's going on, everybody? I hope everyone's having a fantastic evening, afternoon, pre-noon, no matter where you are in the world. I'm Assam Piker, and this is Dawson on Breakfast.
So a lot of the sort of, you know, speculation about could there be a Rogan of the left, you know, a lot of that was focused on him. He's, have to just say it outright, very, very handsome, tall, drink of water. He's, you know, that's a big part of the brand. Can I say something? I'm feeling objectified.
oh yeah um he does sort of fitness influencer stuff he's always going to the gym and you know sending around you know thirst trap photos this guy this week has been a mess.
You beat it. Don't act like you don't beat it.
This week. Oh, I'm asking for it. What was I wearing?
He, you know, plays video games. He does sort of, you know, traditionally guy coded stuff. But then he also like will like wear a pearl necklace and nail polish and, you know, hang out with his gay friends. So he's doing his own thing. But really, when he sits down to start streaming, he's basically talking about politics from a very sort of progressive socialist perspective all day long.
Universal basic income in the way that I advocate for is a drastic wealth redistribution program. I think that universal basic income.
He has four monitors, like a bank of monitors, like he's like a day trader or something. One is just for comments. One is just for his discord. One is his main screen. And when he's locked in, he's just locked in. Like he, you know, goes to the bathroom for 60 seconds and comes back and keeps going. He's like in a flow state for eight to 10 hours a day.
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Chapter 6: What can Democrats do to reach young voters?
The morality of Assad is not complex. Assad is a brutal tyrant and also, you know, a dog statesman in general. Can't speak for his and his audience.
He had like 35,000 people live in his audience. That's like better than a lot of cable networks, especially for, you know, the coveted youth demographic. And then I come back the next day and that happens to be the day that they caught Luigi Mangione. So that was a banger of a stream.
Chapter 7: What is the significance of the 'Rogan of the left' concept?
Normally, as you guys know, this is unlimited italiophobia in the broadcast. This is the first day where there will be no italiophobia on this broadcast. We will ban you.
Then I came back the next day and his guests were Lena Kahn, the FTC chair, followed by Ta-Nehisi Coates, the famous writer, followed by Stavros Halkias, the famous comedian. Back to back to back. This is like Gen Z Tonight Show kind of thing.
Right. And like Lena Kahn, Ta-Nehisi Coates, you'd expect them on like the Ezra Klein show. Mm-hmm. But maybe saying favorable things about Luigi Mangione is where Hasan Piker sort of, you know, strikes a different chord.
Well, and this is the line he's constantly walking in politics of all kinds, right? He's saying Trump is a monster. You can't vote for him. But he's not then saying, here's why Kamala Harris is so great and you really should vote for her. He's basically saying she's the lesser of two evils, but she's really terrible on Gaza. She's really terrible on this other stuff.
Bro, she's 60. I don't know any 60-year-old American who doesn't prefer Israel to the scary Muslims. Sometimes it's that simple.
I mean, I was at the DNC in Chicago, and Hasan Piker was this sort of, you know, celebrated, invited guest. The DNC gave him this really prime real estate, and then he said a few too many really edgy things about Gaza. They're kicking us out.
Unlucky. I don't know why. You think it's because you said something today that they didn't like? I did compare DNC to Israel. That might have been the final blow because we got the We got the call like shortly after I tweeted that.
So he's constantly doing this dance, right? Trying to be a critical ally, but not too allied. Trying to be edgy on Twitch without getting kicked off Twitch. He was recently suspended for 24 hours because he talked about maybe killing Rick Scott, a senator. So it's this constant tightrope act, which, I mean, honestly makes it more exciting to watch.
And the audience responds to this because it strikes them as authentic.
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