AOC Asked Voters Why They Voted for Her & Trump. The Answers Are… Interesting.

“Wanted change so I went with trump and blue for the rest of the ballot to put some brakes,” one Instagram user wrote in response to AOC’s callout.

By Kylie Cheung  |  November 11, 2024 | 12:06pm
Photo: Shutterstock Politics
AOC Asked Voters Why They Voted for Her & Trump. The Answers Are… Interesting.

A week after Donald Trump won the presidential election, top Democrats are in the middle of some collective soul-searching. For some, that means inexplicably and cruelly throwing trans kids and immigrants under the bus, while others condemn their party’s choice to *checks notes* not embrace Joe Rogan. 

Meanwhile, over the weekend, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) simply turned to her constituents about the matter. In 2020, Ocasio-Cortez’s district went 77% for Joe Biden with just 22% for Trump. In 2024, Harris received just 65% of the vote while Trump received 33%. Ocasio-Cortez received about 69% of the vote this time around, compared to 72% in 2020. So, some voters in her district appear to have split the ticket, voting for the Democratic congresswoman and Trump simultaneously. On Sunday, via Instagram stories, Ocasio-Cortez asked those split-ticket voters why they did this and shared some of their answers. There’s no way to verify if the answers she received really came from those individuals, but they certainly are… interesting!

“It’s real simple… trump and you care for the working class,” one answer reads. “I feel like both Trump and you are real,” reads another. To be clear, Ocasio-Cortez ran for office in 2018 while working as a bartender, and continues to advocate for policies like universal health care, strong unions, and a higher minimum wage. Trump has a… slightly different story: He inherited a massive amount of wealth and ran on a platform that promises to make his billionaire friends richer. Ah, well, nevertheless! “Wanted change so I went with trump and blue for the rest of the ballot to put some brakes,” one user wrote. I do hate to break it to this individual, but there aren’t going to be a whole lot of “brakes” to rein in a serially accused sexual predator expected to impose a national abortion ban after he stacks the entire federal judiciary with his far-right cronies. “Voted Trump but I like you and Bernie [Sanders]. I don’t trust either party establishment politicians,” wrote another user. This refrain—railing against the establishment—was unsurprisingly popular.

Some answers Ocasio-Cortez posted pointed to Israel’s U.S.-funded war on Gaza, citing how the Biden-Harris administration has seemingly stood by Israel every step of the way. Trump, of course, appears to have a disturbingly close relationship with Israel’s far-right prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has frequently accused Biden of being too adversarial toward Israel, at one point accusing Biden of being a “Palestinian” (…?). But the fact that this clearly didn’t come through for some voters should be an important wake-up call for Democrats. One user said they voted for Trump and the Democratic Congressional options simultaneously because Trump will be “good handling the war.” Another wrote, “Voted for trump and you, not genocide Harris. Dems need Bernie!!” And another user wrote, “[Trump] speaks of war as something that is bad. Democrats became the party that supports war.” One wrote point-blank, “Because of Gaza.” And another said, “I voted Trump and dems because he reached out to Muslims.”

Other users responded that after four, bleak years, “something had to go.” One said their mom votes for Democrats on the local level “for services,” but Republicans on the national level “for budget.” Another blamed the lack of a primary process for the party to select Harris, and her lack of clear policy positions: “She wasn’t the choice of the people… couldn’t interview. No clear policies.”

The median American voter’s mind is famously a labyrinth of contradictions. So, it’s not entirely surprising that there are some voters who like populist politicians like Ocasio-Cortez and Trump at the same time, even while they espouse entirely different values and positions. What seems to matter, at least to some voters, is that their leaders condemn a political system that’s screwed most of us over, and that is, in fact, a very reasonable position! What I find a lot less reasonable is electing a legally recognized sexual abuser who wants to deport large swaths of the country and send women’s rights back to the 1900s, who, himself, is part of said political system that’s massively screwed most of us over. Democrats clearly need to figure out how they lost to a candidate as distinctly appalling as Donald Trump, and asking the American electorate for feedback—however stomach-churning that feedback might be—seems like a logical first step.

 
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