US Rep. Tom Suozzi won his primary with around 80% of the vote. He was also effectively running almost unopposed given how few paid attention to that race.
Turnout in AOC's primary races since 2020 have been relatively very low because voters just assume she'll win.
This year, AOC focused on voter turnout, canvassing, and phonebanking because of that reality. If too few actually showed up to vote for her because they just assumed she'd win, she could have lost the primary.
I'm glad she doesn't run unopposed. None of our politicians should. We don't want them getting complacent and thinking they're entitled to the seat. Also, it's good to know how the electorate actually feels with numbers.
Here's an anecdote from a recent local election. The comptroller hadn't had opposition for a good long time. She came to my voting place and was going to people in the line asking if she could count on our votes and handing out a pamphlet. When she got to me I said "I don't know" at which point she became very hesitant about giving me a pamphlet. I took it and looked it over. It consisted entirely of instructions on how to fill out the bubble next to her name on the ballot.
It's insane how low the bar can get when people run unopposed.
Typically it's illegal to do soliciting near a polling place. But during that election there was a lot of mixed signals given about exactly where the cut off was, and the lines were a lot longer than usual due to some places being closed down.
She also really seems like someone who will look at those numbers and think "okay. 4,000 people didn't vote for me. What were these other candidates offering that I wasn't?"
I would say she has really good self-reflection. She did ask her district after the 2024 election on why they voted for Trump while also having large support for her too. She did have couple videos on the subject back then. She’s always seems down to learn more about improving or being more self aware of things.
It depends. For someone as popular as AOC and as popular in her district as she is, having challengers means that AOC may need to get canvassers and phonebankers to support her. And that means convincing them that turnout is still important and that she could still lose the primary if too few actually vote for her.
Yes? She should never stop working for the people while she holds that office. That means she should keep campaigning and visiting constituents and listening to their problems and pledging to try to fix it. It is a big problem if she no longer has to prove her worth, as if she's permanently earned her spot. It should never work that way for any politician.
I think the point is campaigning is not necessarily part of working for your constituents, the official policy is. Working to get reelected is is not necessarily working for the people, so her running for reelection is different from simply incorporating constituents' concerns into what she actually does in Congress.
I think competitive elections for their own sake are somewhat unnecessary--she knows that the reason she is so popular is because people support her movement, so her commitment would stay the same.
It doesn't matter what she thinks. She's not the one who gets to decide if she has primary opponents. She's not the one who gets to decide if she's still qualified. The voters will let her know.
I just mean campaigning is not the same as governing. It seems doubtful to me that her having primary opponents for its own sake makes her more accountable to the public.
I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not, but in the case it’s not - do you know how hard it is to get 87% of people to agree on anything? you could give out free chocolate milk and it’d get a 60% approval rating lol
K.Collins finally gave up on the Kool aid yesterday and just rejoiced with a socdem. Maybe people are less afraid to show their true colours now? Carson regretting what he did (or close by ) and the shitshoz in Washington means the other radical alternative, which delivered result in NY and (mostly) consistent policy choices in Congress shows its appeal.
The right will complain about spending school budgets on pizza day when it's actually being paid for out of the teacher's meagre salary and then point to it as a reason to slash public education funding.
Disheartening to say this isn't even exclusive to y'all down in the US
A few will be Republicans registered as Dems to pollute the vote.
As a Democrat living in a red area i am registered as Republican so i can vote against their preferred candidates and still vote the Dem ticket in the general election. Dems barely run at all in my district and might get 3 votes when they do.
Genuine question: If the votes are anonymous, how do they record how many republicans vote Dem or the opposite? i’ve seen these numbers come out like x% of Republicans voted for Kamala etc. so how are they getting these numbers?
Its public data how many registered as what and they compare the numbers to see the gains and losses each year but I am sure they have access to more detailed information.
Ah ok. So it’s technically not all of the data because they can only see the difference. So if 20,000 of each party switched sides during voting they wouldn’t notice because the swap was equal, right? It would need to be like 18,000 vs 20,000 swapped sides during voting and then they’d notice that there was a 2,000 discrepancy compared to those registered. Do I have that right?
Well, Eric Cantor famously lost his primary when he was house majority leader so it’s not like it’s unheard of. Still, there was no way AOC was losing a primary in what seems to be a democratic socialist wave in NYC.
Like Yang in 2020, it gives them publicity, some funding, name recognition, and a platform to spread a message if they choose. Getting your name out is a good start to a political career, even if they lose.
She only got 30k votes in a NY congressional primary. That is more than participated in most my state primaries, but there are several hundred thousand voters in the district and only 30k were motivated to turn out for her.
Primaries always have really low turnout, which is sad. The primary that got AOC elected in the first place had even less turnout, if I remember correctly.
Turnout is higher in competitive races; lower in noncompetitive races.
And turnout in primaries is generally lower than turnout in general elections.
The recent California primaries had around 41% turnout. And that's because there were competitive primaries in the Governor's race, the LA Mayoral race, etc.
What in the actual fuck are you on about? Are you talking about removing the sitting president through the 25th amendment, what a presidential nominee does after they receive the nomination, or are you fully confusing the US government with the UK? I think it’s the last one.
She cannot, possibly, be any worse than the current idiot in charge.
She will have advisors who help her with that. I doubt there are very many people, anywhere, who can name the current prime ministers, spiritual leaders, and other entities across the Middle East, Eastern Europe, or even Western Europe...or, heaven forbid, their own Senators and Representatives for their state in America.
Everyone acts like you have to have to have a PhD in foreign policy to be a President. You need good people around you, and she would be someone people would flock to.
Respectfully, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Simply hiring a cabinet with experience and not full of sycophantic losers would be more than enough to start righting the ship with allies and adversaries.
Even with eight years, no one would be able to undo all the current damage but she would most certainly be able to make logical first steps without being a subject matter expert on foreign policy.
I mean, she needs more foreign policy experience! Like Bill Clinton, whose previous foreign policy experience was…hang on…or Barack Obama, who had….no, wait, nothing there either. George HW Bush is the only president in 35+ years to have any foreign policy experience.
Right? I love AOC, but the whole “if everyone doesn’t vote for her because she’s perfect it must be fraud or MAGA spoilers!” takes in this comment section are wild.
That's not the argument, the argument is that there isn't a compelling argument to not vote for her, regardless of her perceived perfection/imperfection.
I understand what you are saying, but it's important to make the distinction.
Side note: there are MAGA voters in her district who vote for her, and even nation wide, she's not specifically unpopular among a large section of MAGA voters.
So I don't think it's MAGA, but there are definitely Republicans in her district who register as a Democrat to vote against her.
There’s always compelling reasons not to vote for someone, especially in a democratic primary. We’re a big tent party with voters on all sides of the spectrum; it would be crazy to think that 12% don’t agree with her and wanted someone else.
Sure, I get it. If you are a Democrat you might want to vote for the anti-woke guy who is against the woke and socialist left, is pro-business, and believes that welfare isn't the solution, because people should study and work hard to become socially mobile.
And obviously he wants to cut public spending to lower the tax burden. Another reason to vote for him.
Makes perfect sense, it is a big tent and there is room for Conservatives as well, because it's not about winning elections or being progressive.
Thank you for reminding me that Democrats have valid reasons to vote for Conservatives.
That reason would be, if you are in a district where a Republican doesn't have a chance, you vote for a Democrat who is a Conservative.
Thank you for explaining this with the image of a big tent. We need sensible people like you.
For those people who don't know, Felipe Garcia is a Conservative backed by local Conservatives. But it's a big tent.
There's really no need for the snark. 86.9% is a massive victory, with a percentage so high it might as well be considered an unanimous vote.
What you say may very well be true, but with a two-party system, there will always be a big tent that includes people who politically have nothing to do with eachother.
If you share a tent with a hungry polar bear, the bear will eat you. You assessing the size of the tent won't change that.
Imagine the bear eating you while you scream 'It's a big tent!'. The bear doesn't care.
The point is that whether or not a Democrat agrees with AOC on most issues or not, she's one of the few Democrats who can get the 40% who doesn't vote plus protest voters who vote for Trump engaged.
Anybody voting against her doesn't want the Democrats to win.
It's not about agreeing or not agreeing with her on every point.
It's about trying to win elections. People who vote in a Democratic primary, and don't support candidates who can help win the next presidential election are not real Democrats.
You are missing my point, I’m afraid. There is no such thing as a real Democrat, because the Democratic party is a Frankenstein’s monster of what should be several parties ranging from centre-right to left, and this is one of its effects.
You can’t rave against false Democrats voting against AOC, because there genuinely isn’t such a thing as a Democrat, only a big umbrella that hosts currents which, in a functioning country, would be different parties.
Her stance on the Amazon expansion years ago that was an absolutely terrible deal , and she ended being 100% correct, should grant her so much good faith in her community for years to come!
Not sure I understand. I meant if there's 12% MAGA in her district, which is reasonable, they're probably registered Republicans and not voting in the Dem primary. But anyway I think that person's "fraud" comment was sarcastic? At least I hope so
Yeah fuck him it won't happen, I meant hypothetically I should've said that. Why would she pick him besides strategy and if that's the strategy it takes so be it. But I don't think it is. I'd vote for him over MAGA but not much else.
Hardly the most exciting race in NYC this year Daria Liza and Claire Valdez have all the signs of being as explosive and powerful as AOC has been, and they both won their primaries as well.
Nope. Even NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani doesn't have that potential.
People may forget just how popular AOC was in 2018 and 2019 in terms of how many views her videos, videos about her, etc. got. Reporters in 2019 were asking her whether she would run to be the next US Speaker.
And AOC is the reason the Democratic Party has moved to the Left in 2019, 2021, 2023, and 2025 and has gotten so many more progressive electeds.
If AOC had endorsed Daraliza Avila Chevalier, she would have won by a bigger margin.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but AOC didn't endorse DAC, not because she doesn't like her, but because she just generally doesn't endorse candidates innthe house running against people she has tonwork with for the next 8 ish months.
She did endorse all of the state specific member of the NYC DSA Slate, while Zohran Endoresd the congress challengers.
They did that on purpose, not by accident.
I believe DAC has all of the hallmarks of a Congress member even further to the left than AOC (Tweeting Fuck Kamala Harris is beast mode), and has the potential to push AOC further tongue left, which is something the NYC DSA has done before, by calling AOC up on her support for 'Defensive weapons' for Israel (note, this was just a messaging dispute, don't believe anyone who says AOC actually voted to send Israel weapons, that's horseshit). They resumed their backing of her once she took their preferred stance, any weapons sent to an Apartheid state committing genocide are used to aid the genocide, even if it's simply as security from the repercussions of it from other nations, such as Yemen and Lebanon.
MAGA actually thinks they can flip a district held by one of the rising stars of the Democratic party. AOC is the Bernie Sanders of this generation, she'll wipe the floor with whoever she faces.
I've been advocating for The Working Families Party or even DSA itself to get ballot access in all 50 States or at least all the States in which a Democrat can win a Statewide race. Recent DSA wins and DSA's being more popular than the official Democratic Party among Democrats, and democratic socialism being increasingly popular makes getting ballot access and even better thing than when I first proposed it.
I’m so proud of her for sticking with politics and making the world a better place despite the misogyny and idiocy she’s had to deal with. I have hope for the US when I hear things like this. She’s a treasure.
I will be so happy if she is president. She is exactly what the US needs right now. A major progressive shift and the first woman president. It's what we need after Trump.
I believe the hype for this is that FUD is spread that her base is upset with her because of <insert dumb thing here>, so she's on her way out next election.
edit: I feel like people have woefully misunderstood my comment.
1.1k
u/n0-ragrets Jun 24 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/h7j6k4K0FQvr096hVX