The enthusiasm gap was entirely on the Democrat side this past election. Donald Trump won considerably more votes this past election than he ever has. There are also a significant number of prominent former lifelong Democrats that switched to being Trump supporters. Joe Rogan, RFK Jr., and Elon Musk come to mind.
> Trump won 77,284,118 votes, or 49.8 percent of the votes cast for president. That is the second highest vote total in U.S. history, trailing only the 81,284,666 votes that Joe Biden won in 2020. Trump won 3,059,799 more popular votes in 2024 than he won in 2020 and 14,299,293 more than he won in 2016. He now holds the record for the most cumulative popular votes won by any presidential candidate in U.S. history, surpassing Barack Obama. Running three times for the White House obviously helps.
Quite astonished to see Elon Musk being used as an example of someone whose views are worth following. If someone goes from e.g. Red Cross employee to ever more worrying statements and eventually outright racism and misinformation, I'm worried what happened to them (some disease?) more than thinking "ah crap, the racism party was right after all, let me go and vote AfD now"
> Trump won 77,284,118 votes, or 49.8 percent of the votes cast for president. That is the second highest vote total in U.S. history, trailing only the 81,284,666 votes that Joe Biden won in 2020. Trump won 3,059,799 more popular votes in 2024 than he won in 2020 and 14,299,293 more than he won in 2016. He now holds the record for the most cumulative popular votes won by any presidential candidate in U.S. history, surpassing Barack Obama. Running three times for the White House obviously helps.
https://www.cfr.org/article/2024-election-numbers