Spring Break Revelers Are a Good Reminder: Americans Don't Vote on Foreign Policy
The percent of Americans who said in exit polls in 2024 that foreign policy was their top issue when choosing between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris was less than 5%.
There’s a darling video making the rounds on social media of spring breakers being interviewed by Fox News about the current state of the world. The kids know nothing. Their biggest concerns are who to hook up with, how to stay drunk and tan, and how to “get with as many girls as we can and not come back with an STD.”
It’s completely adorable. They are gorgeous, friendly, and carefree in a way that feels uniquely American, but also like a throwback to a more innocent time, getting drunk and laid IRL, no dating apps necessary.
Even their total lack of interest in politics and foreign policy is refreshing.
“You must be happy—the Ayatollah is dead,” the interviewer says.
“I'm so—what? Who?”
“What? What is that?”
“Who the f*** is Ayotollah?”
“ I have never heard that word in my life.”
“Lewis, what’s Ayatollah?”
It’s a great reminder to the hyper-online caste that is America’s journalists that only 20% of Americans are on Twitter. Most Americans do not follow the news closely, if at all. And even those following the news are much less invested in foreign policy than domestic policy.
Exit polling from 2024 found that a measly 4% of Americans ranked foreign policy as the issue that mattered most to them in deciding how they voted for president. 4%! At the height of the Gaza war, with Israel/Palestine playing an outsized role in the discourse on the Left, with choices as disparate as Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, less than 5% of Americans viewed foreign policy as their top issue in pulling the lever one way or the other. And of that 4% who did vote on foreign policy, the clear majority were Trump voters; it was just 3% for Harris voters. More important to all Americans was abortion, the economy, immigration, and the “state of democracy” (34% of Americans, 80% of them Democrats, said they voted on this).
Voters will tell pollsters in the lead up to an election that foreign policy is “very important” to how they are voting (though when forced to rank it, they still rank it last, as a Wall Street Journal survey found), but once in the voting booth, they vote on how they feel about the United States.
A 2023 article from the non-partisan Public Affairs Council noted that in the three elections preceding 2024, “foreign policy wasn’t even relevant enough for pollsters for the longest-standing exit poll to offer it as a choice for the question of which issue mattered most to voters.” The 2022 exit poll for The Wall Street Journal, Fox News and The AP had foreign policy tied with the pandemic for the eighth most important issue. Just 2% of voters said it was their top concern in choosing who to vote for. During the 2018 midterms, it came in seventh, as the top issue for 5% of voters. It was a big higher in 2016, at 13%, but the trend line seems pretty clear.
I know this is a hard pill to swallow for the rest of world, especially its elites, who spend a lot of time talking about the United States. I regret to inform them that it’s not mutual.
Revel on, Spring Breakers!
Ignorance is bliss, and ignorance will always be the domain of the young and foolish. But thankfully spring breakers hardly represent the average young American 🇺🇸
Thank you, Batya. Americans are experts on self-love (look at their politicians), but mostly ignorant about the world (look at their liberal experts!).