How 2024 Became 1959…Again

On October 15, 2023, Aletheia Today published an article on a mayoral race that took place in Boston 60 years ago. No, we did not use that article to predict with uncanny accuracy the outcome of 2024‘s Presidential Election…but we were definitely looking ahead. 

“This is a book about…people who have come to believe that voting is meaningless and useless because politicians or those who influence politicians are corrupt, selfish, and beyond popular control.” – Surely this is a quote from some just released rehash of recent events, correct? 

Not even close. This is the opening paragraph of a book published in 1960: The Alienated Voter, by Professor Murray Levin (d. 1999). Levin’s singular contribution to ‘electoral science’ is his discovery of a new species of voter that he called ‘Alienated’. The Alienated Voter (AV) does not vote with the intention of reshaping public policy or even in the hope of improving conditions for herself, her family and her friends. She no longer believes such things are possible.

The Alienated Voter doubts her elected representatives have the power…or even the desire…to make life better for her. They are looking out for themselves…and their cronies.  In any event, their influence is limited by a ‘system’ that co-opts every good intention for its own undemocratic ends.

Nor is the AV a ‘message voter’. Who would she be messaging? In her world, there’s no one worthy of such a message. AV often does not belong to any political party; she has no discernable ‘ideology’. If challenged, she simply says, “I’m not political.” and turns away. But in fact, she is very political! She devours alternative media, rounding out the personal version of Leviathan she carries in her head. 

Nor is AV an ‘identity voter’. Her ‘class’, the exploited. Her ‘race’, the powerless. Contacted by a pollster, she is unashamed, “I did not vote!” and she wears that like a badge of honor, and scoffs, at least to herself, at her misguided neighbors who proudly but foolishly display their “I voted” stickers, like first graders hoping for a treat. The Alienated Voter knows, “There will be no treat!” 

Let me set the scene. It’s Boston, 1959. The City’s incumbent mayor is not running for reelection. The runner-up in the previous mayoral race, State Senate President John Powers, has been informally designated ‘mayor presumptive’ by the Boston ‘establishment’ and its media outlets. (Ring any bells?)

Nevertheless four brave candidates entered the nonpartisan primary against Powers. Possibly the least well known of them: Registrar of Probate John Collins.

As expected, Powers won the primary easily with 34% of the votes cast. Surprisingly, Collins finished second, but with only 22% of the total. The Boston media promptly promoted Powers from ‘mayor presumptive’ to ‘incoming mayor’. The outcome of the final election was never in doubt…until about 8:45 PM on the evening of November 3, 1959.

At the time, Boston was best understood as an uneasy confederation of ethnically defined neighborhoods. Tell me your postal code (no zip codes yet) and I could tell you where your ancestors were from, what religion you practiced, and how much money you made. “You are where you live.”

Yet, Levin’s study showed that religion, income, and ethnicity played no significant role in the 1959 election results. Collins won the votes of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, high and low income earners, Irish, Italian, Yankee and African American voters. 

Somehow, a consensus emerged without anyone (not even Collins) explicitly calling for it. Nobody saw it coming. It was not reflected in the size of crowds at political rallies; it was not reflected in public opinion polls. It happened under the radar, at bus stops and in barrooms, and it cut across all the city’s neighborhoods. 

In the end, Collins won, 56% to 44%. Powers carried only 4 of Boston’s 22 wards; he’d been expected to win them all. Collins turned a 12% primary deficit into an astonishing 12% election day margin.

Both candidates received more votes in the final election than they had in the preliminary. Powers doubled his primary vote total, but Collins quadrupled his (from 28,000 to 114,000). 10% of those who voted for Collins in the final had voted for Powers in the preliminary! How does that happen? 

The verdict of Boston’s voters was delivered loudly…and clearly: “We won’t let the city’s ‘power elite’ take us for granted any longer.” 

May I ask you a question? The last time you voted in an election, did you think your preferred candidate would do a better job than their opponent?  Not necessarily a ‘good’ job but a ‘better than the alternative’ job? Of course you did…you’re not an Alienated Voter.

Professor Levin’s most astonishing finding was that a majority of voters in Boston’s Mayoral election did not think their candidate would be a better mayor than his opponent. This tendency was especially prominent among Collins voters. 

Voters did not vote for Collins; they didn’t even vote against Powers. They voted against a system that took them for granted. This phenomenon resurfaced in 2024, this time on a national stage. Just look at the 2024 vote totals: the Republican got just 3,000,000 votes more than last time – not enough to change the result; but his Democratic opponent got 6,000,000 fewer votes – and that’s what flipped the switch!

The same thing just happened in the United Kingdom. Labour received only a few more votes in their 2024 landslide than they had in their 2019 rout; but the Tories received 6,000,000 fewer votes in 2024. In both UK and US, the voters who made a difference in 2024 were the voters who chose not to make a difference, Alienated Voters who just dropped out.

How do we know that these results can be attributed to alienation and not just apathy? In the final New York Times/Siena College national poll in late October, nearly two-thirds of voters said the government was “mostly working to benefit itself and the elites,” rather than “the people and the country.” The establishment parties never had a chance!

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