Trump didn't win the election, the Democrats lost it
Thoughts on the reasons behind Trump's election victory
Donald Trump is the next President of the United States. According to the polls, it should have been an extremely close race. I had a feeling that Donald Trump might win the election by a narrow margin. In reality, Donald Trump won more than clearly: Victory in all six swing states, a majority in the Senate, the House of Representatives and the totally unexpected popular vote - something he has been far from accomplishing in his two previous elections and no Republican managed since George W. Bush's re-election in 2004.
How did this happen?
My thesis is that it was not Donald Trump who won the election, but the Democrats who lost it.
First of all, it has to be said that the situation was not the easiest for the Democrats. Joe Biden's time in office saw Russia's attack on Ukraine, a surge in the number of illegal migrants in the US and - most crucially - the highest inflation in decades, driven by supply chain bottlenecks due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the generous government support that came with it.
Although the inflation rate has since been pushed back sharply thanks to tough intervention by the Fed - so much so that the Fed was able to start gradually lowering high interest rates again before the election - life in the US has nevertheless become significantly more expensive in recent years. Regardless of whether people are earning more themselves today, many products now cost much more than they did four years ago and people don't like it when prices rise noticeably.
In the post-election analyses, there is often talk of the economy being the main argument for Donald Trump's election victory alongside migration. People voted for him because they feel that Joe Biden's government is responsible for the fact that they can no longer afford their lives - even though, according to statistical data, it is precisely low-income people who have experienced the strongest relative income growth in recent years.
An extremely interesting development in this election is that, for the first time, the Democrats are the stronger party among high-income earners, while the poorer sections of the population have strongly oriented themselves towards the Republicans since Donald Trump's first candidacy in 2016. It is a reversal of the parties' target groups.
There is also a strong polarization by education and gender - the Democrats are the party of women and educated citizens, while men and the working class are increasingly voting Republican. These are very similar developments to those here in Europe and Austria.
More interesting than any demographic data, however, is the number of votes the candidates received.
The number of eligible voters in the US increased by about 4 million from 2020 to 2024, but about 3 million fewer people went to the polls. 2020 was the election with the highest voter turnout in the US so far (almost 66% of eligible voters). According to predictions, it will be 63.5% in 2024, which is around 2.5% less, but still the second highest figure in US history.
Not all votes have been counted yet, but it can already be said that Donald Trump has gained several million votes compared to 2020, while Kamala Harris has lost many millions of votes compared to Joe Biden's historic 2020 result. The lower voter turnout was therefore mainly at the expense of Kamala Harris.
I also looked at the results of the swing states that have already been counted and are decisive:
While Trump was able to gain voters strongly in all swing states, Harris lost votes compared to Biden in Pennsylvania and Michigan. She even gained votes in Georgia, but less than Trump, so it wasn't enough. The trend towards fewer votes is not evident in the swing states - no doubt also because voters there were aware that the votes in their state could decide the election.
Despite Trump's clear victory, it remains the case that in all swing states combined, perhaps 100,000-200,000 voters will ultimately make the difference between victory and defeat in an election of many millions of people.
The data shows that this election was decided by many voters who voted for Joe Biden in 2020, but stayed home in this election instead of voting for Kamala Harris. Why couldn't Harris win over these voters?
One possible answer to this question could be found in interviews where people are asked why they are voting for Kamala Harris: Because she's not Donald Trump. This gives the impression that although these people are convinced they are against Trump, she has not succeeded in convincing many voters to vote for her.
This election would have been winnable for the Democrats if their leading candidate had won over more of the people who still voted for Joe Biden.
For me, the decisive voter groups were firstly the undecided centrist voters who are not enthusiastic about either candidate, but don't see them as demons either, and secondly young men who have made a remarkable move towards Trump.
In my election forecast, I linked to several podcast appearances by Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance and I argued from the comments on YouTube under those interviews that those appearances certainly won a lot of voters over to Trump - partly because they reassured wavering voters in their choice, but also because they positively surprised skeptical voters, since neither Trump came across as a demon or Hitler in the interview and J.D. Vance came across not as uncharismatic and weird, but as likable and competent.
No interview has caused as much of a stir as Joe Rogan's interview with Donald Trump. Joe Rogan is the superstar among podcasters. The interview with Trump received tens of millions of views on YouTube within days. People were obviously very interested in watching a three-hour unscripted interview with the possible next president.
According to Joe Rogan, he also tried to get an interview with Kamala Harris, but she would only agree under certain conditions: That Joe must come to her, not the other way around, that the time frame be limited to one hour, and that Kamala's team reserve the right to make content edits before publication. Theo Von confirmed in an interview with Joe after the election that these conditions were also presented to him. The fact that Joe published this information was very damaging to Kamala's image. It painted a picture of a candidate who does not have the guts to dare to have a long open conversation, even though her rival and his running mate had no problem with it - and this despite the fact that she had repeatedly and strongly questioned Donald Trump's cognitive abilities during the election campaign.
It fits in with the image that I, as an outsider, have unfortunately increasingly formed of Harris. While she has been good at giving rehearsed speeches at campaign appearances and at the one debate she also outperformed Donald Trump, who just couldn't stick to the issues that are good for him, she hasn't looked good in the interviews I've seen of her.
Interviews are the golden opportunity for a politician to pitch their ideas and promote the vision behind their time in office. She didn't manage that. I didn't see much more from her than rambling, largely vacuous verbiage and a far too frequent inability to answer questions. It was her job to convince viewers that she is better suited to tackle the challenges of the next few years, but instead she spent too much time talking about how bad Donald Trump is. That goes down well with those for whom voting for Donald Trump would never be an option - but she would have got those votes anyway! She would have had to win the votes of those who would also vote for Trump - and you don't win them over by making them feel like they're crazy for even considering him.
In general, the Democrats have alienated a lot of people with their idea of moral purity. It just doesn't go down well when you blanket accuse all potential Trump voters of condoning rape, fascism and racism. Sometimes you get the feeling among Democrats that statements like Hillary Clinton's famous “Basket of Deplorables” are not unfortunate slips of the tongue, but rather unintentionally express a truth: That there are many voters in the US who, deep down, the Democrats don’t really want to win over because they are disgusted with them and feel that they are beneath them. These are exactly the people who are voting for Donald Trump because their gut feeling tells them that he is finally someone who meets them at eye level and takes them seriously.
Fittingly, a Blueprint poll found that after inflation and the situation at the border, the strongest voting motive was that voters felt that social issues like transsexuality were more important to Democrats than helping the middle class.
It also didn't do Kamala Harris any good that she ran as a candidate without a real mandate. Joe Biden is more deeply to blame for this by his long refusal to step aside so that people in the Democratic Party would not or could not hold an internal primary. If nominated, legally only Kamala Harris as Vice President had access to the large amount of money raised for Joe Biden, which further tied the party's hands. This does not change the fact that Kamala Harris ran as a candidate who never successfully faced the vote of her own party. She dropped out of the running very early in the 2019 primaries, and her position as Joe Biden's vice president was, in many people's perception, due to Biden's promise to fill the vice presidency with a woman of color, not her aptitude or popularity.
I maintain: Kamala Harris would never have won an internal party primary. This proves that she is far from being the strongest candidate the Democrats could have put up.
In this regard, a scene in a YouTube video on the Jubilee channel, in which Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg tries to persuade a round of undecided voters to give Kamala Harris their vote, was enormously telling for me. Applause breaks out when one of the voters asks Pete why he can answer the important questions but Kamala can't. Pete does his best in his answer to make Kamala look good, but many many voters have wondered why it is Kamala who is up for election when they feel there are people in the Democratic Party who can better answer the questions they are concerned about and want answers to.
The defeat in this election is in part an answer to that question.
Pete Buttigieg, to me, is a good example of a better choice than Kamala Harris. I don't follow US politics outside of the highest offices very closely, but of the politicians I know, Pete is my absolute favorite right now. He has a wonderful ability to talk to all kinds of people with empathy and expertise and win them over with his warm-hearted manner. He's also not above freely addressing his own concerns, problems and weaknesses, which helps him come across as a real person and tangible, whereas Kamala Harris is usually uptight in her performances and comes across as an intangible facade. Pete is the kind of person who is so convinced of his position and the arguments behind it that he has no problem venturing into hostile territory - for example, Pete has often appeared as a guest on the conservative television channel Fox News to promote his position. Pete would probably have no problem speaking freely for three hours on Joe Rogan about himself as a person and about his political beliefs.
My thesis is therefore that Pete Buttigieg would have won this election as a candidate. Trump has a certain charisma, but as a candidate he is a person with an overlong list of problems who could be shown up by an even halfway competent competitor to such an extent that his election becomes extremely unlikely. In Pete's case, for example, the contrast between him as a person and Trump would have been so stark that he could certainly have won over more voters.
This assessment of Pete Buttigieg could probably be similarly applied to some other top people in the Democratic Party who would have succeeded as well, even if Pete appeals to me personally the most.
Instead, it was a choice between two candidates that many didn't find particularly good or convincing.
British comedian Tom Walker, through his fictional character Jonathan Pie, once again wonderfully summed up the emotional background behind this defeat in just a few minutes: Trump Wins The White House. Again.
In the end, I am primarily annoyed that the mistakes of the Democratic Party are now giving us four more years of Donald Trump, in whose administration I have no high expectations. I fear four years of internal chaos that will paralyze the ability of the world's greatest power to act and that many bad decisions will be made. Basically, I'm in agreement with Noah Smith's opinion on why it's a bad idea to vote for Trump. I don't think much of Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate, but I would have preferred to see Democratic Party actors at the levers of decision-making for the next four years. We will have to come to terms with Trump and his inner circle of loyalists and hope that no fatal mistakes happen during his term that lead to an existential crisis.
Simon, there's a lot of good information in here, and I may recycle some of it in one of my posts. Sorry you didn't get more eyeballs on this.