The United States November 5 presidential election result greatly shocked the Democrats and the nation, but it reflects that most Americans wanted a change. The Republicans managed to pull off a stunning political trifecta, grabbing control of the House, the Senate and the White House. Having had a clean sweep of all seven battleground states, Trump is elected America’s 47th president and only the second US president to win two non-consecutive terms; the first was Grover Cleveland in 1893.
Trump secured 312 electoral votes compared to Harris’s 226, surpassing the required 270. He also won the popular vote, garnering more than 74 million votes to Harris’s 70.8 million, becoming the first Republican candidate to win the popular vote since George W Bush over two decades ago. He managed to flip several traditionally Democratic states, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, which were crucial to his victory. Exit polls indicated that voters trusted Trump more on economic issues, which were prioritised over other matters like abortion. While Harris’s campaign, for instance, struggled to connect with working-class voters in key states like Pennsylvania, relying heavily on women’s rights issues but failing to match Biden’s 2020 support among women.
After President Joe Biden suspended his campaign in July 2024, the Harris campaign quickly rebranded their message, emphasising the concept of ‘freedom’ as a central theme. This shift was aimed at appealing to a broader base of voters and reclaiming states traditionally associated with Republicans. The campaign leveraged Project 2025, a conservative policy plan, as a foil to highlight the freedoms they sought to protect and expand. This allowed them to present concrete examples of what they viewed as threats to American liberties, rather than relying on abstract concepts of authoritarianism. Harris campaign effectively used protecting voting rights and election integrity, defending reproductive freedom, advancing LGBTQ+ equality, and strengthening workers’ rights and the middle class. Trump, on the other hand, capitalised on widespread voter discontent with the economic situation. Nearly 45% of American voters reported being financially worse off than four years ago, the highest level of economic dissatisfaction since 2008. His messaging on economic issues resonated strongly, with 79% of voters who prioritised the economy supporting him. Also, white voters, who traditionally favour Republicans, increased as a share of the electorate from 67% to 75%. Trump also made significant inroads with voters of colour, winning approximately one-third of their support—the strongest performance for a Republican since 2004.
Joseph E. Uscinski, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami with a specialisation in public opinion and mass media with a focus on conspiracy theories, told The Standard that while the Democrats’ focus on strengthening US democratic foundations and values was a central part of their platform, it did not ultimately lead to success in the presidential election.
The results also suggest that the Democratic Party indeed had some flawed assumptions about the electorate and their campaign strategy.
The Democrats had long banked on shifting demographics favouring their party, but this election showed that assumption was flawed. The party’s expectation of solidifying minority support did not materialise as hoped, with Republican candidate and President-Elect Donald Trump making unexpected gains among Black and Hispanic voters in crucial swing states.
The Democrats misinterpreted their 2020 win as a strong endorsement of their policies rather than a temporary expression of dissatisfaction with then president Trump and the pandemic situation. This led to overconfidence in their ability to retain power.
The party also struggled to effectively communicate their economic achievements and address voter concerns about inflation. This allowed Republicans to capitalise on economic anxieties among the electorate.
Vice President Kamala Harris and her strong wing Democrats failed to maintain their historical connection with working-class voters, increasingly being perceived as the party of cultural elites. This shift alienated a significant portion of their traditional base.
The party also underestimated Trump’s enduring appeal and the effectiveness of his messaging, particularly among working-class voters across racial lines.
The Democrats’ theory about the election was based on outdated assumptions about demographic trends, voter priorities, and their own strengths, leading to a significant electoral defeat.
Why was the Democratic theory wrong?
The most important aspect of the whole logic of Harris’s defeat was based on the concept that ordinary people are talking about housing costs, inflation, and even when they are talking about the price of eggs.
“As part of despondency, I found myself a few weeks before the election, and things were working fine as I thought they should. However, my hopes dashed into thin air when I visited North Carolina, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin during the election week. I do not live in these states full-time; I live in Wisconsin and Indiana, where I spend much time with working-class people and people living in the rural parts of the country,” Lamin Keita, a Democratic who voted for Harris, said.
Meanwhile, the acceptance and integration of Donald Trump’s vision of an America First, where no one has to give up anything to win, was palpable in all the major cities. This mantra and assumption appeal a lot to Hispanic voters and to working-class voters, especially working-class men. It also resonates a lot with people in rural parts of the state of all races.
“What concerned me and continues to concern me the entire campaign was the Democrats’ theory of explaining the current inflation that has hit households in the country. For example, how much do you spend at a grocery store on food, and how much do you pay for your house rent? These variables have spiked in states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and others and have become an instrument for the electorate wanting a change. In some ways, they wanted a return of Trump or a refrain from voting,” Keita said.
Also, many Democrats began to view the Harris campaign as what ‘we got wasn’t perfect’. Still, ‘we got to hold on to it’, and they had these plain vanilla policies that were not that exciting to the majority of American voters. Thus, the Democrats tried to address around the edges some of the issues that people needed from the government with no particular direction. That appears to be a dangerous gamble and enough chaos that logically backfires against Harris on November 5, 2024.
However, the evidence of anger and anxiety that Americans feel cannot be directed toward the objective truth. The theoretical and empirical observations suggest that there’s a lot of fear and anger among Americans, and the concept of the whole economic anxiety argument may not be a sufficient explanatory variable because it doesn’t have some empirical truth to it as entirely responsible for Harris’ defeat. However, the way it’s been misused to teeter over racial differences and gender differences has become the crowning jewel and ringing laud among the ordinary people in the country.
To this effect, Republicans and Trump fed into these narratives by distorting and presenting deep anxiety about the fundamentals of American socioeconomic and political institutions for not being sustainable, not being predictable, and not strong enough to defend American democracy. What this logically means is that they are talking about anxiety about their ability to predict their security in the near and distant future. Trump has used this anger and fear as a proxy and given a simple story, a clear, by any means, articulate story about toxic anger. He instrumentalised it to direct that anger and anxiety among the majority of his supporters in a toxic direction. Ultimately, the mechanism has generated and yielded the complete repudiation of moral voters.
