What Explains a Trump Win?
Also: don't forget a lot of people also voted against him.
First, an obseravtion. There is currently a 3.3% gap between the candidates in the popular vote, so let’s not forget that he didn’t win an overwhelming amount of the vote. Let’s not pretend like he won an actual landslide. But the fact that he won a majority is a troubling comment on the American electorate and American society in general.
What explains this? We won’t have a firm answer for some time as the data are incomplete (and even then there will be debate as to exact answers).
Here are my initial thoughts.
A Binary Choice. He was going to win most of those votes no matter what. Most people vote based on party ID. This is just true. They rationalize their choice or they really don’t think about it as much as anyone who is reading these words. Moreover, getting them to defect to the other teams is plain hard.
The Economy. I will admit that earlier in the year when I was marveling at the fact the polls had Biden and Trump tied, if not Trump ahead, I could not fully wrap my head around it and regular commenter Andy kept pointing out that Biden was unpopular. And, of course, a major reason that Biden was unpopular was inflation. I have a family member (who is anti-Trump) who works in a blue-collar industry. A major topic of conversation from him and his colleagues continues to be the price of groceries. People don’t want to hear about macroeconomics and global effects when they look at their receipts at the grocery store. Biden, and by extension the incumbent party, was unpopular because of that. No amount of correctly noting that the pandemic was responsible for the economy, that gas prices are based on a global market, and that the US did far better on inflation and other indicators than did similar economies.
None of that matters.
We live in a world (and always have) wherein things like this are actually effective:
I am reminded of an exchange I had with a co-worker in 2018 about Trump. She stated that all she cared about was the gas was cheaper than it had been, so Trump was great! This was a person who worked with statistics and analytics. But she nonetheless reduced the presidency to gas prices (and, no doubt, this was fueled, no pun intended, by long-term partisan affiliation).
Change. The economy, plus long-term resentment over COVID restrictions, as well as other factors, have contributed to a global (not just US) political sentiment for change. There has been a clear anti-incumbent wave globally, and there has also been a surge of right-wing nationalism (see, e.g., Austria as a recent example).
I would note that if a segment of the population wants change, and there are only two viable parties, the incumbent party loses. People have nowhere else to go (or they stay home, as many millions did).
And if you combine a global nationalist movement with two parties, it stands to reason that one of those two parties would have the nationalists as part of their internal coalition. And that means the real risk that the nationalists will take over said party.
While, yes, I can conjure a fantasy in which a robust Democratic primary would have produced a miracle opponent, the reality is that this was not going to happen. Indeed, it is likely such a candidate would have had to attack the Biden administration on inflation, which would have just contributed to the general belief that the Democrats were to blame. And if even Democrats are saying the Democrats are to blame, then why vote in another Democrat?
Who would have won this election on D side? Michelle Obama is the best I can conjure. And she would have faced many of the same headwinds that Harris faced.
This is Us. Yes, this election says something about America. But it isn’t new. Can I remind us all that despite our deeply engrained national mythology about democracy and freedom, we really only had full voting rights in the United States in 1965? And that we continue to have to fight over voting rights? Many Republican states were willing to purge potentially legal voters from the rolls because of fantasies about masses of noncitizens voting.
Indeed, I am currently reading a book, Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power, which clearly clarifies that often those calling for “freedom” are calling for the freedom to dominate others. While we have come a long way down the journey toward true freedom, I can’t help but see the freedom to dominate manifesting in things like Dobbs, anti-trans actions, threats for mass deportations, and a long list of other parts of the politics of the American right.
But, let me point out that the current difference between Harris and Trumos is roughly 3.3% of the vote. And let me also note that if Harris had won by 3.3% of the vote we wouldn’t think that the country was resoundlingly Democratic or that small “d” democracy and small “l” liberalism had vanquished the threat of reactionary nationalism.
There is clearly a significant strand of illiberalism in our politics, and it is going to get its chance in office. Don’t get me wrong: I am quite concerned about it. I can’t forget the fact that serious people who worked for Trump called him a fascist. I have not forgotten his ongoing rhetoric nor that of the people he will empower. I am profoundly disappointed by so many of my fellow Americans, including people very dear to me, who were willing to ignore/rationalize all of this and stick to their partisan preferences. I will say that hold in full disdain anyone who defends it directly.
Race. I think that when the data are analyzed we will find that race is a major variable in explaining the outcomes. Certainly, that would comport with the work Liliana Mason has done. And yes, Trump’s rhetoric about “losing our country” and his xenophobic fearmongering about the border resonates with a lot of people. And the people who fear their loss of power, or who fear migrant-fueled crime don’t want to have nuanced conversations about the complexities of the border. They just want simplistic solutions. Just close it! As if the border is the garage door and Mom is worried about flies getting in.
And, as I feared when the debate about removing Biden was ongoing, Harris’ race and gender could be a problem. We don’t know yet what role that played, but I am betting it was worth some portion of that 3.3%.
Conclusions. I think that at the end of the day, the data will show that some combination of inflation and nationalism/racial resentment/nationalism will explain most of why Trump will be president again.
While, again, it is always possible to assert that a “better” candidate with “better” messaging would have won, the devil is in the details. A brutal primary would not have been good for the Democrats. I don’t, for a second, believe that some better-honed policy message would have worked.
Indeed, this election rather substantially reinforces my core view that candidates matter a whole lot less than the general public and the pundit class, in particular, think.
Trump was, objectively, a terrible candidate. The list of why is enormous. And yet, he won. People wanted change and returning the incumbent party to office is not change.
To be clear, I am not attempting to justify any vote for Trump, nor am I discounting the harm he is likely to inflict on the US and the world (that is not hyperbole).
Elections do, in fact, have consequences.
Before reading the post (sorry): “Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.” Schiller.
EDIT: after reading the post: yeah, see above.
I don’t know if this explains the win, but it certainly depicts the fantasy land in which the Trumpkins dwell.
http://www.nypost.com/2024/11/06/opinion/voters-saw-through-the-lies-and-elected-donald-trump-as-the-47th-president-of-the-united-states/
20 million votes less than the most fortified smoothest, above board and flawless 2020 election.
Rowember! Women Love Abortion.
I have myself, over the course of years, done what we call “driving off the cliff at 100 miles an hour” – the Wile E. Coyote thing – because I believed something that was flatly untrue, and the evidence for its untruth was easily available.
This is a thing that happens to humans. It’s adjacent to motivated reasoning, which is something all humans do to some extent. Why we do that is the subject of a longer essay, but all evidence suggests to me that it exists because the human genome flourishes because of it. Just like it flourishes because of our tendency to divide the world up into “Us” and “Them”.
I think candidates do matter, but maybe only 5 to 10 points worth. I look at what’s happened and conclude that some fraction – maybe 5 percent – had trouble reckoning Harris as part of “Us”.
They say she spoke in “word salad” – it’s said honestly, but doesn’t really match with what I saw and heard, and I’m guessing I saw and heard a lot more. They say “I don’t really know her”. And you voted for (in some cases) Senate and House candidates you know even less well.
On the economy, yes, I have kept pointing out the Biden administration’s unpopularity—which actually began with the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle and never recovered. I think one of the problems is that Democrats tried to ignore this, spin it away, or suggest that people are stupid for not understanding how great Biden actually is—none of which are effective at motivating voters. And I say this as someone who has an above average opinion of Biden.
Additionally, I think what some people miss (and I’ve pointed this out before) is the difference between macro-level economic statistics, which are both aggregated and imperfect models, and the micro experiences of the individual in their individual circumstances. That the economy as a whole is doing well and better than peer countries on a macro-level aggregate level is cold comfort for the individual whose circumstances are in the bottom half of the distribution. Lecturing such people about how they are dumb because of how great the economy is in aggregate when their personal experience is different is, at best, ineffective and probably counterproductive. I think back to 2020 and people (maybe even including me) who pointed out that police killing unarmed black men is actually exceedingly rare in this country. How was that message received? Not well.
Additionally, a lot of things that regular people care about, unlike gas prices, have stayed very high. Housing and rent, in particular, along with anything subject to interest rates (mortgages, cars, credit cards, etc.). That is where I’ve personally seen the most frustration among friends and family.
Finally, the reality is and always has been that Presidents get both credit and blame for stuff that happens on their watch, even stuff beyond their control. And that’s happened here on the D side as well with a lot of people crediting Biden for lowering inflation when he doesn’t have any control over it. Likewise, Trump had no control over the economy as President. It is not in the job description or positional authority. If roles were reversed here and Trump was President during this period of inflation, Democrats would be hammering him for it, and Republicans would be pointing out all the rosy aggregate statistics. Such is how it always is.
How will that show up? Because the preliminary data suggest that Trump voters this year could be the most racially diverse for the GoP at the national level in a very long time. This is a disconnect that needs greater explanation. The narrative here and in most D circles is that Trump is a virulent racist and a hitler-like fascist – so why is it that his numbers with the groups he supposedly hates have improved? The long-standing answer that people are too dumb or misinformed to understand how racist Trump is was never a very strong argument and has only grown weaker. We’ve had nine years of reporting on Trump’s statements and all the awful and dumb things he’s said. He was President for four years. People are not ignorant about Trump.
I keep seeing people suggest this, but I don’t get it. Why would Michelle Obama be the best? Beyond being intelligent, a good speaker, and a seemingly all-around decent person, what does she bring to the table that a Klobochar, Shapiro, or Whitmer wouldn’t?
I lean toward Biden’s unpopularity and the public’s dissatisfaction with the economy as the dominant reason. Historically, those factors nearly always get taken out on the incumbent party in the White House. We hoped and believed Harris would defy that historical pattern, but it’s not hard to understand why she didn’t.
However, that in itself raises questions. According to most measures, the economy is doing well. We’re not in a recession, we’re at historically low unemployment. Inflation is down, and even though food prices are still high, there simply is not mass economic calamity in this country. Yet poll after poll has shown the public perceiving the country to be in the throes of economic disaster. Of course, Trump kept screaming how that was the case, but I do not believe he has the power to shape the entire public narrative to that degree.
I think the mainstream media is partly to blame, but I also think the increasing compartmentalization of people’s information sources is a factor. Everyone is in their little bubbles, with certain narratives being pushed, and it leads to confirmation bias in people’s daily lives. Even if a person is not suffering financial ruin, the significance of $5 egg cartons or $3 gas can get magnified in their minds. I’m not trying to minimize the fact that there are Americans who have been suffering real financial catastrophe, from medical debt to housing prices. But the fact is that it’s not been to a degree that would normally explain the political backlash. By that standard, Obama wouldn’t have stood a chance in 2012, when the country was still suffering the aftereffects of the Great Recession.
Earlier this year, I gave a rundown about why I thought Biden was being blamed for the economic problems more than Obama was during his presidency. Basically, the country did blame Trump for mishandling the virus, but they tended to see it as somewhat of a black swan event that didn’t affect their overall positive view of his handling of the economy. After he left office, economic problems that were in many ways rooted in the country emerging from the pandemic were laid at Biden’s feet, simply because those problems hadn’t existed before. The media did a poor job of explaining all this. And so did the Dems, in part because they were afraid of sounding like they were making excuses, but also because they feared that if they talked about how the economy was in healthy shape, they risked coming off like they were showing a lack of concern for people’s suffering–a factor that did hurt Trump in 2020.
And that brings me to a final point. This is the third consecutive presidential election in which the incumbent party has lost–which is historically unusual. The last time it happened was the late 19th century, when Grover Cleveland was defeated for reelection (despite winning the popular vote) then got back into the White House in the following election. We seem to be in an era of periodic dissatisfaction with incumbents. I would almost find that a comforting notion now, if I had any confidence we’re going to have a free and fair election in the next go.
This explains it
https://jeffgoldstein.substack.com/p/i-am-not-voting-for-donald-trump
One other point. It is common in the stock market that when a stock moves, lots of “experts” will tell you why it moved, and their expertise is meaningless. It was noise, or some big institution yawning and rolling over.
But that doesn’t stop people from saying “Oh, I know exactly what the problem is”.
@Andy:
True, however a sizable fraction of my R contemporaries will insist that he didn’t say that awful or dumb thing, despite transcriptions and videos. Rather, they blame “the evil media” for reporting. ( in fact, I’ve had at least two Rs insist that CBS had deep faked several of T’s speeches).
People tend to believe what they want to believe, despite evidence to the contrary.
John Kelly is just a hysteric, Mark Milley a woke scold.
In seriousness, QFE, because I have not forgotten either.
Potential cuts to and curtailment of Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare are very scary and very possible. My concern there is mitigated by my smug, liberal-elitist satisfaction that these safety net attacks will hurt Trumpers too, if not most.
I feel worst for the good people of Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Unlike Trump voters, they don’t deserve what’s coming.
I keep thinking about the woman I met in the dog park, who hates a lot of things about Trump, but said she thinks women are too emotional to be president. I told her I disagreed—that men are often just as or even more emotional than women, but tend to express it differently—but I wonder how many other women agreed with her.
I also have been hearing that Trump’s anti-trans ads have been effective. It’s ridiculous in some ways, even if you think it’s a legitimate issue (I don’t), because the number of trans people is so small. It would be like Trump running on a platform of saving people from lightning strikes (56 injuries and 14 fatalities in the US in 2023), while also promising to end seatbelt and traffic laws (42,500 motor vehicle accident deaths in the US in 2022), and somehow convincing people that lightning strikes is not only the bigger threat, but to ignore the fact that he’s making the actual threat worse.
Speaking of which, JK Rowling is getting hammered on Twitter by her TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminists) allies because she’s celebrating Trump’s win. The TERF allies are pointing out that rollbacks to reproductive freedoms affect all women, while the numbers of people affected by trans people is very small. Rowling in turn is arguing that it’s in the millions if you count all the women athletes forced to compete against trans women; women forced to share bathrooms, prisons, and shelters with trans women; children forced onto puberty blockers; and lesbians forced to have sex with trans women. She’s totally lost it, but unfortunately, many people are finding this type of argument convincing.
(Re: Rowling’s points: there are literally only a handful of competitive trans women athletes in the US. Most women will probably never share a bathroom with a trans women, or may not even know if they do. Prisons and shelters are places where women are vulnerable, but that’s true for trans women, too. Children are only put on puberty blockers after long consultations with their doctors, parents, and the child themselves, and again, the numbers are small. Some trans folks online argue that lesbians should be willing to sleep with trans women, but no one is forcing lesbians to do that).
Steve M. with a lot of very interesting insights, makes sense to me, mostly:
https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2024/11/trump-is-toxically-masculine-andy.html
@Andy:
I would recommend Mason’s work.
While I understand your point and agree it is complicated, I also think it is possible for Trump to have had a racially diverse voter base and still have a lot his support be driven by racial resentments.
@Bobert: I once had a close family member, deep into his presidency, if not after it, explain it all away with “that is just how New Yorkers talk.”
@Steven L. Taylor: “I once had a close family member, deep into his presidency, if not after it, explain it all away with “that is just how New Yorkers talk.”
Let me guess — this is someone who’d never been within a thousand miles of New York?
@wr:
Indeed. I have numerous family members from New York, and I can assure you that NONE of them talks like Trump.
@Bobert: I made the mistake of thinking that when someone brags about sexually assaulting women (the Access Hollywood tape), is accused by over two dozen women of sexual assault, found by a judge in a civil case to have sexually assaulted a specific woman, it would be BFD. We just elected a rapist as president, and half the country is fine with it. But half the country doesn’t care that he says to this day the election was stolen, he promises to pardon the Jan 6 crowd. I make the mistake of thinking that character doesn’t always matter if it just a few exaggerations or an isolated event that happened in the past. But a rapist, a felon, a racist who is incapable of telling the truth? I just didn’t believe that more than 50% of the voters would want somebody who is completely amoral.
@TheRyGuy: Lazy, dumb, low IQ, a DEI hire. Not even a dog whistle anymore.
@Lucysfootball: It is because God chose Trump, dontcha know?
If they start slashing benefits, it’s gonna hit a lot of retirees and disabled vets. No Medicare means no care. In my neighborhood there a lot of these guys. One guy is on food stamps, Medicaid and Medicare, disabled vet who smokes several packs a day. Lives with his 94 year old mother. He’s in a wheelchair. He posted a joyous rant thanking god for Trump. Trump is going to end all our foreign wars and kill off the military industrial complex! (I had not heard that reference in a long time)
I do not resent him getting benefits. I get SS and Medicare, too. I did have an image flash of that dog that Tramp and Lady watch being led onto the police wagon, wagging and doggy smiling, unaware of the tragic fate that awaits him.
@TheRyGuy:
The big increase was among Hispanics, and one point that has long been underappreciated is that (a) a majority of Hispanics identify as white (b) there’s a high level of racism among them. Light-skinned Hispanics are racist against dark-skinned Hispanics, and many are racist against blacks. It’s not a coincidence that the most prominent neo-Nazi in America today is named Fuentes. But the dominant American narrative depicts Hispanics as a racial minority.
It’s not the only thing that has pushed many of them to the right–other factors include sexism among Hispanic men, ardent anticommunism among those from Communist nations, and deep religiosity–but it’s one factor. And it doesn’t refute the fact that Trump is a racist. It shouldn’t be a surprise that people don’t always vote according to their own best interests.
@TheRyGuy:
I can.
It might have something to do with pseudonymous persons (i.e., unwilling to put their own name to their screeds) continually calling out bloggers by name while almost doing nothing other than being rude and insulting, derailing conversations, and not addressing content.
Let this serve as the end of my patience. Any comment that does not actually make an argument about the post will be deleted. You are quite close to being banned.
I am tired of you showing up in my space and yelling at me and the other authors.
You are a guest. You will either act like one or be shown the door.
@TheRyGuy:
Rationalization =/= rational. At times, you seem to confuse the two.
No matter the manner you choose to wave your hands, The Force is not real. It does not affect anything outside of your own hallucinatory vision.
I feel a bit like a broken record at this point, but…
It’s the misogyny, stupid*
A lot of people won’t even realize that’s what it is. It’s evident everywhere in our culture, from the ability to gain an interview callback when women in tech remove gender identifiers, to the sudden leap in the number of women who landed positions in orchestras when they auditioned from behind screens. There are a lot of people–men and women–who just don’t “see” a woman as qualified.
Honestly, I’ve noticed shades of it in comments here. “I’m voting for Harris, but she [whatever]”
Bottom line is that Harris is more accomplished than almost any person commenting on this blog, period, full stop. THAT’S WHY SHE’S A VICE PRESIDENT and you’re (whomever you are) are not.
I don’t really think it’s that much deeper than that. It’s why (if it holds), she didn’t outperform Biden anywhere. It’s why we can kill the dumb narrative that Hillary was a bad candidate.
When voters choose between Trump and a woman, they choose Trump. I’m betting that would hold true in the reverse (say, a Kristi Noem v. Gavin Newsom match up) too.
*I want to make it CRYSTAL clear that I am paraphrasing Bill Clinton’s iconic “it’s the economy, stupid” line, and not interjecting any commentary on our lovely and respected hosts.
As a nuance, I think some people without a standing party ID still identify certain issues to certain parties, e.g., Rs are better at the economy. In this cycle, despite a number of R leaning economic experts and businesses opining that Trump would be significantly more inflationary, I am confident a that millions of casual voters combined “inflation bad, R economy good” to pull the handle for Trump.
@Jen: I wholly concur that misogyny is part of the explanation.
@Joe: Agreed.
True, or at least it was earlier today. The gap is now 3.0%, and will likely continue to drop as votes are counted over the next several days.
There are apparently millions of votes still to be counted, the majority of which could go to Harris, and Trump and Harris will each end up with 70-something million votes.
And people are still using gas prices as a reason/excuse to have voted for Trump. Maybe there’s selective memory of sub-2 dollar/gallon gas four years ago, the result of the pandemic recession that caused demand and world oil prices to crash.
As for the co-worker saying in 2018 that gas was cheaper under trump, that wasn’t even true, on average. The St Louis Fed website shows that gas prices were low during the last two full years of the Obama administration, and were no lower than that in 2017 and 2018.
@Eusebio: Yep, and the price of eggs, without a single mention (or apparent understanding) that a bird flu epidemic has led to the cull of 21 MILLION birds this year alone. We live in a deeply under-informed society.
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