Pollsters predicted a cliffhanger election. Americans gave a thumping verdict for Trump. TOI draws on information from our US correspondent and a range of American news sources to identify the factors behind the numbers, beyond the headlines.
It’s (again) the economy: CNN put out a US map that tracked wage growth vs inflation rate across all counties. Across the country, inflation had risen faster than wages. That’s a picture worth a thousand economists’ analyses. Never mind that US growth, per latest data, was excellent. Most ordinary Americans weren’t feeling good. Nearly 75% felt the country was headed in the wrong direction and the economy was in bad shape. Trump’s promise of hiking tariffs and bringing factories back to US went down well across ethnic groups. And the wealthier voters liked his promise of big tax cuts.
Keep them out: An AP post-poll analysis pointed out immigration was an issue 5x more important in 2024 than 2020. Even many Latino voters – the biggest immigrant bloc – shared the sentiment. Per CNN, Trump got 54% of Latino men’s vote compared to 36% in 2020. Immigrants don’t want hundreds of thousands coming in, mostly illegally, even if those piling up at the border look like them. It’s the ‘shut-the-door-behind-me’ syndrome. Trump was incendiary on immigration, promising the biggest mass deportation of illegals. It worked across social blocs.
He’s our man, said men: All post-results exit poll data shows Trump winning the men’s vote by 10 points (and losing the women’s vote by 10 points). But Trump, unlike Republicans before him in recent elections, won substantial votes from Latino and Black men. An NYT analysis hypothesised that American men liked his ‘I don’t give a f***’ attitude. A Slate commentator said the result showed “a lot of men” wanted to “reassert their dominance”. The Trump campaign also got less-educated men to vote in large numbers, in contrast to their usual polling day lethargy. Plus, low-income men reckoned he’d make the economy work for them. Finally, as a CNN analysis showed, abortion rights weren’t a decisive factor, unlike in 2022 midterms. Harris won voters who put abortion high on the agenda by 8 points – but 4 years back, when Roe vs Wade was still in force, Biden had won that group by 38 points.
White votes, ‘uninspiring’ Kamala, woke ‘excesses’ help Trump win
Right-wing, Christian, white country: Trump won the white vote by 11 points, per exit polls. That’s not as surprising as this, as NYT pointed out: He won Florida by 13 points, compared to 3 points in 2020, and even in states Harris won, like New York and Virigina, Trump votes moved up substantially, by 13 points and 6 points. NYT said, with justification, “the entire country moved to the right”.
And within that shift, the Christian vote, especially the evangelical vote, played a big role. They came out in big numbers for Trump. In this round at least, the election has gone to Americans who think the country should predominantly be white and Christian. Democrats failed to read how this culture war was playing out – Trump read it right.
Kamala who? Trump got a big bump from general voter lukewarmness towards Harris. Maybe she got too little time, because Biden hung on for so long. But she was never inspirational, unlike Obama, and never, ever got a committed fan club, unlike Trump, who could say anything at all, and still command support. Even neutral commentators noted Harris’ speeches were like ‘word salads’. Minus charisma, it’s tough to win American presidential polls. She sounded far saner than Trump but, and this was key, far more boring than him. Also, even if unfairly, Harris couldn’t break many Americans’ belief that a woman can’t govern the world’s mightiest country.
Wake up wokes, America’s fed up: Trump campaign, per NYT, spent more than $65m on anti-trans ads. This was because Republicans wagered, correctly as it turns out, that many Americans were sick of what they saw as the ‘excesses’ of the woke brigade. Trans issues – whether trans people can use men’s or women’s bathrooms as per their ‘gender-identity’ or whether trans people identifying as women can compete in women’s sporting events – were seen by more than a few ordinary Americans as extremist identity politics. An NYT analysis argued even some Democrats thought the party had gone too far left on these culture issues. Trump’s instincts on this proved spot on.