As the FT put it: “In the end, it wasn’t even close. A presidential election long forecast to dance on a knife’s edge very quickly turned out to be a rout for Donald Trump.”
Trump polled 73.4m votes or 50.7% of the those who voted, while Harris polled 60m or 47.7% of the vote. Third party candidates mustered just 1.6%. Trump’s 4.3m lead was more than Biden had in 2020, or Hillary Clinton had over Trump in 2016.
Trump’s vote did not rest on small margins in a handful of swing states, as was the case when he won in 2016. Instead, he gained support across the electoral map in states both red (Republican) and blue (Democrat). Even in his birthplace of New York state, one of the bluest strongholds in the country, Trump winnowed a 23-point gap down to 11.
The biggest caveat to Trump’s voting victory is that contrary to the usual hype of a ‘massive voter turnout’, fewer Americans eligible to vote bothered to do so compared to 2020. Then over 158m voted, this time the vote was down to 143m. The voter turnout of those eligible fell to 58.2% from the high of 65.9% in 2020.
Around 40% of Americans registered to vote did not do so. And the number of Americans who failed to register rose to 19m from 12m in 2020. So, although Trump got 51% of those who voted, he actually got only 28% support of Americans of voting age. Three out of four Americans did not vote for Trump. The real winner of the election was (yet again) the ‘no vote’ party. Indeed, Trump polled fewer votes in 2024 than he did in 2020. But Harris lost around 11m votes compared to Biden in 2020.
In my analysis of the 2020 election, I concluded that “Biden won because America’s ethnic minorities overcame the white majority. Biden won because younger Americans voted for Biden sufficiently to overcome Trump majorities among older voters. Biden won because working class Americans voted for him in sufficient numbers to overcome the votes of the small town business-people and rural areas.”
This time none of those things happened. This time, the vote majorities that Biden got in 2020 among ethnic minority voters, women, young people, city dwellers and college graduates weakened sharply for Harris, while Trump’s support among white males (and females) without college degrees rose by more than enough. Indeed, in just about every demographic group, Trump gained from 2020.
The majority of America’s working class did not vote for Trump. For a start, a large percentage did not vote at all and non-voters would mainly be those with lower incomes and education qualifications or unemployed.
According to exit polling in ten key states, Harris took 53% of the vote from voters with a household income of $30,000 or less (the poorest income earners) while Trump took 45%. While Harris had a majority among those earning more than $95,000 dollars a year (the college-educated ‘better off’), the vote was more or less split with those earning $50-95k.
As for the organised working class, Harris took 54% of the vote of trade unionists, while Trump still took 44% – but trade union membership is now quite small in the electorate. Young people made up 16% of the electorate but many did not vote. Of those young people who did vote, Trump got a majority among men (58%-38%) and Harris got it among young women.
But here is the rub. The Harris campaign was based primarily on what is called ‘identity politics’. She called for support from black voters against Trump’s open racism. She called for support among Hispanic voters against Trump’s attacks on immigrants; she called for support from women against Trump’s reduction of abortion rights. And she got majorities with these groups – but much less than in 2020. Harris lost support among women, her majority falling from 57 per cent in 2020 to 54 per cent. These majorities were overcome by the increased majority of male voters supporting Trump in this election.
Harris lost the election heavily because the Democrats campaigned on the identity issues that concerned voters much less, while Trump campaigned on what mattered most to Americans in 2024: inflation, the cost of living and what is perceived as uncontrolled immigration.
Three out of four Americans who said that inflation caused them and their family severe hardship in the last year voted for Trump. And as I have argued in previous posts, the perception that average American households have suffered a loss in living standards in the last four years is no myth, contrary to the views of mainstream economists.
Between 2020-2023, real pretax income growth for the bottom 50% of income earners in the US was basically zero. Prices of goods and services are up over 20% since the end of the pandemic and for basic foodstuffs it is even higher. Moreover, the huge hike in interest rates by the Federal Reserve to ‘control’ inflation drove up mortgage rates, insurance premiums, car lease payment and credit card bills.
Inflation and the drop in living standards for many Americans was blamed by sufficient numbers of voters on the Biden-Harris administration. As in many other countries, incumbent governments that presided over the post-pandemic period have been ousted. Indeed, it is the first time since the beginning of universal suffrage that all the incumbent parties in developed countries have lost vote share. The Democrats are the latest – Germany next.
In 2020, Trump was the incumbent and was blamed for his disastrous handling of the COVID pandemic. But in 2024, the Biden-Harris administration has been blamed for the failure to deal with inflation and for not stopping immigration. Many Americans saw ‘uncontrolled immigration’ as causing a loss of jobs and rising crime – against all the evidence. Nevertheless, this irrational fear had traction, especially in small towns and rural areas where there are few immigrants visible.
Biden and Harris crowed about a vibrant, healthy, low unemployment US economy, better than anywhere else. Sufficient American voters were not convinced of this message coming from the so-called ‘liberal elite’, given their own experience. They reckoned they were losing out because of high prices and costs, precarious jobs and uncontolled immigration that threatened their livelihoods, while the rich and educated in Wall Street and in mega hi-tech companies made billions.
Of course, Trump won’t change any of that – on the contrary, his pals and financial backers are a bunch of rogue billionaires who look to gain yet more riches from cuts in taxes and deregulation of their activities.
But elections are just a snapshot of public opinion at one moment – nothing stands still.
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