Trump Wins
In the early hours of Wednesday, November 6th, Donald J. Trump was projected as the president of the 2024 United States Presidential Election, victorious in his campaign against current Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump’s electoral triumph will make him only the second individual in the country’s history to serve two non-consecutive terms after Grover Cleveland did so from 1885 to 1889 and 1893 to 1897. While virtually all pre-election polls suggested an incredibly tight race between Trump and Harris, the former’s win ended up being decisive, securing 312 electoral votes to Harris’ 226 – the most garnered by a winning candidate since Barack Obama in 2012. Trump was also finally successful in winning the popular vote for the third time of asking, after failing to do so against Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 – at the time of writing, his margin over Harris stands at just under 3 million votes. The unexpectedly wide margin of the election came as a shock to many who were expecting a long, drawn-out process such as the one that took place in 2020, where it took until the Saturday after Election Day for Joe Biden to be projected as the winner.
Trump’s appearances on podcasts, such as Joe Rogan’s, propelled support among younger demographics, courtesy of The Economic Times.
Turnout & Key Shifts Among Major Groups
While Donald Trump was able to retain the support he received in 2020 – he won over 74 million votes that time out, and has so far secured just over 76 million in this contest – Kamala Harris was not able to repeat the same exploits that Joe Biden did in 2020. While Biden won a historic and record-breaking 81 million votes, Harris has won only just over 73 million, signaling a dramatic drop-off in Democratic support over the past 4 years. This decline is perhaps most visible among Hispanic/Latino voters, who supported Biden by a margin of 65-32% against Trump in 2020. This time around, however, the margin plummeted to 52-46%, costing Harris millions of potentially decisive votes. Less pronounced, but still noticeable was the shrinkage of Democratic female support, which dropped slightly from 57-42% in 2020 to 53-45% in this month’s contest. Trump was also able to make sizeable gains among younger voters, particularly those in the 18-24 age range – while he lost that bracket by 31-65% in 2020, he was able to make up enough ground to claw it back to 42-54%, giving him millions of votes from a typically influential demographic. Trump’s surge in popularity among young voters has been largely attributed to his campaign strategy which targeted social media platforms and outlets popular with younger generations, particularly young men – in the months leading up to the election, he appeared on live streams and podcasts as ‘influencers’ such as Adin Ross, the Nelk Boys and Theo Von, all of which went viral and generated a significant amount of publicity. The Trump Campaign’s ‘viral strategy’ culminated a week and a half before the election, when he made an unexpected appearance on ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’, the most popular podcast on both Apple Music and Spotify.
Underestimation of Republican Support – Again
A common theme of recent American elections has been the drastic underestimation of Republican support in pre-election opinion polling, and this election was no exception. The final set of New York Times/Siena College polls had Trump and Harris ‘even’ – separated by less than 1% – in Pennsylvania, Nevada, and North Carolina. Trump ended up winning all three states – Pennsylvania by over 125,000 votes (1.8%), Nevada by nearly 50,000 votes (3%) and North Carolina by just under 100,000 votes (3%). The same set of polls had Harris up by a single percentage point in Wisconsin and Michigan, states which she went on to lose by 30,000 votes (0.8%) and 80,000 votes (1.4%), respectively. One widely accepted theory for this occurrence is a tendency of Trump supporters – and Republicans in general – to eschew pollsters and the media, deliberately refusing to answer polls, resulting in a disparity between polling results and election outcomes. Another potential explanation is the role of ‘late deciders’ – exit polls show that those who made up their mind in the days leading up to the election swayed 47-41% in the President Elect’s favor, and those who decided in the preceding weeks voted 54-42% in favor of Trump.
Assassination Attempts
One factor that cannot be underestimated in Trump’s electoral success is the successive attempts on his life that took place in July and September, respectively. The first, and by far the more high-profile of the assassination attempts took place at one of Trump’s campaign rallies in the town of Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13th – when he was grazed in the ear by a bullet fired from a nearby rooftop. The incident, particularly Trump’s immediate reaction – where he raised a fist to the air and shouted ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ after returning to his feet – unsurprisingly generated swaths of publicity, which went on practically uninterrupted until the following Sunday, July 21st, when President Joe Biden announced that he would be withdrawing from the campaign, replaced shortly thereafter by Vice President Kamala Harris.
What Happens Now?
As President-Elect, while Trump does not possess any actual power for the time being, he will continue to dominate the news cycle until he is re-inaugurated on January 20th, 2025. In the meantime, he has begun shaping the agenda for the opening months of his new administration, announcing a plethora of nominations for various cabinet positions, many of which have drawn immediate scrutiny and controversy.
Featured image: Donald Trump Delivers a Victory Speech After Being Projected President-Elect of the United States, courtesy of Flynn Nicholls of Newsweek.
