I have already penned for Current some brief, modest thoughts on the 2024 election. I would like to add, however, one more extensive election postmortem.
There is much to say about this election but let me confine this piece to one subject. In the wake of the results of the election many are calling it a “blowout,” a “landslide,” and a “realignment.” None of this is true.
First, let’s consider why some might make this claim. Trump surprised nearly everyone not only by winning the election (not that big of a surprise) but also by winning a majority of the popular vote (very surprising). I had always thought that Trump had a hard ceiling of support somewhere in the high 40s. The strong disapproval of Trump, I thought, made it nearly impossible for him to secure half of the popular vote. That was wrong. Trump’s ability to win this kind of popular support is impressive, as is his winning of every swing state.
The same can be said for the breadth of Trump’s win. He increased his vote totals from 2020 within virtually every demographic, including Blacks and Hispanics, the latter of which he almost won outright. He won those who make under $100,000 and under $50,000. He seems to have mitigated his loses among women while dominating the male vote. The Democratic coalition was little more than those who listen to NPR plus Black women.
As winning all swing states suggests, Trump’s victory was also geographically impressive. Indeed, Trump increased his percentage of the vote in every single state, only losing ground in Washington, D.C. Deep blue states such as New York, New Jersey, and Illinois saw double-digit swings toward Trump.
Is this a landslide? That is a term of art rather than a matter of arithmetic certitude. Still, when one thinks of “landslide” one thinks of Lyndon Johnson in 1964 or Richard Nixon in 1972, each of whom beat his opponent by over twenty percentage points. Or think of Ronald Reagan in 1984, defeating Walter Mondale by eighteen points and winning every state but Mondale’s home state (Minnesota) and Washington, D.C. Trump’s 312 electoral votes and roughly 2.5% popular victory pales in comparison to these triumphs.
To be sure, Republicans likely have also gained both chambers of Congress. Again, though, gaining four seats in the Senate, giving Republicans fifty-three seats, does not inspire awe. By comparison, in 1980, Reagan’s victory over Jimmy Carter came with a net pickup of twelve Senate seats for Republicans. In 2008, Barak Obama added eight seats to the Democratic caucus in his defeat of John McCain. Further, if Republicans gain the House (at this writing likely, but not certain), it will be by a similar razor-thin margin by which they held it pre-election. Yes, call the 2024 election a solid Republican win, but it hardly qualifies as a landslide.
And a realignment? Highly premature. The political science nerd definition of a realignment is “a deep and sustained shift in partisan loyalties.” Deep means it isn’t just a few people altering their voting behavior, it’s a whole booming bunch of them. Sustained means such a change isn’t election specific. It is something that sustains over time. A permanent switch, or as permanent as anything gets in politics.
Let me concede that the shift toward Trump was “deep,” although I think that’s an exaggeration. What is clearly questionable is the “sustained.” One election does not make a realignment. Like recessions, realignments are only visible in the rearview mirror. You have to be in it for a while to recognize the phenomenon.
The main reason to be cautious about throwing around the realignment claim is that likely the voter movement we saw in 2024 is Trump specific. It is likely that a great deal of the movement of working-class voters and minority voters toward Trump is particular to him. To really make the 2024 election a portend of realignment, Republicans must sustain these gains. Much of Trump’s appeal is from his big, brash personality. That isn’t replicable. Republicans will have to both adjust some traditional GOP policy views (e.g., free trade, hawkish foreign policy) and find a compelling personality to carry that message. This is not impossible, but difficult. The 2024 election might be an electoral vindication of Donald Trump, but it isn’t clear that such vindication transfers to the Republican party in general.
The invocation of Barak Obama above should serve as a cautionary tale for Trump supporters. Obama won that race by seven points, with 365 electoral votes. As mentioned, his party added eight seats to the Senate and also twenty-one seats to the Democratic House majority. By any measure Obama’s victory was more impressive than Trump’s. People at that time talked about a Democratic realignment, with Obama as a transformation political figure comparable to Franklin Roosevelt.
What happened? Obama’s party got shellacked (Obama’s term) in the 2010 mid-term elections. Republicans won a massive sixty-three seats in the House and seven in the Senate. By the end of Obama’s term, Republicans controlled the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate. Spanning Obama’s presidency, Republicans had gained over 1,000 state legislative seats across the country and held thirty-four governor seats at its end. Mr. Realignment had led his party to its worst electoral position in a century. As every successful Roman general was reminded, all glory is fleeting.
Trump and his supporters must avoid the mistake all too many presidents make, namely overreading their mandate. Joe Biden did this after the 2020 election. He came to believe that he was not simply a transitional figure, someone who main value was in defeating Trump, but someone who could bring about consequential change. That was a mistake. Leaving aside COVID, it was not the policies of the Trump era that were repudiated in 2020; it was Donald Trump. Biden’s desire to make history blew up in his face.
Trump should not make the same mistake. He has no “mandate to lead.” Presidents win with what we call a “coalition of minorities.” In other words, Donald Trump didn’t win the presidency because of this or that policy proposal. People vote for presidents for a myriad of reasons. They will often vote for someone in spite of, not because of, particular candidate policy proposals. A voter might like Trump’s views on trade, but not Ukraine. Further, many voters were not voting for Trump as much as they were voting against Biden/Harris. A successful candidate builds a coalition out of the dozens of reasons behind people’s votes. You can rarely say “the American people voted for x policy proposal.” Victorious candidates make a mistake if they think their election is electoral permission to enact their policy views tout court. In this election, for example, it is fair to say that voters want a stronger border policy. That does not mean they want Donald Trump’s border proposals unvarnished.
It is hard to believe. Four years after the 2020 election, we are about to inaugurate Donald Trump president again. A healthier country likely would have moved on from his brand of politics, permanently punishing him for his damnable actions in the wake of his 2020 defeat. But here we are. There are some signs that Trump may have sobered somewhat in the ensuing years. But only somewhat.
Sit down, buckle up, and get ready for another wild ride.
Excellent, just spot on in its observations.
I won’t disagree with your “a healthier country” comment, but I wonder if folk–the disappointed ones–aren’t being tempted to over interpret that aspect, too. Swing voters, late deciders, the relatively unengaged, all swung to Trump at the end, because they wanted whatever the alternative to Biden-Harris was (mainly for economic reasons). Trump was the only alternative on hand, and that’s the fault not of the country, but of the Republicans. I agree they should have taken a broader conception of what was at stake, but that’s saying I wish they were different kinds of voters and different kinds of people. I wish they knew what the Federalist Papers are, eg, and maybe had read some. Which isn’t a wrong aspiration for me to have for them–it’s just unrealistic. Anyway, to those who are saying this election indicates something deeply distressing about “America,” I say chill a little. Let’s see what America does in ’26 and ’28 before we read it it’s last rites.
At least of those of us in the Democratic coalition who listen to NPR/PBS heard about Trump’s misinformation/disinformation.