Us 2024 Presidential Election: Why Trump Won

Pollsters and pundits predicted that the US 2024 Presidential election would be close. Though the polls indicated a tie race, most polls had Vice President Kamara Harris slightly leading former President Donald Trump in the popular and electoral votes. But the polls were wrong. Trump won decisively. How and why he won? This article discusses why.

First, let us briefly indicate what each candidate stood for. Harris was for opportunity economy, abortion rights, transgender rights, and democracy. Trump meanwhile called for an improved economy, a tougher bolder control and immigration reform.

Unlike the Democratic Party, the Republican Party was divided under the Trump candidacy. Some former Republican politicians and supporters endorsed Harris. The 2024 election was also the most expensive contest. Both campaigns spent about $2 billion.

ELECTION RESULTS
Exit polls and election results showed that Trump increased his votes from 2020 election, as the following demographics indicate:

The statistics showed that Harris did not do well among women, Latino, young men, and older voters compared to 2020 when Biden won.

Trump won all of the seven swing states. Most surprising was that he won the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, which have been traditionally Democratic strongholds. Moreover, Harris was unable to win any of the Sun Belt states, particularly Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada, which Biden won in 2020. Trump won the electoral and the popular votes, “the first Republican to achieve this since Gorge W. Bush in 2004”. Harris received 226 electoral votes and 48.4% of the popular votes, while Trump got 312 electoral votes and 50% of the popular votes. Though Trump’s victory was not a landslide, it was conclusive as stated. Further, his party won both congressional houses with a razor thin majority in the House of Representatives.

Viewers, particularly analysts, attributed Harris loss to many factors, chief of which are the economy, immigration, transgender rights, Harris’ late entry into the race, her lack of an effective ground game, and the Democratic Party failure to change.

The Economy
Many viewers blamed the economy as a major factor for Harris’ loss. They said that the economy performed poorly under Biden, causing inflation and hardship. To them, according to CBS News Survey Director Anthony Sovanto, Trump last presidency improved the economy. They believed that Trump can better handle the economy than Harris.

However, as I discussed in my earlier paper, this view does not consider that the economy under Trump and Biden had successes and challenges. For example, while there was economic hardship, inflation under Biden drastically decreased to that of Trump. The economy experienced growth, according to recent reports. Also, though “historically the economy decides US presidential elections and the American people vote with their pocketbook”, Obama won reelection despite having “a failed economic record” since Franklin Roosevelt. In the 2024 election, Trump led 51% to Harris 41%, a 10% lead on the economy.

Immigration
Trump led on immigration. Most voters viewed that illegal immigration affects the economy and helps increase crimes. They felt that Biden’s immigration policy did little to improve immigration. They supported Trump’s vow to implement mass deportation of undocumented immigrants if elected.

Abortion/Transgender Rights
Harris championed the rights to abortion, that women should have the rights to their bodies. In opposition to the Supreme Court overturned of Roe V Wade decision, women helped the Democrats retained the Senate in the 2022 mid-term election. However, in the 2024 election, Harris did not get the women votes as expected. As the statistics above indicate, Trump increased his votes among women 13% from 2020. This broke her back.

Harris took transgender rights as a cause. This advocacy is the rights for men to change their gender to women. It calls for the government to pay for the surgery. Many voters do not want their daughters to compete with transgender females in sports. According to 60 Minutes, the Trump campaign spent $143M in ads against Harris as being out of touch with Americans on this issue.

Late Entrance into the Race
Many analysts indicated that Harris’ late entrance into the election as the Democratic standard bearer also caused her defeat. They stated that Biden should have gotten out of the race earlier to allow Harris enough time to canvass. Biden, after performing badly in the debate with Trump, remained as a candidate until in July after intense pressure to withdraw. They also said that Harris was not tested in the primaries. To them, the primaries would have strengthened her for the national election.

Nevertheless, Harris candidacy united the Democratic base and brought momentum and excitement among the Democratic Party. She erased Trump leads in the polls when Biden was in the race and led most part of the election. Additionally, she decisively won the debate with Trump.

Harris’ late entrance reminded me of the 1968 election when President Lyndon Johnson forcibly dropped out of the race. His Vice President Herbert Humphrey entered as the standard bearer of the Democratic Party. Humphrey did not participate in the primaries. Republican candidate Richard Nelson, who had lost in the election in 1960, defeated Humphrey. Nixon had 301 electoral votes to Humphrey’s 191. But the popular votes were very close. 43.4% for Nelson and 42.7% Humphrey. The Democrats blamed Johnson for not withdrawing sooner. But this was a different situation. America was involved in the Vietnam War. The American people opposed and demonstrated against the war. Also, the Johnson administration was unpopular.

Lack of an Effective Ground Game
As I stated in my last piece, ground game is one of the keys to an electoral victory. Obama won reelection in 2012 because of his ground game. Some viewers of the 2024 election indicated that the Harris campaign did not have an effective ground game. This opinion is surprising in that the campaign had 2505 staff and 358 field offices and thousands of volunteers in the swing states. Moreover, it reportedly raised about $1.5 billion for the election, far more than the Trump campaign. Ground game entails sending out campaign literatures to voters, knocking on doors, advertising and mobilizing and getting party members and supporters to the polls.

During the election, observers viewed the Harris campaign ground game was better than Trump’s, which outsourced its ground game to Elon Musk group. The Trump team did a good job in getting a substantial Latino and Asian American votes, according to reports. For instance, CNN reported that Trump received 46% among Latino voters, a 14% increase from 32% in 2020. Further, it got 39% from 34% among the Asian American votes. The increases are results of investments in these communities, especially in battleground states, said Helder Toste, former Republican National Committee Hispanic Outreach Director. Toste indicated that the outreach efforts started before the election, longtime ago. It included workers knocking on doors and giving party information to voters.

BBC exit polls showed Harris lost two points with Black voters, 13 points with Latino and 6 points with young voters under 30. Some analysts pointed out that the Democrats did not go to the polls as they should. According to Marian Zuhaib of the Associated Press, Democrats turnout dropped across the board, specifically in non-battleground states, paving the way for Trump resurgence”.

These problems could have been avoided had there been a more targeted strategy, James Zogby, a member of the Democratic National Committee commented, adding that “everything fell short.”

Failure to Change
Democratic Party officials pointed figures at each other since the defeat. The party left wing argues that the party did not go too far to the left to galvanize its base, while the centrist wind indicates that the party pushes to the left too far scaring away moderate voters in the swing states. Amie Parnes of the Hill’s Headlines indicated that Senator Bernie Sanders, a key member of the Democratic Party progressive wind, said the party left its core group and verse versa. “It should not come as a great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find the working class has abandoned them, adding that while the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people wanted change. And they are right”, Sanders said.

Democratic strategist Rodell Mollineau called for party self-definition. “We need to have an honest conversation about who we think we are and what we stand for versus what the American people think we are and stand for because there is obviously a communication divide here, and we need to address it”, he expressed.

While the party as a whole thinks Harris did her best considering the situation, some members faulted her choice of Vice President Running-mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. They felt that he was ineffective, saying Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro would have been must better.

It appeared Harris had a difficult decision; choosing Shapiro, a Jewish, could have gained support from the Jewish group, but it could have shown Harris siding for Israel in its battle with Hamas. On the other hand, Walz had the support of the unions, who represent working class Americans. She may have felt that Walz would have brought the progressives to her campaign. However, judging from the election results, choosing Shapiro would not have made any difference. Pennsylvania went Republican. Bob Casey, a three-term Pennsylvania Democratic senator, lost to Republican challenger David McCornich. Remember that Casey has a long history in Pennsylvania politics. His father was a governor of the state for many years.

Nevertheless, the Democratic Party encountered similar blame pointing when it lost three elections in a row from 1980-1988. After that, the party met in Washington DC and set a new path which brought in Bill Clinton, who was then governor of Arkansas. Though he was nationally unknown, Clinton brought energy into the party. He won the 1992 and 1996 elections by a landslide.

A factor that was not known during the 2024 election was that the Harris campaign knew the Vice President was down in its internal polling. Yet public polls showed differently. David Plouffe, a senior advisor to Harris, said after the election in an interview with “Pod Save America” that the VP was trailing Trump. “We were behind”, he stated, adding “it surprised people because public polls in the late September and early October showed us with leads that we never saw.”

Other analysts who joined Plouffe in the interview indicated that Harris refused to distance with Biden because of her loyalty to the president. She knew the economy was bad, but she “resisted pressure to criticize Biden, arguing that vice presidents rarely break from their presidents”, said Stefanie Cutter, another official of the campaign.

Plouffe stated that these challenges made the task difficult, despite the campaign making the race competitive.

Other Elements
While the above factors caused Harris’ defeat, other elements may have contributed also to the loss. They are: Trump’s personality and the un-readiness to elect a woman president.

Trump’s Personality
This section of this article discusses Trump’s personality and how it enables him to win the 2024 election.

There are many studies and reports on Trump’s personality and how it turned voters to support and vote for him. He started as a successful real estate executive and became a multi-millionaire. After becoming a reality TV producer, he entered politics and defeated well known Republican politicians in the Republican primaries and alternately won the national election in 2016.

Ben Goldsmith and Lars Moen conducted a study of Trump’s personality in June 2024 and revealed that his followers and admirers have become a cult, which has unquestionable loyalty to him. The cult sees him as a messiah who can deliver them from their problems and protect them from internal and external enemies. In his speech at the 2016 Republican Convention, Trump told the American people that “I am your voice”, and “I alone can fix it”. Though he came on the national scene without political experience, he surprisingly won the election that year.

“Trump’s followers are often referred to as a personality cult”, said Goldsmith and Moen. He exhibits ultra-nationalism and at the same time preaches divisive rhetoric and fear tactics for support of his beliefs. Authoritarian leaders such as Bento Mussolini of Italy demonstrated these characteristics resulting in fascism. In the 2024 election, Harris and others classified him as a fascist.

Trump’s followers believe in him, believe in his opinions and do what he tells them. For example, they believed his view that he did not lose the 2020 election but his enemy stole it. Therefore, he instructed them to storm the capitol.

The study concludes that Trump has what other politicians lack: “A highly loyal and motivated base of supporters – his personality cult.”

Dan McAdams wrote in the Atlantic in 2016 of Trump’s personality and concluded that Trump has an extraordinary persona that entails aggressiveness, boldness, anger, and does not think twice or consider the collateral damage of his decision. He says what on his mind and does not fake what he says. People admire this personality, according to McAdams.

Other studies state that Trump is unpredictable; he follows no advice and does what he feels like. Some Americans see him as the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan and the rebirth of conservatism. Reagan was president from 1981-1989. Before, he served as California governor. Prior to becoming governor, he was a cowboy movie star with a gunslinger mentality. While others viewed him not being bright, some considered him bold, aggressive, charismatic, and a great communicator. His presidency forced Iran to free the American hostages. He considered the Soviet Union an evil empire and helped dismantle the Union: in a speech, he commanded Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev to bring down the Berlin Wall. He bombed Khadafy upon taking office. By so doing, supporters and fans viewed him making America fearful and great again.

Unlike Reagan, sometimes, Trump is not coherent in speech and is unhinged. But like Reagan followers, Trump’s cult believes in “Trumpism”, the thought to make “America great again”, the tightening of American borders, the implementation of strict immigration policy to rid America of immigrants considered criminals and enemies of the state, and the notion of stronger tariffs to protect American economy.

Trump’s cultist power increases his self-confidence. In 2016, he boasted that if he walked in New York City, a large crowd would follow him. He has this aura, a magnet that draws people to him. In 2024, after two failed assassination attempts, his followers and supporters claimed that God ordained him to lead America and would succeed. No one can stop him.

In 2016, I wrote that had he lost the election, he would have started a movement, which preaches the greatness of America and the return of the nation to its rightful owners. Such a movement would do anything possible to make him president.

Trump blames powerless minority groups for poor economic conditions and crime increase. The accused usually are vulnerable immigrant groups. In the 2016 election, he vowed to construct a wall at the Mexico-American border and planned to deport Muslim immigrants. In 2024, he falsely accused Haitian immigrants of killing and eating neighbor cats and dogs. He promised, if elected, to carry out mass deportation of illegal immigrants. Though mass deportation would increase food costs since most illegal immigrants work on American farms and replacing them would raise farm labor costs, his supporters did not see the inflationary factor of the pledge and cheered the promise.

Cult leaders in the past behaved similarly. For instance, Adolf Hitler blamed the Jews for Germany's problems. He and his Nazi Party members or cult followers implemented a mission of hatred against the Jews, which led to the mass deportation of Jews and the Genocide, which later became the Holocaust. To them, the Jews were foreigners, immigrants of an inferior race.

In the 1920s in America, a group called the Eugenicists engaged in an anti-immigration propaganda. They “felt that people of lesser race or social origins would contaminate American Society if they entered the US. The group effort resulted in the Immigration Act of 1924, known as the Johnson-Reed Act or the National Origins Act. It tried to "control the number of "Unfit" individuals entering the country by lowering the number of immigrants allowed to fifty percent of what it had been previously." Eugenicists included powerful politicians who motivated the group.

In the election, Trump used the economy and immigration together with fear and divisive statements as weapons. This stance attracted older, rural, and non-college degree Americans, particularly White men to Trump, thus helping him to win. Moreover, as in 2016, angelical or evangelical Christians played a critical role in Trump’s victory. According to Ryan Foley of the Christian Post, self-identified Christians in the 2024 election, voted for Trump, receiving 56% of their votes, which made a difference in the race. Harris got more votes from non-Christians.

Also, the LA Times reported that 4 out of 5 Evangelical Christians voted for Trump. They and the Catholics supported his anti-abortion policy, for they viewed abortion murders the unborn babies. In 2016, they gave him 81 percent of their votes. The Times reported that during the 2024 election, “Trump promised them that he will be their protector against a range of supposed enemies, to advance white evangelical fever dreams of Christian nationalism”.

A study published in Politics and Religion after the 2016 election revealed that White evangelical Christians believed that Trump’s presidency was God’s plan. Moreover, a study published in PLOS One shows that Trump’s supporters also draw to his narcissistic, grandiose and aggressive traits. Dan McAdams reported that Trump’s aggressive behavior may have started when the president-elect was a child. By Trump’s account, the former president “punched his second-grade music teacher, giving him a black eye.” This behavior makes him to be bold, vulgar, and thin-skinned. Further, research in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin shows that masculine insecurity and aggressive politics also led men to support Trump, because they felt he could better protect them. Indeed, “men who feel their masculinity is threatened are more likely to endorse aggressive policies and support leaders like Trump”, the study says.

Un-Readiness to Elect a Woman President
Many analysts do not discuss why US women presidential candidates have not won the presidency. This writer hypothesizes that the main reason could be prejudice, that the country is not ready to elect a female president. Hilary Clinton and Kamara Harris are uniquely qualified but lost.

In 1972, New York Congressperson Shirley Chisholm became the first African American presidential candidate of a major political party. In fact, she was the first female presidential candidate in the US in modern times. However, her candidacy did not get serious attention during the primaries. Some viewers thought that she was out of her mind to run for president. They said that a woman cannot be president.

In 1984, Vice President Walter Mondale selected New York Congresswoman Geraldine Farraro as his vice president standard bearer for the Democratic Party. Many felt that the selection was an act of desperation, for the party would lose the election. Ronald Regan defeated the ticket by a landslide.

Twenty-four years later, in 2008, Senator John McClain picked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice president running-mate. Like in 1984, they lost the election. The public viewed that she was not qualified.

However, in 2016, Hilary Clinton, a lawyer, former senator, and secretary of state, ran as a candidate but lost to an inexperienced candidate.

Kamara Harris became the first female Vice President of America. Though like Clinton, she is qualified and her candidacy brought excitement and momentum, she lost. If qualification is not an issue, why did Harris and Clinton lose?

Let us look at perception and prejudice. Race is out because Obama, a Black, won twice. But there was the prejudice that Blacks in America were incapable of leading. It took hundreds of years to know and accept that the perception was faulty. Similarly, women were viewed as second-class citizens whose duties were limited to cooking, childbearing, and household chores.

Women's suffrage occurred in 1919 and was ratified in 1920 with the 19th Amendment, giving them the right to vote in America. That ”victory took decades of agitation and protest” starting in the 1840s. The conservative population felt that they should not participate in politics. Thus from the 1840s to 1920, rural White men controlled politics and elections in the US. To date, they can almost decide presidential elections. Hence, though women can now participate, a large segment of the population still feels that women should not become presidents. This brings us back to the study regarding masculinity. Perhaps, White men feel threatened by a woman's presidency. But one may argue that White men elected a woman vice president. Yes, but not for president. They voted for Biden, a male, for president.

However, just as a Black man became president, a woman would but not now. Seemingly, the public is not ready to have a female president. Maybe that will change later.

Trump's election will give him more power. With the Republican Party controlling both houses and a conservative Supreme Court that granted him immunity, he can do whatever he pleases as president. On the other hand, he could use that power to become a better president, since this will be his last term, and he would want to leave and be remembered with a positive legacy.

About the author: Dagbayonoh Kiah Nyanfore II is a Liberian national who has lived in the US for over 40 years. He is a political commentator specializing in elections. He has covered elections in America and Liberia since 2012. The above article is a follow-up to his piece, entitled, “The 2024 US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: WHO WILL WIN?” https://thenewdawnliberia.com/the-us-presidential-election-2024-who-will-win/

Nyanfore is a graduate of Georgetown University in international affairs and worked with Bill Clinton’s 1992 transition team in international communications. He was a special assistant in the office of former Congressman Les Aspen. He is a writer and has published over 60 articles, including a forthcoming book, “Victory over Difficulties”. He can be reached at [email protected] or his website at www.dagbayonohkiahnyanfore.com.