Trump Again: Analysis of the Vote and Possible Scenarios

da: Redazione
22 January 2025

Last week, U.S. citizens elected the 47th President of the United States. The voters chose the well-known and controversial Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump, who previously served as president from 2016 to 2020. For the Democratic Party, which decided to back outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris, the defeat is quite severe and highlights significant challenges in garnering support among Americans. But what are the causes of Trump’s victory? What will the future scenarios be, and what impact will the new presidency have globally? These are the questions that the Meseuro editorial team posed to Paolo Stohlman, a PhD candidate in Political Science specializing in U.S. politics, who analyzed the entire election campaign and the final vote on November 5th in detail.

What factors contributed to Donald Trump’s victory? Many! Here are some important data points that illustrate the extent of Trump’s victory:

  • In predominantly Hispanic counties, Trump gained +13.3% compared to 2020.

  • In counties with more than 40% college graduates, Trump gained +4.5% compared to 2020.

  • +10% among 18-29 year-olds.

  • +8% among the Black community.

  • +6% among women aged 18-45.

  • In Miami-Dade County, where Clinton had a +30% lead in 2016, Trump won by +12% in 2024.

  • An urban shift to the right: +12% in Brooklyn, +11% in Chicago, +9% in San Francisco, +12% in Boston.

The 2024 election campaign was not only a competition between the two candidates but also between the political priorities of the American people. In the final weeks, it became clear that these elections would also be a referendum on four issues: cost of living and immigration for the Trump campaign; state of democracy and abortion for the Harris campaign. In the end, it seems that James Carville’s motto, “It’s the economy, stupid!” stands at the top. Americans have never recovered from the double shock of COVID-19 and inflation, which only exacerbated an already oppressive “crisis of affordability”: immense difficulties for a large part of the population in obtaining what is considered a promise of American life. A house costs +47% more than in 2020, interest rates on medium-sized loans and credit cards are +40%, and normal expenses are +28% higher. Moreover, the palpable sense of social mobility that constitutes the American model seemed to elude many. As we all know, the U.S. economy is growing strongly and unemployment is low, but the Biden administration’s choice to keep repeating this fact when 45% of Americans said they were worse off economically than in 2019 was a huge blow to the Harris campaign. Additionally, the cross-cutting nature of a problem like inflation was a significant advantage. There are Americans concerned about the state of democracy, pro-Ukraine Americans, and Americans for transgender rights—but all Americans feel the weight of the cost of living. This allowed Trump to both strengthen the party’s base, namely lower-middle-class whites, and extend it to the rest of this class’s population, regardless of age, ethnicity, and increasingly, geographic location.

CC: The Economist

However, in my opinion, this does not explain Trump’s extraordinary victory. In fact, the Republican candidate not only surpassed the threshold of 270 electoral votes but, perhaps even more indicative, also received almost 5 million more votes than Kamala Harris. It is only the second time since the end of the Cold War that a Republican has won the majority of the votes. Trump had the shrewdness to present himself as both the candidate of change and the return to a better time, leaving the electorate with a broad interpretation of the promises of a Trump 47. With a delicate strategic ambiguity, Trump was simultaneously the pro-life candidate, but at the same time the only Republican perceived as pro-choice; he is the defender of the dignity of artisanal work and SMEs, but also the first among the bitcoin bros; in favor of greater regulations on food and pharmaceutical products, welcoming the community skeptical of traditional medicine, but also the best friend of big oil and nuclear; critical of the Biden administration for handling the crisis in Gaza, but also a friend and supporter of Netanyahu. From abortion to immigration to geopolitics, the promises were many and often disconnected or contradictory, but the narrative was unique: a promise of change, an improvement in living conditions, and a total and unique distancing from the status quo. Thus, Trump proved capable of welcoming people from any socioeconomic, ethnic, and religious background. In urban, suburban, and rural areas. American society is full of contradictions, and he embraced them. Last but not least, he did it where the unclaimed votes were. Cleverly using new media and heterodox information sources, Trump reached an audience that was not only broad but disconnected, that is, unreachable in any other way. From Joe Rogan to Logan Paul, from appearances at the UFC to advertisements before, after, and during football games, Trump understood that his base was extendable and made it grow. Harris’s decision to stay mainly on traditional media turned out to be one of the worst choices of this campaign. Here, more than in any other factor of this campaign, it was seen how Trump was the candidate of change, reinforcing the elitist and anti-democratic image of the Democratic Party.

 

CC: NYT

How does Trump’s victory change the future prospects of the Republican and Democratic parties in view of the upcoming elections? With this victory, it becomes impossible to interpret the Trump phenomenon as simply an anomaly in the long history of American politics. Trump had to win these elections: after the narrow victory in 2016, where he won only the electoral vote and not the popular vote, Trump has essentially only lost elections. The Republican Party lost in 2018, 2020, and 2022, despite its total devotion to the former president, and began to doubt the Trump strategy (see the 2024 primaries). Not anymore. From Tuesday’s results, it is clear that the Trump effect works not only among already conservative whites but across the board – a challenge the Republican Party has been trying to overcome for decades. If he already had a hegemonic influence on the party, now the party is his. What this will mean in terms of implemented policies is unknown – too many campaign promises have left much confusion about what the actual governance of the country will be. The real question is what happens after Trump? The most ‘Trumpian’ candidates lost in states he himself won. Kari Lake, the Republican Senate candidate, failed to beat the Democratic candidate in Arizona. Mark Robinson lost the race to become governor of North Carolina. For the Democrats, it is a return to 2016, but even more defeated. After a legislatively impressive but politically disappointing administration, it is clear that the party is significantly disconnected from the will of the American people. They lost not only because their political ideas were less convincing (or completely absent), but mainly because they lack credibility. The Democratic Party cannot present itself simultaneously only as the anti-Trump, or worse, as the only right choice. It needs a vision of prosperity and national security that can compete with MAGA. Surely, the solution is not to campaign with Liz Cheney! It will take a lot of ‘soul-searching’ to rediscover the raison d’être of a party that has long relied on the assumed vote of marginalized categories, from the lower class to Hispanics. But as Senator Bernie Sanders said: ‘Will the big financial interests and overpaid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn anything from this election campaign? Probably not.’ How did Trump win all the swing states? What was the probability of this happening? Polls in the week before the elections in all the swing states indicated that the candidates were essentially at a stalemate: 50%-50%. Considering the margin of error of the polls, which is always about 3%, three times the difference between the two candidates, the probability that one of the two would win all seven swing states was 60% (according to the 538 model). In the models of the election forecaster loved and hated by all, Nate Silver, out of 80,000 simulations, 20% resulted in a ‘sweep,’ that is, victory in all swing states, for Trump – while 14% of the time it resulted in a sweep for Harris. I believe he succeeded due to issues of transversality. In the days before, I had identified 7 counties that represented the demographic and socioeconomic composition of their swing state, and in all seven cases, those counties voted for Trump with a margin similar to that of the state. For me, this indicates the broad pro-Trump coalition that was created in 2024.

CC: Channel 4

What can we expect now for the fate of the Democrats? Will there be a contest for the party leadership and on what issues? There will undoubtedly be a period of ‘finger-pointing,’ that is, assigning blame. These are numerous and deep, and first among all is President Biden. With this defeat, Biden has definitively ruined his legacy – already compromised – and will be remembered, at least in the near future, as the one who made a Democratic victory impossible. Kamala Harris will also have to respond to several criticisms, first among them the choice not to distance herself much from the Biden administration, which was and is glaringly unpopular. As for the future, it seems impossible for a party that has focused almost exclusively on the ‘anti-Trump’ message to turn the page and build a real political proposal for the country. The broad internal coalition that was created around this disdain for Trump will now disintegrate, leaving a void that must be filled with a new political message and a new identity, perhaps more populist, centered on the economic and social needs of the middle and lower class. I believe, however, that the contents of the new proposal are perhaps less important than the creation of a solid political identity – founded on a vision of American society that goes beyond the infinity of choices and the relativism of ‘you be you.’ I imagine there will be a broader debate on the need for a generational change, and with this a strengthening of the more protectionist tendencies of the Democratic Party.

Many consider Trump as a bearer of an isolationist vision. But what will be the real effects of his re-election on global geopolitical balances? Million dollar question. Trump has presented an approach to geopolitics rather than specific positions on the various geopolitical fronts of today. The use of the war in Ukraine in the election campaign as a cardinal example of the overpresence of the United States in the world suggests that this is the emerging administration’s geopolitical priority. Without a doubt, the political message that the American people’s choice gives to the rest of the world is one of closing in on themselves and general disinterest in what happens elsewhere, starting with European and Pacific allies. Much will depend on the choice of Secretary of State (a Ric Grenell indicates strong isolationism, while Marco Rubio would be softer), the National Security Advisor, and the Secretary of Defense. It will then be interesting to see what relationship he will have with international organizations, including the IMF and the World Bank, especially at a time of double crisis, where global south states are facing climate change and sovereign debt simultaneously.

But above all, we can expect a strong economic repercussion: both regarding Trump’s choices on tariffs with China and the rest of the world, and regarding the deportation of about 15 million migrant workers in the USA. The possibility that these policies will lead to a new inflationary cycle in the United States has long been highlighted by economists from various countries and schools, and the consequences on other major central banks, from the ECB to the Bank of Japan, would be severely damaging. Certainties are few, but it seems certain that we are facing a tumultuous period.

And how could the relationship between the USA and the EU change during his second term? In the European debate, what is being talked about is a clear and vocal decision by Trump to detach from the transatlantic alliance, and it is certainly true: Trump is not a big fan of either NATO or the European integration project. But here it is useful to clarify that the real drama for Europeans is not so much being the object of Trump’s aggressive rhetoric, but being completely forgotten by the American policy-making bubble. What is heard in the corridors of the Capitol, and here I refer to both parties, is widespread disinterest from the American political class in what happens in Europe, from a political, economic, and military point of view. To have a say in Washington, Europe must do a ‘scale policy’ job, it cannot think of interacting as individual states with Trump in the hope of obtaining some more trade agreements. All this is even more true when we consider the current political situation of several EU countries: from the fragile governments of Spain and France, to the struggles to form a government in Belgium and now in Germany. Certainly, with Harris, this phase of divorce between Europe and the United States would have been more gradual and less tense – Trump speeds up the times and makes it more urgent to have a more dynamic European Union, skilled in financing and decisive in domestic and international policies.

I conclude with some provocations: the day Trump withdraws support from Kiev, hindering funds and political support, what does Europe do? And the day he decides to impose tariffs of 60% or 100% on all Chinese products, creating a possible flood of low-priced Chinese goods, how does the European Commission react? Trump is an unpredictable man, and if the EU wants to keep up with the times, it needs greater agility and decision-making.

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