New Orleans Now that we’re almost a month away from the US presidential election, the picture is getting clearer, even if the final analysis might still be evading us.
Contrary to many claims, this was no landslide. Harris was not blown away by Trump. I’m not even sure the votes have all been counted yet, but the scorecard from the Cook Report for example states the numbers clearly:
- There were 154,905,224 votes cast.
- Trump received 77,176,074 or 49.82%
- Harris polled 74,777, 835 or 48.27%
The margin of victory for Trump was 1.55% and just under 2.4 million votes, 2,398,239 to be exact. Yes, the loss of all of the battleground states was devastating in the Electoral College 226 to 312, but the popular vote count was a long way from a landslide. In fact, it’s worth remembering that President Biden received more than 81 million votes in 2020, a fact that must grind President-elect Trump’s teeth in his private moments in the dead of night given his narcissism.
So, was it turnout and a failure of the field program? Indeed, turnout was less in big cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. I continue to hold the view that turnout will invariably decrease not only in the cities but across the country as long as virtually all campaign resources are poured into battleground states, and we don’t have a real backs-to-the-wall 50-state campaign. At least with a broader campaign, I would make the case that Harris, like most of the Democratic candidates over the last more than 20 years, would have won the popular vote.
Where resources were poured into the battleground states, turnout for Harris did increase from what most analysts have found from the data available to date. Nate Cohn in the Times’ Tilt newsletter argues that even so, Harris polled much poorly among the usual Democratic base that wasn’t motivated to vote, while Trump increased his numbers in all of the battlegrounds. He may be right that more turnout for Harris in the battlegrounds, might still not have delivered the victory.
It may come down to popular amnesia about Trump’s first term, but more likely “it’s still the economy,” as Carville argued in the first Clinton election. Inflation, post-pandemic blues, racism, misogyny, and a willingness to throw something against the wall in the hopes that change – any change – might all have come together in a witches’ brew to make the difference. I have trouble blaming Harris, even though she now seems forgotten in any discussion about the future. I actually have trouble blaming Biden as well. The stark reality is that despite all appearances, political analyses, and plain common sense, Trump and his crazy antics brilliantly spoke to the American people in a way that classic campaigning from issue platforms to fieldwork just couldn’t offset in this historical moment. It’s not so much who to blame on the Democratic side now, as acknowledging the credit that Trump deserves. It may be a hard four years living through it, but I find a ray of hope in the fact that he’s both lame duck and sui generis. I’m not sure anyone else could have pulled of this magic trick on the American voting public, and I’m hoping and working to make sure that’s the case.