By Andrew L. Yarrow
The Economist has already declared that Donald Trump is the most consequential U.S. president since Franklin Roosevelt. . . which is saying a lot given such intervening presidents as Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama. Others have called Trump's election the "greatest comeback" in American political history-even more than Richard Nixon's victory in 1968 after his 1960 defeat to John Kennedy. Without question, Trump has defined an era in American politics that began in 2015, and he has certainly refashioned the Republican Party in his image in a way that no president of the last century other than FDR and perhaps Reagan had accomplished.
But that begs the question of how a vulgar, twice-impeached, criminally convicted real estate developer-turned-reality-TV-impresario became America's 47th (and 45th) president and what that will mean for the United States and the world.
Despite a host of opinion polls showing that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, was leading by 2 or 3 percentage points and had at least an even chance of winning a very tight election in the all-important Electoral College, Donald Trump won by 1.6 percentage points, or about 2.5 million votesand easily triumphed in the Electoral College with 312 votes to Harris' 226 votes. Trump won all seven so-called "swing states"-Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada-all of which, except North Carolina, President Joe Biden had won in 2020 to defeat Trump.
Although this was the first time in Trump's three runs for the presidency that he won a plurality, albeit an extremely narrow oneof the popular vote, perhaps the question should be reframed as "Why did Harris lose?" Although she barely had 100 days to campaign-a blink of the eye in American politics-and was not well known or well-liked as vice president, Harris had an enormously successful Democratic Convention in Chicago in August. Political and Hollywood celebrities turned out en masse for her, and she raised huge sums of money in the following weeks. And Trump seemingly had so many liabilities. Many believed that the United States would finally elect its first female president.
Of course, it didn't happen. Even the predicted close election was anything but close, with the presidency called for Trump barely eight hours after the last voters cast their ballots on America's West coast.
The reasons for Harris' loss and Trump's victory are many, both from an electoral/demographic standpoint and from a political one. Numerically, the biggest reasons are that millions of Democrats who voted for Biden in 2020 stayed home and that Hispanic Americans, particularly men, swung dramatically toward Trump, as did many younger Americans. While Trump only won about two million more votes in 2024 than he did in 2020Harris won 8 million fewer votes than Biden had won. Hispanic men shifted by a remarkable 19 percentage points toward Trump, and 18-to-29-year-olds-widely seen as a progressive bloc-moved 10 percentage points in his direction. Young menwho Biden won in 2020, gave a majority of their votes to Trump in 2024.
However, almost all segments of the population and all parts of the country were more likely to vote Republican than they had in 2024 or in the 2022 midterms. Trump increased his percentage of the vote by 8 points among Hispanic women2-3 points among all women, 4 points among those without a college degree, and he doubled his vote share among Black men under age 45. In Democratic strongholds, from New York and New Jersey to Massachusetts and Minnesota, Trump won a higher proportion of the vote than any Republican presidential candidate had done in a long time. In cities, two million fewer voters cast their ballots for Harris than they did in 2020 for Biden.
Despite an economy that had come roaring back since the Covid pandemic-with significant job growth and low unemployment, declining inflation and a booming stock market-nearly three-fourths of Americans told pollsters that the country was headed in the wrong direction. During the campaign, Trump railed against the Biden economy and high inflation. For many people who saw soaring grocery and housing prices, the message resonated despite the sunnier macroeconomic picture.
Immigration was probably the issue that struck the biggest nerve for many Americans. Trump, who began building a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border to try to keep out immigrants during his first term, spoke endlessly and angrily about "illegals" pouring across the border, allegedly committing crimes and "taking" Americans' jobs. H e reminded voters that Kamala had been the "border czar," supposedly overseeing border policy, as vice president. Infamously, he briefly peddled the ugly lie that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating neighbors' cats and dogs. Trump promised to close the border to "illegals" and, more ominously, deport millions of immigrants. In southern states like Texas, Arizona, and Florida, with high numbers of immigrants and refugees, such messages earned him votes.
Trump and his vice presidential running mate, J.D. Vance, also played to many Americans' resentment of elites-not only Eastern media like The New York Times and CNN but also in Hollywood, finance, and academia. Well-to-do, well-educated liberals in places like Manhattan, San Francisco, and Cambridge, Massachusetts were depicted and seen as out of touch with "real" Americans in the red heartland of the country. Kamala Harris, a San Francisco lawyer, was easy to paint as a liberal-or even a "Marxist," as Trump called her-with little connection to America's middle and working classes.
The conservative Republican attack on elites has owed much to a backlash against "wokeness," or political correctness, particularly around gender issues, in universities, schools, and popular culture. Trump ran an influential ad claiming that Harris supported using federal government funds for sex-change operations for prisoners. Coastal Democrats' and many academics' embrace of LGBTQ+ rights and gender politics more broadly (including the overly earnest use of gender-neutral pronouns), as well as more outrageous claims that some teachers "groom" students to "become" gay or transgender turned off many moderate, yet otherwise tolerant Americans.
Trump, who has a long history of misogynistic remarks and behavior repeatedly, stridently, and successfully made hypermasculine appeals during his campaign. Wrestler Hulk Hogan ripped off his shirt at a Trump rally calling him a "gladiator," Kid Rock called him a "badass," and Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship who appeared with Trump at his post-election victory speech, called him "the toughest, most resilient human being." At the Republican Convention in Milwaukee, Trump came on stage as "A Man's Man's Man's World" blared from the speakers. This machismo was contrasted with Biden's alleged "weakness" and the suggestion that Harris, as a woman, would be "like a play toy" who would not be taken seriously in the tough world of international relations. Nowhere was Trumps' tough-guy image better expressed than when he pumped his fist in the air moments after the attempted assassination in July.
The idea that education, the media, and Hollywood have effected a hostile takeover of American culture also spilled into racial politics. Although the United States has made major strides against racism in recent generations and the vast majority of Americans were appalled at the murders of George Floyd and other Black men by white police officers, racism continues to exist. Trump and many Republicans attacked "critical race theory," and some supporters raised the ugly specter of the "great replacement," the notion that people of color-like Harris?-are taking over the country demographically and culturally from white Americans. Trump's repeated comments about supposedly out-of-control crime were thinly veiled references to African Americans, as much talk of urban crime has been at least since Richard Nixon.
Trump's "America First" battle cry, echoing that of Nazi sympathizers in the United States in the 1930s, neatly wove together his rhetoric against immigrants and people of color, in addition to foreign "enemies" in the Muslim world, China, and elsewhere. This nativist streak was supported by the strong Christian nationalist movement that has called for making America an overtly Christian country. The place of Jews in this America is ambiguous, as most evangelical Christians strongly support Israel. Trump does not seem to be an anti-Semite despite his former chief of staff, Gen. John Kellyrecounting that Trump suggested that Hitler "did some good things."
By contrast, the issues that Democrats believed would win them support among non-party-affiliated voters failed to sufficiently rouse these critical swing voters. Abortion, or reproductive rights, which seemed to be a winning issue in the wake of the Supreme Court's 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, did not appear to help Harris and other Democrats. Nor did the argument that the election was about preserving democracy made by President Biden, the Democrats, and even many former top Trump staffers sway enough voters.
Harris, who moved to the center during her campaign, was attacked by Republicans and undoubtedly seen by some leftwing Democrats as opportunistically changing her positions. She also tried to walk what may have been too fine a line between the Biden Administration's support for Israel and not appearing to Arab and some younger voters as sympathetic enough to the devastation in Gaza.
The day after the election, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sandersthe progressive former presidential candidate, issued a damning indictment of her "disastrous" campaign: "[It] should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. ... While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they're right."
In the weeks since the election, Donald Trump has made it clear that he intends to act on his rightwing populist agenda. He has empowered billionaire Elon Musk to help him make deep cuts in parts of the federal government, suggesting that he wants to move some federal agencies and workers out of Washington. His early choices for his Cabinet-of people like Rep. Matt Gaetz, a firebrand accused of sexual and other peccadillos, as Attorney General; former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who has peddled pro-Russian conspiracy theories, as director of national intelligence; Pete Hegseth, a Fox News presenter, as Secretary of Defense; Robert Kennedy Jr. a vaccine skeptic, as secretary of health and human services, and Lee Zeldin, an opponent of climate legislation, as director of the Environmental Protection Agency-signal a sharp turn to the right.
Because Republicans won control of the U.S. Senate and held their majority in the House of Representatives, Trump is likely to have relatively free sailing with his Executive Branch and federal judiciary appointments as well as his legislative priorities. The investigations into Trump's alleged incitement of the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and his alleged mishandling of classified documents will also end. Trump has pledged that within "two seconds" he would fire Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by Biden's Attorney General Merrick Garland to lead the prosecution of these cases; Smith is likely to resign before that could happen.
In addition to the expected about-face on climate change, his threats to deport undocumented immigrants, and his pledges to abolish the U.S. Department of Education and cut back other domestic social-welfare programs, Trump has signaled that he wants to extend his 2017 tax cuts and abolish taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security benefits. Although Republicans once posed as the party of fiscal probity, Trump's proposed tax policies have been projected to add $7.75 trillion to America's $36 trillion national debt.
Trump's foreign policy is harder to gauge. On the one hand, he has been seen as sympathetic to Vladimir Putin, yet he spoke with Volodymyr Zelensky days after the U.S. election, and has claimed he could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. He has criticized European countries for not providing enough financial and military support for NATO, saying on the campaign trail that Russia could do "whatever the hell they want" to any NATO country that failed to meet its defense spending targets.
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been longtime mutual supporters, but Trump probably wants to be seen as a peace broker in the bitter war in Gaza. Trump, like other Republican and Democratic politicians, has attacked China and Xi Jinping on trade, human rights, and threats to Taiwan. However, Trump's proposed 60 percent tariffs on Chinese imports would hurt American consumers and many businesses as well as China, and could have severely damaging effects on the global economy. Indeed, his call for 10-20 percent tariffs on all imports would also drive up prices for Americans and hurt U.S. trading partners in the European Union, Mexico, Canada, and around the world.
Beyond policy changes, Trump's election and presidency could well have significant effects on American culture. Public discourse, already angry, could become even more bitter and coarse. The hypermasculine and anti-immigrant rhetoric could enflame already explicit or latent misogyny and racism.
For the 48 percent of Americans who voted for Harris and the tens of millions who see Trump as a dangerous demagogue and the election as a catastrophe, the next four years look bleak. Will they react with quiet desperation or will they fight back? And if the latter, how? The United States, which has been deeply divided for a generation, will be at least as polarized as ever.