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Experts have weighed in on why Donald Trump won the US elections.
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They pointed to Trump’s strength on immigration and the economy and a global trend of voters punishing incumbents.
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Here are some of the sharpest analyzes we’ve seen on Trump’s victory.
A flurry of analysis has emerged following Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election on Wednesday, as experts tried to explain how the former president won a second term.
They have offered a variety of reasons, ranging from a populist revolt against elites to Vice President Kamala Harris’ shortcomings as a Democratic candidate.
Here’s some of the best commentary we’ve seen.
Steve Hanke, Johns Hopkins University
The professor of applied economics and former adviser to President Ronald Reagan told Business Insider in an email: “American voters have reacted negatively to the American elites running the show in Washington, the media and so on. The election results were a revolt against the elites.”
Nate Cohn, chief political analyst at The New York Times
“Trump won across the board — including among voters who seemed most skeptical of him eight years ago, from Spanish-speaking voters in New York City to technology workers in San Francisco.
“None of this is what Democrats could have imagined a decade ago, when many of them assumed that demographic and generational changes would produce a new Democratic majority. Instead, many of the voters who viewed Democrats as the foundation of their coalition became so frustrated with the status quo that they decided to support Mr. Trump instead.”
Tina Fordham, independent strategist and consultant
“Trump’s victory is the most powerful example this year of a political and economic environment that has been cruel to incumbents around the world and made clear that inflation is a political secret.
“This lesson will not soon be lost on governments – growth is not enough when prices are high and wages are not keeping pace. The dividing lines in American politics remain clear along geographic, educational and gender lines, with Trump’s strongest support coming from This result will leave many Americans not only angry, but fearful.
“At the global level, we cannot escape the fact that Trump’s victory will be transformative for both the US and the international system, increasing geopolitical and economic risks.”
Nate Silver, founder of FiveThirtyEight and author of the Silver Bulletin newsletter
Silver republished a lengthy post in late October titled “24 Reasons Why Trump Won.”
Those reasons included inflation, negative perceptions of the economy and nostalgia for Trump’s first term, slow wage growth, a cultural shift to the right, disillusionment among male and minority voters, and Harris’ late nomination.
Silver’s other reasons included Trump’s ability to convince voters he is on their side and his success in appealing to marginal voting groups; the war between Israel and Hamas that divided the Democratic base; the assassination attempts on Trump increasing his favorability; and Harris’s inability to explain her shift from left to moderate, or to articulate a clear vision for America.
Matthew Yglesias, author of the Slow Boring newsletter
“I think ‘don’t nominate women’ would be the worst possible conclusion from this,” Yglesias wrote on delete the party. away from talent. Learn from those who win!”
“Trump has made many impossible and often contradictory promises and will have problems,” Yglesias said in another X post. In a follow-up tweet, he added: “An obvious one is that Trump has managed to reassure a healthy portion of people about abortion rights, while also maintaining enthusiastic support from people who really want to ban abortion. Hard needle for threading!”
Dominic Sandbrook, historian, commentator and author
Sandbrook told The Rest is Politics podcast that Kamala Harris failed to gain enough support from female, Latino and black voters, while Donald Trump had a “history of outperforming the polls… especially in rural areas and the South and the suburbs .”
He argued that Harris and Hillary Clinton had similar weaknesses, with part of the electorate unwilling to consider a female commander in chief.
Many voters were also “suspicious” of a mixed-race woman from California who “seems to be the embodiment of, for lack of a better phrase, the metropolitan liberal elite,” Sandbrook said.
Eric Corelessa, TIME national political correspondent
“The Democrats’ hasty replacement of the first-term president by Harris deprived them of a better-tested candidate who could potentially have won broader support. Voters took Trump’s advanced age and increasingly incoherent rhetoric to heart. Much of the country read Trump’s. legal troubles as part of a larger corrupt conspiracy to deny him, and them, power. And he capitalized on a global upheaval in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic that has ousted incumbent leaders around the world.
“Every time abortion came up, Trump emphasized that the issue was now a matter for the states, and that this issue revolved as much as possible on the economy, immigration and crime – issues that the campaign believed were causing fear among wealthy women from the suburbs that were open to supporting him.
“Musk also turned X, his social media platform, into a cauldron of conspiracy theories and characterized the stakes of the race to his more than 200 million followers as existential.”
Gerard Baker, The Times of London
Think about this for a moment: the man his opponents call a “fascist” not only likely won an outright majority of more than 150 million voters, but also did so by drawing the votes of millions of black voters for the first time . people, Latinos, Jews and young people.
While legitimate concerns about the man’s disregard for the niceties of law and order will be tested in a second Trump term, the sheer scope and magnitude of his appeal should force his critics to reconsider many of their worst assumptions. to reconsider.
“Instead of continually portraying him as the next Hitler, Democrats and the media should ask why he is succeeding in appealing to such a broad and diverse audience of everyday Americans – many of whom used to vote Democrat. Trump has managed to attract a multi-ethnic, working-class constituency to the Republican Party as its populist economic message begins to gain resonance. The 2024 elections provide emphatic evidence of that call.”
Laurel Duggan, UnHerd
“The abortion issue seemingly had little impact on Republicans’ performance against white women this cycle. Trump’s lead for this group in 2024 was the same as before the overthrow of Roe; in the red states, given the abortion ballot measures, are Florida and South Dakota The former president still won both the women’s vote and the white women’s vote. In the swing state of Arizona, where abortion was also on the ballot, Trump leads the white women’s vote by nine points and the overall women’s vote by one point.
“Partly because of the abortion issue, white suburban women have long been seen as a promising group for Democrats to make up for the loss of white working-class men. Senator Chuck Schumer claimed in 2016 that “for every working-class Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the Philadelphia suburbs, and you can repeat that in Ohio, Illinois and Wisconsin. 2024. White women’s persistent Republican tendencies have proven difficult for Democrats to combat.”
Todd Landman, professor of political science at the University of Nottingham, in The Conversation
“Fighting razor-thin margins and toss-up polls, the Trump campaign pursued a strategy that did not aim to significantly expand support beyond its traditional base. Instead, it successfully energized and mobilized new voters within its core demographic – especially young men. voters, who showed up in large numbers.”
‘The Trump campaign has also dealt a heavy blow to the economy. She ignored the reality of the positive indicators presented by a booming stock market, high employment levels and GDP growth rates. Instead, Trump and his surrogates and campaigners focused people’s attention on the present day. The hardships resulting from many years of high inflation, which had eroded household incomes and purchasing power.
“A wildcard feature of this election is the concerted support Trump enjoyed from billionaire Elon Musk, who built a large following through his control of the social media platform X (formerly Twitter). This helped the Trump campaign amplify and amplify its message. and deliver it directly to millions of followers.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
