Well, I am back with another election article. This time of course the election is complete, and you would be lying if you said you were not at least a little surprised by the results. Not only did the results tip completely opposite much of the media, but also the Republican Party went home with a clean sweep of Congress. This leaves one remaining question. Do these surprising election results point more toward a Harris failure or a Trump success? In other words: Did Harris underperform or did Trump overperform expectations? Or perhaps it was both.
As we know, Donald Trump achieved victory in the election. He won 312 electoral college votes over Kamala Harris’s 226. Trump also won the popular vote with about 77 million votes to 74 million votes, which is not something he achieved against Hillary Clinton in 2016. However, Trump did win more swing states this election. In a quite swift and systematic fashion, Trump won each and every swing state one by one. Most important of these swing states were Pennsylvania and Georgia. Each candidate needed either of these states for a significant edge in the election, and Trump won both. Adding even more to the decisive Republican victory, the GOP also won control of the Senate along with the presidency. Then, days later, victory in the House followed, the closest race of them all.
So, looking back on this election, the Democratic Party has had a lot of tough questions to answer. How did Trump have such a huge victory when the media so often displayed him as a threat to democracy? Also, why did Kamala Harris underperform with so many demographics which were assumed to be sure supporters, such as Black and Hispanic voters? One of the main theories to answer this question is arrogance in the Harris campaign. After Joe Biden’s victory against Trump in 2020, Democrats assumed their supporters would vote in the same way in 2024. Because of this, Kamala Harris neglected to focus on campaigning to previous Democratic supporters. An example of this is rural Pennsylvania. Rural Pennsylvania was thought to be reliably Democrat voting against Trump since 2020, it even being referred to as part of the infamous “blue wall.” So, Harris decided to focus less on this area and other areas like it, and more on pushing policies such as abortion rights. These policies turned out to be way less important to the American public than the state of the economy, which Trump had a much better plan for. This led to Trump winning favor in swing states.
This election has also given way to many very upsetting and controversial theories. Here is my favorite of these conspiracies, supported by star podcaster Joe Rogan. The theory is that the Bidens voted for Trump. The first piece of evidence is of course how Joe Biden was basically abandoned by his own party. After his major defeat against Donald Trump in their debate, very quickly each high ranking Democratic leader abandoned Biden and endorsed Harris, causing Biden to step down. There is also Joe Biden’s very joyful meeting with Trump at their recent White House meeting, a very visible contrast to when Trump had the same meeting with Barack Obama. Finally, Joe Biden’s wife, Jill Biden, wore all red to the polls, a very unlikely coincidence. Whether you believe this theory or not, we can all agree that this election clearly shows how the public opinion has changed. In these next four years America will drastically change, and I am looking forward to it with great optimism and excitement.
