2024 U.S. Election - Key Takeaways
How The Election Unfolded, And The Road We're Heading Down Now?
Contents
Introduction
Before The Election
On The Day
The Demographics of The 2024 Election
Were The Polls Wrong?
Changes In The World of Geopolitics
US Party Systems and The Future of US Politics
Concluding Remarks
Bitesize Edition
Many polls before the election had the election at 50/50 on the national level. Some had small Harris wins in many of the swing states, and others saw Trump winning in the swing states. It was foreseen that the seven swing states would be the key battlegrounds where the election was determined. This was certainly the case.
In 2016, Trump and the Republicans took a large proportion of these swing states on their way to victory, and Biden did the same in 2020. The Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin would have been key to any Harris victory. Unfortunately for Harris, as occurred in 2016, the Rust Belt turned red, and the initial “Red Mirage” in which Republican candidates initially burst in front in the early election results didn’t stop. When all is said and done, Donald Trump is the 47th President of the United States.
Questions have since been asked about if the polls were wrong. How did Trump take (at the time of writing) five of the seven swing states, with Arizona and Nevada not yet counted, while Harris appeared the favourite in some of the swing states polling before the vote? It comes down to the margin of error in any forecast and other potential issues with the polling method. More on that later.
With the election behind us, we can begin to look forward. How will domestic politics in the United States change? We saw the Democrats suffer a heavy defeat. They will need to regroup and consider what went wrong. The Republican Party has been influenced by Donald Trump for close to a decade now, but he can’t run again in 2028. Change is expected in the role both parties play in American politics. What could this change bring? Perhaps a new Party System in the United States?
As it is the main theme of my written pieces, we’ll also explore how global geopolitics will be affected by another Trump Presidency. Time will tell. For now, let’s explore the events leading up to this election.
Introduction
An event that requires no introduction. The United States election certainly had the attention of the world. In what has been a year of elections in 2024, the election on November 5th was always known to be the biggest of the year before it even occurred. With a Trump victory, change is almost inevitable. Let’s dive into this election cycle further.
Before The Election
In my exploration of the US election, before the day started to unfold, it was determined that a handful of states would determine the direction the election travelled. These states were the following:
Arizona
Georgia
Michigan
Nevada
North Carolina
Pennsylvania
Wisconsin
In my analysis, I also analysed other states that were only weakly leaning towards Democrat or Republican, and any states that have flipped since the election in 2000. This proved a pointless exercise as every state in this extra group fell exactly as predicted. Perhaps in a future election, this safer strategy would prove fruitful, but it wasn’t to be this time.
Back to the seven swing states above, and in 2016, Trump only lost Nevada in this group. In 2020, Biden only lost North Carolina in this group. As per my research, I calculated that Harris in 2024 was polling worse than Joe Biden in 2020 by an average of 2.85%. Biden eventually saw victory in the Electoral College in 2020, but this analysis of mean polling figures made it clear that in any potential scenario of a Harris win in 2024, it would have been a much closer battle. Unfortunately for Harris, the underperformance represented in the polling data compared to Biden was too much to overcome, with Donald Trump once again moving into the White House.
We had, of course, seen a heated buildup to this election. One of the biggest events was the change of the Democratic candidate when Joe Biden withdrew from the Presidential race in July. Flashing back to 1968 when Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson pulled out, it was Republican Richard Nixon who won the Presidency with 301 Electoral Votes. The Vietnam War was raging under the Democratic President Johnson before the election in 1968, contributing to the strong Republican performance.
In 2024, there will now be questions as to whether Biden should have stepped down sooner, or if the key issues in this election were too difficult for Harris to beat, just as in 1968. The economy and immigration proved to be the biggest single issues that motivated voting patterns towards Trump in this election. For Harris voters, democracy and abortion were the biggest issues.
With Democrat President Biden seeing all these issues rise in focus during his four years in the White House, it was unfortunate for Harris that by association as Biden’s Vice President, she could well be interpreted as a continuation rather than a change. An incumbent rarely survives a period of high inflation and the border issue has remained one of the biggest issues facing the United States today. By association with Biden, was Harris already disadvantaged?
The major events on the Republican side were even more eventful. We had multiple assassination attempts against Donald Trump, with the most notable being the one that hit his ear in Butler, Pennsylvania. The images taken from the aftermath of the assassination attempt are certainly some of the strongest forms of political imagery of the last few years, and will likely be a moment looked back upon as a key chapter in the political story of Trump. Did this event drive other potential voters towards Trump?
We also had the independent candidate RFK Jr. polling very well during the buildup to the election. Back in May, he reached 10% in some polls. A percentage of votes this large would have heavily influenced the vote. He eventually pulled out in August, endorsing Donald Trump. Would this have swayed independent voters, who usually are around 10-12% of the total American population, more in the direction of voting for Trump than Harris?
Other questions include whether Josh Shapiro as Harris’ running mate could have changed the result in Pennsylvania, seen by many as the most important state in this election. Or if Trump and Harris appearing on podcasts made this the podcast election, which further split the genders in this election, where Trump appeared on predominantly male-viewed podcasts such as Joe Rogan and Theo Von, as well as an X interview with Elon Musk, versus Harris who appeared on Call Her Daddy, heavily focusing on women’s issues.
We could sit and question these hypotheticals forever seeking to find a single answer to explain what happened in this election. Likely, they all had some impact on the eventual outcome, whether positively or negatively for your preferred candidate. Thankfully, we don’t have to leave these questions unanswered. With this election, we’re lucky to possess so much data.
From this, we can interpret the trends and stories that have defined this election. Before diving into the data, let’s start with the events of election day.
On The Day
Early in the day, we experienced disruption when many counties received bomb threats in the state of Georgia. These were believed to originate from Russian domains as stated by the US media. A man was also arrested for attempting to enter the Capitol smelling of fuel, and possessing a flare gun and a lighter. As a result of the disruptions, the polls were extended in Georgia, as well as an extension in North Carolina due to technical issues. In what could have been a tumultuous day, with political polarisation obvious in the United States, this was likely calmer than some expected.
JD Vance and Trump voted in person early in the morning, stating their quiet confidence. As the day went on, this subdued confidence turned to outright confidence as more and more predictions were released as polls closed. Initially, there was nothing out of the ordinary, as these predictions saw no surprises. Every state fell as expected in the predictions until we found ourselves in the swing states of Georgia and North Carolina. After both were predicted to be won by the Republicans, momentum seemed to be with Trump.
History has once again rhymed in this election. The swing states in 2016 and 2020 typically all fell the same way, with a few exceptions. In 2024, after Georgia and North Carolina’s predictions were announced, the writing was on the wall. Harris told her followers to go home, and Trump headed to the Florida Convention Centre.
Fox News were the first to then predict Trump’s victory in Pennsylvania, but other news outlets delayed announcing the prediction that the numbers were supporting until it was mathematically proven.
As occurred in 2016 with Trump’s last victory, the blue Rust Belt states once again turned red.
It surprises me that this unusual condition of the swing states falling the same way wasn’t referred to more in the buildup to election day. Considering this, it would seem peculiar that the polls had Harris winning some swing states, and Trump winning others. To understand this, we have to look deeper into the demographics of the results behind this election.
The Demographics of The 2024 Election
In comparing Trump’s 2020 and 2024 performance, he gained more votes in every state apart from Washington. Some of the gains tipped him from a loss to a win, including in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada (based on current counts in Arizona and Nevada).
In large gaining states for Trump, such as his home state of Florida, he increased his Latino vote by 8 percentage points and completely flipped the county of Miami-Dade which is typically won by Democrats as a more urban county. Biden won 53.4% of the votes in the county in 2020, but Trump achieved more than 55% this time around.
Trump had large gains amongst Asian, Black and Hispanic voters nationwide, while also gaining in rural areas, one of his usual demographics of high success. Harris only increased Democrat vote share amongst over-65s and white, educated women. Typically, educated citizens vote Democrat, as we explored in a post a few months ago.
In fact, Trump’s largest successful demographic groups were white non-college men, followed by white non-college women, white citizens, men in general, and 45-64-year-olds. However, he also attracted huge gains in 18-29, who still leaned Democrat but less so than 2020. Perhaps his strategy of multiple podcast interviews truly paid off for Trump.
Note: I collected these conclusions from many different sources. All will be included in the sources list at the bottom of this post which you can view by unlocking this post or via a free trial.
And so, after studying the demographics, and the gains Trump made in many demographics and states, how did the polls get it so wrong? How was Harris predicted to win some swing states but Trump swept them all? In what ways are polls flawed?
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