Donald Trump was elected president. It wasn’t even close. He has won or is leading in all the swing states, closing in on 300 electoral votes! All the numbers aren’t in yet, but it looks like he is even winning the popular vote, something no Republican has done since George W. Bush did it twenty years ago!
UPDATE: The final tally: Trump took all the battleground states and won 312 electoral votes to Harris’s 226. Trump also won the popular vote, 74,027,961 to Harris’s 69,507,824, a margin of 4,520,187.
Not just the outcome but the scale of Trump’s victory came as a surprise. (Newsweek headline as polls closed: Kamala Harris Predicted to Win By Nearly Every Major Forecaster.) I was surprised. In all honesty, I was expecting a Harris victory.
Trump took big chunks from the constituencies that Democrats had assumed were their very own. Exit polls show that Trump won 45% of the Hispanic vote, 42% of 18-29 year olds, 56% of Catholics, 44% of women, 50% of suburbanites, 20% of black men, 41% of college graduates, 44% of union members, and 47% of those favoring abortions (more on that tomorrow).
Mark Antonio Wright is surely correct in calling Trump’s victory “the most remarkable political comeback in American history.”
Furthermore, Republicans won the Senate. And it looks like they may also win the House of Representatives.
After the headline WORLD IN SHOCK, Drudge links to an AP article by Steve Peoples and Bill Barrow entitled Election takeaways: Trump’s decisive victory in a deeply divided nation. But, given the magnitude of Trump’s victory, maybe we’re not as divided as we think. What it describes sounds like consensus to me.
Here are the article’s takeaways:
“With modest shifts, Trump undermines the Democrats’ coalition.” This refers to Trump’s inroads with Blacks, Hispanics, and young adults. So the allure of divisive identity politics must be receding.
“Trump focus on immigration, economy and culture worked.” Americans must have concerns in common after all.
“Trump will take charge of a nation with deep fissures.” Well, yes, but maybe the fissures are closing. The article reports,
When asked what most influenced their vote, about half of voters cited the future of democracy. That was higher than the share who answered the same way about inflation, immigration or abortion policy. And it crosses over the two major parties: About two-thirds of Harris voters and about a third of Trump voters said the future of democracy was the most important factor in their votes.
Trump voters too were worried about the future of democracy. Now America is seeing democracy in action. Let’s hope the progressive side still supports that.
“Trump’s criminal baggage not an issue for many voters.” Democrats were stoking fears about Trump by saying that if he is elected, he would use the powers of his office to go after his enemies. That was clearly psychological projection, since that is exactly what the Biden-Harris administration has been doing to Trump! Voters, many of whom are terrified at the prospect of government agents descending on their homes and putting them on trial for crimes they don’t even understand, saw through that.
“‘Bro’ politics beats out abortion concerns.” Here the journalists are highly confused. First of all, the “Bro’s”, the “Barstool” conservatives flaunting all of that “toxic masculinity” the progressives hate so much, are nearly always pro-abortion. (More on this issue tomorrow.) But, more to the point, the “gender gap” hyped by the media and referred to as factual by this reporter wasn’t actually there! By the reporter’s own admission, “About half of women backed Harris, while about half of men went for Trump, according to AP VoteCast.”
“Democrats face leadership crisis with urgent need to regroup.” Do they ever! “Trump already succeeded in painting Democrats as out-of-touch culturally with middle America. Now Democrats are left to wonder how to reconnect with parts of the country and slices of the electorate that rejected them.” I would say that the election results show that Democrats are out-of-touch culturally! (Let us count the ways. . . in another post.]
In his victory speech, Trump said, “We’re going to help our country heal.” I actually think he will. He has been vindicated. He has nothing to be angry about anymore. He can afford to be magnanimous. We’ll see. But if the nation really does come together, it won’t be because of him. Rather it will be because the nation has come together that, for better or worse, it has elevated Trump.
Photo: Donald Trump (2024) by Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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