5 days Ago
In the end, it was no surprise that Donald Trump won. The race had been close from the very beginning, and nothing ever seemed to change that. It was close nationally, as well as close in all seven of the swing states, so either candidate could have won.
Indeed, the polls ended up being right on target this time. Other than Arizona (more on that later), all seven of the swing states were within three points, right near the margin of error for most polls. It’s also not a surprise that he swept all seven of the most competitive states.
Although it’s fun to dream up strange combinations, usually the winning candidate wins all of the swing states. There were a couple of surprises in this election, however, and they could well have ramifications for years to come – or, you know, maybe not. The first was that Donald Trump actually managed to win the national popular vote, the first Republican since George W.
Bush in 2004 to do so. It’s good that the Republican candidate actually won both for a change. Perhaps it will lead progressives to reconsider their misguided attempts to circumvent or eliminate the Electoral College.
It wasn’t just that Trump won the national popular vote, though – it was how he managed to do so. The majority of states swung in his direction this time compared to 2020, even states that weren’t competitive at all. He became the first Republican in decades to win Miami-Dade County, for instance, and dramatically improved his margins in New York City.
It will be a while before we have a complete set of exit poll data to go over, but it seems as if Trump dramatically improved his performance among minority voters of all types all over the country. If Republicans are able to expand upon this trend, they could dramatically remake the electoral map. There’s reason to believe that won’t happen, though.
For one, Trump didn’t really have many coattails this year. Although Republicans handily regained the Senate majority, the map already favored them, and they seem to have just barely squeaked out a majority in the House. We saw this here in Maine, where Trump won the 2nd District by nine points but the Golden-Theriault race went to a ranked choice runoff, and in Arizona, where Trump won by six points but the Republican Senate candidate lost by two.
There’s a few possibilities as to why this occurred. It could be that voters out there didn’t like Biden or Harris but didn’t want to give Republicans unchecked power. Another is that the Republican candidates down-ballot were so flawed that they were going to lose regardless of the presidential election.
Arizona was a combination of the two. In Maine, it was probably more about balancing the Republican majority. Even Republican candidates who won, like Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania and Tim Sheehy in Montana, got fewer votes than Trump.
It was a pattern repeated all over the country, for state and federal races, not a unique occurrence in a few places. It suggests that this new coalition of voters that Trump has formed – one that seems to be moving beyond race and gender lines – hasn’t transferred down-ballot to other candidates yet. We’ve seen this before.
After Obama won in 2008, Democrats began talking about a new permanent majority. Instead, Republicans immediately retook Congress in 2010, and in 2016, Trump managed to win back many of those voters. The question here for Republicans is twofold: whether they can avoid immediate blowback in the midterms and whether Trump’s emerging new coalition can be transferred to future Republican presidential candidates in a way that Obama’s wasn’t for Democrats.
The good news for Republicans is that, with Trump limited to one more term, they may be able to solidify the gains more quickly than Democrats did. If they do, they could not only continue their Electoral College dominance but make other states where Trump improved his numbers more competitive, like New Hampshire, Virginia and perhaps even Maine. In an odd way, even if the country remains polarized, Trump’s victory this year may ultimately lead toward, if not greater unity, a different kind of politics.
It would be good for the country if we could move past identity politics and toward one where both parties have to pitch their agendas to all voters, rather than constantly dividing them up into demographic subgroups. Then we might return to actual contests of ideas, instead of contests to see which party can scare the most people. We invite you to add your comments.
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