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The US Presidential election on November 5, 2024, the results of which the whole world is following closely, ended with Donald’s victory, as we predicted in our relevant article. Although, even we did not expect the difference of approximately 5 million in the popular votes across the country. In this context, as in the last period, the pollsters were wrong again. Apart from this mistake, it is very obvious that the election results gave a heavy defeat to the current Vice President of the USA, Kamala. So, contrary to everyone’s expectations, how Trump won this election with such a big difference and why Harris lost? After all, almost all of the swing states, such as Michigan, the US legislative body, the Congress, namely the House of Representatives and the Senate, have been taken over by the Republicans.
In addition to being re-elected as president with a tremendous comeback rarely seen in American political history, reaching a majority that will control all houses will make him a very difficult power to reach for the next four years.
At this point, we believe that it is necessary to go into the details of such an important victory. Let’s not forget that the result of this election will affect all world politics for at least four years. In this context, we think that the subject should be divided into subheadings.
If we list the reasons why Trump won and Kamala Harris lost:
- Political and social reasons
- Was Kamala Harris popular?
- Democrats’ election strategy mistake.
- Biden’s too-late withdrawal from candidacy.
- Immigration and Israel policies.
- Economic reasons
- The issue of food inflation.
- Is economic growth really enough?
Trump Won: Harris Wrong Candidate?
Those who follow American politics will remember that Kamala was a candidate for the US presidency in 2019. At that time, our candidate, a former attorney general, was known as one of the people closest to the conservative line in the Democratic party. In other words, Harris was actually someone who was close to the right and winked at the Republicans, and was not very popular in the party. We can easily see this situation from the primary elections within the Democratic party for the 2020 presidential candidacy. K. Harris, who received approximately 1 percent of the votes in the primary elections held at that time, naturally could not become a candidate.
As will be remembered in the relevant primary elections, although Bernie Sanders was the most popular democratic candidate, Biden, the candidate of large donor capitalist companies, won the primary elections and faced Trump in the 2020 elections. At that time, Joe Biden announced Harris as his vice-presidential candidate under pressure from these large companies. The reason for this was that, unlike Bernie Sanders, Kamala did not resist doing what she was told and was open to being guided. What we are trying to say is that he was not popular in the past and somehow, he was imposed instead of Biden as the candidate of big capital and donors by making a fait accompli. We can already understand this from the serious decrease in the turnout rate of Democratic party voters in the election.
At this point, it is also possible to attribute it to Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential candidacy very close to the election. Because he withdrew at such a time that; since there was no time left to determine a candidate in his place, the vice president was imposed as a natural candidate.
Democratic Party Promises (!)
Following the election loss, the Republicans’ natural joy as well as the blame war within the Democratic Party has begun. One of the most frequently made criticisms at this stage was the party’s biggest promise slogan “We are not Trump!” and its approach based on its opponent. In other words, the Democratic Party seems to have failed to offer more than an approach along the lines of “We are running the country and everything is fine, but if Trump wins, everything will be terrible.” At this point, it should be noted that; regardless of the content in voter psychology, if one of the two candidates advocates the current situation and the other advocates change, people tend to vote for the one who advocates change.
In other words, the fact that the Democrats did not offer any new promises has not only reduced the turnout rate of their voters but also affected their voting tendencies.
Political experts who questioned how Trump won after the election stated that he at least made promises regarding immigrants, abortion, the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas-Lebanon conflicts, while the Democrats only babbled. The failure of a party that claims to advocate NATO and international cooperation in such social and political events to take action has had a negative impact on voters. In this context, Trump stated that if elected, he would end the war in both Ukraine and Gaza. Stating that he would also deport all undocumented immigrants, Donald has at least made some claims and promises.
Black and Hispanic Votes!
In light of all these facts, it should be noted that this timid and unpromising approach of the Democrats has had a negative impact especially on black and Hispanic voters, from whom Biden received a lot of votes in 2020. According to the research conducted by NBC, as you can see from the images below and above, the support given by black American citizens to the Democratic Party in swing states such as Wisconsin has decreased by almost 10 percent, while Trump’s support has increased by 12 percent in the same state.
In addition, in Pennsylvania, which is again a very critical swing state, Hispanic votes, have decreased by 10 percent for Harris, while her opponent has received 10 percent more votes compared to the 2020 election.
If we add the Democrat voters who did not go to the polls to these examples, we understand the difference of approximately 5 million votes in the election result.
How Trump Won: The Economy!
Everyone knew that in the surveys conducted before the American Presidential elections, the “economy” and “immigrants” were the top two issues among the people’s biggest problems. Under normal circumstances, a party that wanted to win the election would be expected to bring concrete suggestions on these two issues. At this point, Donald Trump managed to appeal to the middle-class American workers by taking Elon Musk, a very good marketing expert, with him.
Let’s not forget that although it does not constitute a significant part of the country’s economy in terms of wealth, the working class constitutes almost half of the total electorate. At this point, the Democrats and Kamala Harris stated that the economy was good, inflation was down and the stock market was booming, and did not give the American worker any hope for the new era. Yes, the stock market was booming, but approximately 90 percent of the total money in the stock market was in the hands of the richest 1 percent, and this group did not have a high voting potential in terms of numbers.
On the other hand, when the sub-topics of economic growth are examined, Trump, who sees that this growth is caused by rich consumption expenditures and public expenditures, stated that the working class is not getting the amount they deserve from this economic growth, and that he will introduce tariffs on foreign trade and make American workers richer by reducing taxes on workers, and thus won the vote of this class.
The Inflation Impact!
Democrats, on the other hand, talked about growth and the booming stock market, stated that the economy was already good under their administration, and did not give any signals of change. At this point, it should be noted that the reality of inflation in the world after the pandemic is the end of many current governments. In other words, the people in important countries, especially the government in England, have punished their administrations due to increasing inflationary processes.
Harris and the Democrats have also received their share of this wave of punishments. There is an important point we want to draw attention to here. Although inflation has decreased in the US economy, food inflation, which directly affects the tables of a large part of the voters, is still high. In other words, people feel the effects of food prices, not the prices of luxury consumer goods. The fact that the political administration has not been able to make progress on this issue is also an important factor in their losing the election.
Why Harris Lost!
To summarize, the reason why Kamala Harris and the Democrats suffered such a heavy defeat that they never expected lies in their failure to correctly analyse voter behaviour. In other words, like every political power that is disconnected from reality and intoxicated with power, the Democrats have not noticed the bad course of the economy and especially food prices. On the other hand, they have not taken any steps regarding the problems at the Mexican border, which affect a large part of the population, and especially the immigration issues.
The voters have also turned their backs on the government that behaves in this way. What is important here is that not only the Republicans but also the Democratic voters do not participate enough in the ballot box and want to teach the administration a lesson.
Finally, it should be mentioned that Harris’ plan to constantly use right-wing rhetoric during the election campaign and get votes from “Gray area Republican voters” did not work either. The Democratic candidate, who even announced that he received the support of far-right Republican Dick Cheney during the election process, did not even realize that he was drawing the reaction of his own base of voters with such behaviour.
In this context, it is possible to summarize as follows for those who ask how Trump won and why Harris lost:
- Democratic President Biden’s inability to find a solution to the economy and especially food inflation,
- His inability to develop a discourse other than a right-wing perspective on immigrants,
- His inability to get the votes of the people and especially the working class and the middle class, which make up the majority of voters,
- His never being a popular politician among Democrats.
