Election 2024: What Went Down & What Will Go Down
Things are much more normal than it seems...
For how crazy and unconventional the 2024 campaign was, the election results are quite normal. I know that sounds insane given that Donald Trump is “Donald Trump,” but what “Donald Trump” is varies from person to person. Most of you reading this see “Donald Trump” as a greedy, unhinged, hateful idiot – and I agree. That is who he is. We also know that about 20% of voters look at him as a populist savior-hero-warrior. Most of the country has a take that differs from “us and them.”
To the majority of voters Trump is equal parts “just another politician,” “a political outsider,” and “an entertainer.” When we hear Trump babble, we think dementia and insanity. They hear stand-up. When Trump promises mass deportation and blanket tariffs, we take him literally and condemn his plans. They hear blah blah blah, just another politician promising things that he can’t or won’t deliver on. After all, Trump habitually over-promises and under-delivers, so even if he does try to come through on his promises, they look at The Wall – or lack thereof – and shrug, “Politicians promise. Politicians lie.”
What motivates these voters – the ones who shift from Obama to Trump to Biden to Trump – are issues and three in particular: The economy, immigration, and crime, issues that have influenced nearly every election I’ve been alive for. This makes sense: the economy, immigration, and crime are corporal issues, issues that we see or feel daily. “Our issues” – democracy, rights, equality, justice – are seen as abstract, even when they impact our everyday lives.
I go to the grocery store and I feel the pinch of inflationary greed. I go to a restaurant and I hear “foreign tongues” spoken by people “not like me.” I walk down the street and I am fearful of being attacked or shot at. No one needs to explain these experiences and feelings to me. And no data or stats – abstract things – are going to negate what I feel.
In my everyday life, I don’t feel democracy, rights, equality, or justice. There are times when I experience these things – or lack thereof – but not like I experience want because things are too expensive to buy or fear because I am primed to irrational concerns over crime. And, yes, I write that from a perch of privilege, the same perch that most voters share, at least in part.
CNN has a good breakdown of exit polling from the 2016, 2020, and 2024 presidential elections. On voters and the economy, this is what they found. It will not surprise you:
When the economy is perceived as good and favorable to one’s family, a voter will throw in with whomever they feel is responsible for the good economy. When the economy goes sour, they will blame whomever they think is in charge. Everything outside good or bad doesn’t matter. Even hard data is irrelevant. All of that is seen as abstract. What matters is perception.
Thus in 2016, more people felt that the economy was doing pretty good. Clinton benefited by 28 percentage points (remember that she won the popular vote). In 2020, most people thought that the economy sucked. Biden had the edge and won. In 2024, while those who think that the economy is good overwhelmingly voted for Kamala Harris, most people think that the economy sucks. (Also remember that in 2008, when the economy crashed under the Republican president, Obama got a huge boost of support and won the presidency.)
Though not measured in the CNN analysis, other polling shows that most Americans think immigration is “out of control.” Americans also believe that crime is high. The reality is a bit different. Crime is low, and in some categories at historic lows. “Out of control” is so subjective of a term that it has to be prefaced with “I feel that…” Countering “I feel that…” is a political landmine. You question someone’s feelings and you lose that voter. And as far as crime goes, I’ve spent decades researching crime stats and public opinion, and its rare that the public ever feels good about crime, even when crime rates are low and they have not been personally impacted by crime.
For all his babbling, diversions, and craziness, the three things that every Trump event had – even his dance-a-thon – was fearmongering over the economy, immigration, and crime. And no matter what the data and stats told us, the corporate media feasted on inflation, immigration, and crime, without explanation or context. We were told how bad everything was and how Joe Biden was failing, even when the opposite was true. We were shown endless footage of migrants massed at the border and of crime scenes, footage that, without context presented more prominently than the visuals, fixed itself in the public imagination. Even when corporate claims of things like mass shoplifting were debunked, the lies stuck.
The economy, immigration, and crime are three of the four mythical pillars of Republican Party politics (foreign policy is the fourth). No matter that history and statistics do not back Republicans’ claims to expertise in these areas, that the GOP is the good economy/business party is hard baked in our public belief system. Republicans also claim to be the “tough on” party, so when immigration and crime are “out of control” – forget reality – voters call on the tough guys. This is nothing new.
From 1983 to 1999, California had two Republican governors, George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson. Deukmejian was the “tough on crime” governor and Wilson was “tough on immigration.” Neither were seen as “weak” on either issue. Crime was portrayed as fearfully high, immigration “out of control,” and each governor went “very tough on” those issues.
Under Deukmejian, California’s incarceration rate soured so much that it outpaced Deukmejian’s massive prison build out. Pete Wilson’s reign saw hostility towards immigrants that would give Stephen Miller a hard-on. Not only did Wilson talk mass deportation, he headed up campaigns to strip immigrant workers of rights, deny migrant kids education and health care, raid the homes of migrants, and to make English California’s “official language.” Forget stats and reality, for close to two decades, Californians believed that we were losing a “war” with criminals, immigrants, and criminal immigrants and voted in their perceived interests.
We might not be in the 20th Century, but we are animated by the same issues as Californians were in the 1980s and 1990s, and how we feel on those issues guide our votes. Who is messaging the “solutions” to these “problems” doesn’t matter, as long as they strongly acknowledge what we feel and promise to do something about it. And if one of the candidates is closely associated with whatever “problem” is being flogged, good luck. This applies to Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden, as well as all the people they beat to get to the presidency.
With all that in mind it makes complete sense that Trump gained votes in demo groups that Democrats have dominated or done well with. Harris won the female vote, but her margins were far tighter than Clinton’s or Bidens. Trump gained and Harris lost ground with men, who decidedly voted Trump. Digging deeper: Compared to Clinton and Biden’s performance, Harris saw margins shrink among Latino men – who flipped to Trump by 35 points! – Latina women, Black men and Black women. Trump saw a continued tightening in his margins for White men and a big drop of support among White women.
Age demographics also show some interesting shifts, though its important not to equate age demos (18-29, 30 – 44, 45 – 64, 65+) with generations (Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers). And so, Harris dominated but saw shrinkage among the young’uns. She barely won the 30 – 44 crowd. She had no chance with 45 – 64, my people. The only demo that she saw better numbers than Clinton and Biden were in the 65+, where Harris and Trump tied.
And, of course, how all the demo groups voted is linked to education level. Harris got college graduates, even White grads. Trump gobbled up the non-grads.
One area that Trump also dominated was new voters, a demo that usually goes Dem. In 2020, Biden’s margin on new voters was 32 points higher than Trumps. This year, Trump’s was 13 points higher than Harris. Why? Trump targeted a previously untapped demo of new voters, young and youngish men. This tough-on-everything, put-women-in-their-place, violently-bash-the-Other talk goes over big among pissed off, apolitical guys, especially the horny, lonely ones. That is not a joke.
While it is frightening that MAGA is building a young man army – never a good thing – this is commonplace in American history. Reagan and both Bushes worked hard to bring Angry Young White Men in the fold. Massive Resistance to the Civil Rights Movement was an Angry White Man thing. When the left started to rise in the 1920s and 1930s, Angry Men were enlisted to beat the “foreign troublemakers” down. During Reconstruction, it was Angry White Men – from the North and South – that filled the Ku Klux Klan and other groups fighting to put Black folks “back in their place.”
These “troops” are just that, soldiers. They are convinced to enlist and set upon an enemy. Who does the enlisting and ordering about, who decides what is important and what is not? Money power, AKA our corporate oligarchy. Again and again and again, it is money power that rules our politics. When it can’t buy power outright, it manipulates messaging and spreads disinformation by simply spending as much money as it wants to, and it does so in a system that has no enforceable limits on the commerce of politics.
So, yeah, as much as an annoyingly evil clown as Elon Musk is he has a lot of money and is willing to spend it and that makes a difference, especially when it comes to recruiting new voters to his cause. Peter Thiel is insanely wealthy and his money spends. Right-wing libertarians in Silicon Valley tech and venture capital are loaded and will shell out. Never forget Wall Street or America’s old money. All these people can give and give and give, and they use loopholes and fronts to make sure no one knows that they are funding Trump or how much they are giving him, directly or indirectly.
“Don’t they care about democracy or rights?” you ask. Sure, as much as it impacts them. Frame democracy as “one dollar, one vote” and democracy is very healthy…for them. Abortion rights? What’s going to keep a billionaire from securing their daughter an abortion? Climate change? The rich have their bunkers and access to whatever resources they want. They got theirs, now we must get ours if we want in on the game – that’s their POV.
This is the way this America has been run since the first batch of religious fanatics and land speculators landed in Virginia and Massachusetts. The American Indian faced genocide because they lived on land that White speculators wanted. The colonial elite who asserted independence from England did so not so we could all experience freedom, but to protect their wealth. When the Founders drafted the Constitution, they baked chattel slavery into our founding document. So it goes.
And as it goes, every time money power has asserted itself, people have fought back. Indian tribes refused to be swindled out of land that they treated as common property. Almost from the moment the first slave was brought to this land there were slave rebellions and revolts. Indentured servants enticed to America for jobs, once here, organized and fought for their freedom. We know that much of 19th Century USA history concerned the fight over slavery. What we don’t learn is how small and subsistence farmers took on big money – land speculators, big estate holders, the banks, and eventually the railroads. And how they won.
The downfall of slavery and the rise of Reconstruction brought a frenzy of activity among former slaves and their supporters. Attempts to end Reconstruction were fought hard, and when the Nadir and Jim Crow came, Black Americans did not give up. They organized in churches and in workplaces. Their union activity sometimes overlapped with organizing by White and immigrant workers. All this activity – and the threat of revolutionary change - forced FDR into the New Deal. While this was happening, women fought for their rights, with the backing of men.
Read deep in American history and there’s a bold line that connects all these struggles to each other and what followed. The Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, Gay Rights, and Poor People’s Rights movements all were influenced by former fights and each other. Every activist and organizer working to make change in AIDS medicine, homeless funding, environmental sanity, workplace safety, the end of police abuse, against economic disparity, and even for a stop sign on their too busy street – all of these people are part of a glorious American tradition, and most of them started their fight during dark times.
And so out fight continues, as it will for as long as we are alive. It is a fight for justice and equality, for kindness, community, and care. We are aligned against a very old enemy, one that will fight us in every battle, as they have been doing forever. None of this makes Tuesday any easier to accept - it sucks - but all of it is familiar, including our ability to fight back and make gains. Never surrender. Never.