Crawling Through the Wreckage: Understanding 11/5
Trump won the 2024 election because a majority of voters had suffered severe economic hardship. These voters ignored Trump’s faults.
It’s been more than two weeks since the disastrous U.S. presidential election. It’s time to consider what happened, why Vice President Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump. Obviously, Democrats had problems, and we need to understand what they were so we can fix them before the 2026 midterm elections.
1. Although the overall 2024 vote was down, voters showed up where it mattered. There were about 4.5 million fewer voters in 2024 than there were in 2020 (2.8%). In California there were 1.7 million fewer voters than there were in 2020 (9.7%).
It would be easy to attribute Harris’ loss (2.5 million votes) to this drop-off in overall vote were it not for the fact that total vote in the seven swing states was up. In Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin the vote increased by almost 900,000. In each swing state the 2024 vote exceeded 2020.
Voters saw Trump as the stronger leader who would fix the economy. In 2024 Trump was the change candidate.
In many swing states, Harris did better than Biden had in 2024. But in all the swing states, Trump improved.
2. Who voted for Trump? In politics, sometimes answers are simpler than we expect. The CNN 2024 exit polls contain the question: “[What was your] 2020 presidential vote?” Ninety-three percent of 2024 Harris voters voted for President Joe Biden in 2020; however, 6% shifted to Trump in 2024. Allowing for the 4% of 2020 Trump voters that shifted to Harris, the net shift to Trump was 2%, or 3 million voters. Harris lost by 2.5 million votes.
One answer to the confounding 2024 results is that Biden voters shifted to Trump.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Before the election, the No. 1 voter issue was “the inflation and the economy” (YouGov). In the CNN 2024 exit polls, there’s a sharp distinction between Harris and Trump voters on this question: “In the past year, inflation has caused your family____.” For those answering, “severe hardship,” 74% voted for Trump; (77% of Harris voters responded, “no hardship.”)
We could stop here with a terse summary: Harris lost because of the economy. Because of inflation, too many 2020 Biden voters favored Trump on the economy.
3. Why did Trump voters choose this terrible person? While voting solely because of the economy makes sense, there’s still the fact that 76.7 million voters chose Trump, a person who does not believe in the rule of law.
The Harris campaign knew they had a huge problem with the state of the economy. Their campaign assumed they could accomplish three things to overcome this problem: (1) convince voters that Harris was better able to handle the economy than Trump; (2) argue that there were other important issues where Harris was clearly superior to Trump; and (3) make the case that Trump was unfit to be President—because of January 6 and his numerous peccadilloes.
Harris never succeeded on (1). The CNN exit polls showed that 52% of voters trusted Trump to “handle the economy”; (46% said Harris.)
Regarding (2), Harris seems to have succeeded. The CNN exit polls asked voters “the most important issue:” 34% said democracy, and 80% felt Harris would be best on this issue.
Regarding (3), The most polarized CNN exit poll question was: “[Who do you have a] favorable opinion of?” Forty-four percent had a favorable opinion only of Harris, and 43% had a favorable opinion only of Trump.
Writing for Time magazine, Jill Filipovic explained the mentality of Trump voters: “…it’s hard to imagine that a critical mass of people who cast their ballots for Trump don’t, like everyone else, see Trump’s vanity and venality and strongman aims. The dark truth is that a lot of voters seem to want a strongman in charge.”
Trump won the 2024 election because a majority of voters had suffered severe economic hardship. These voters ignored Trump’s faults.
4.The Campaign themes are telling: Trump made the economy the center of his campaign. He asked, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” His closing ad focused on the economy: “Kamala broke it, Trump will fix it.”
Kamala Harris focused on a more general theme, “A new generation of leadership.” (“We’re not going back.”) She closed with “A Brighter Future.” “I will be a president for all Americans.”
The CNN Exit poll asked, “What candidate quality mattered most?” The No. 1 choice was “Has ability to lead” at 30%. Trump prevailed 2 to 1. The No. 2 choice was “Can bring needed change” at 28%. Trump prevailed 3 to 1.
Voters saw Trump as the stronger leader who would fix the economy. In 2024 Trump was the change candidate.
5. What was the role of disinformation? This was a presidential campaign where disinformation played an enormous role. This disinformation was disseminated to an unprecedented level on social media: X, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, podcasts,, etc.
There were two forms of disinformation: (1) Slamming Kamala Harris. (2) Distorting the candidate’s positions on issues.
Regarding (1), the Trump campaign spent more than $200 million on an ad attacking Harris’ position on transgender rights: “Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you.” Trump implied that Democrats supported gender-affirming surgery for children without parental consent.
Transgender status is a hot button for Trump supporters. Recent polls suggest that MAGA voters vastly exaggerate the number of transgender individuals in the United States; they believe the number to be around 30% where in reality it is less than 1% (0.6).
The Harris campaign did not circulate false information about Trump, but they did run adds linking him to January 6, Project 2025, and other anti-democratic positions.
The net effect of this disinformation was to make both candidates unpopular. To repeat, the most polarized CNN exit poll question was: “[Who do you have a] favorable opinion of?” Forty-four percent had a favorable opinion only of Harris, and 43% had a favorable opinion only of Trump. (Eight percent had a favorable opinion of neither candidate.)
Harris hoped to emerge as a positive alternative to Trump but, because of disinformation, she didn’t. Thus, for Trump voters, the 2024 election can be summarized: “I don’t like Trump, and I know he has done bad things, but I believe he is a strong leader who can change the economy.”
6. Was the election stolen? Because, for many Democrats, the presidential election results were surprising, there’s a lingering belief that MAGA stole votes in swing states. I have seen no hard evidence to suggest that happened.
There are three situations that suggest chicanery. One was that the election polls suggested that Harris had a slight lead. However, there were always several percentage points of “undeclared voters.” In 2024 they broke for Trump. (In my opinion, these were the “shy” Trump voters pollsters also saw in 2016—voters who are hesitant to declare they would vote for Trump.)
The second reason was that Democrats assumed they had a superior ground game to MAGA and, therefore, there would be a late-breaking surge for Harris. This didn’t happen. Trump had a much better ground game than expected.
The third reason that Democrats suspect voter fraud was because in many states there were situations where Harris lost the presidential vote, but a liberal Democrat won the Senate vote. That’s because, sad to say, Harris didn’t have a winning message but, in many cases, the down-ballot Democratic candidate did.
Trump’s core message had two components: “Americans were better off in 2020 than they are in 2024. Biden/Harris scuttled my great economy by opening the border and letting millions of illegal immigrants into the county. They are driving up prices.”
Robert Reich writes that the Democratic response should have been: “[B]ig corporations and the wealthy have shafted average working Americans, whose wages and jobs have gone nowhere for decades and who are understandably frustrated and angry at what they see as a rigged system.” But Kamala Harris didn’t say that. Voters perceived that Trump had an explanation about what had happened to the economy between 2020 and 2024, and Harris did not.
The fact that Harris didn’t have a coherent economic message explains many “split-ticket” situations. For example, “Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez more or less held her voter share in her district even as it swung sharply toward Trump. As Ocasio-Cortez’s own voters told her, the reason her constituents split the ticket between her and Trump wasn’t because they were drawn to Trump’s right-wing policies or his ugly rhetoric. It was because they wanted change, because they viewed both Trump and her as fighting for the working-class.”
7. What about sexism and racism? Many Harris supporters believe that she lost because of her gender and race. Perhaps it’s true that voters wanted a strong man.
There’s no statistical evidence for this. And some contrary poll results. In two swing states, Michigan and Wisconsin, Democrats ran female candidates for Senate; both beat their male opponents. In Michigan Elise Slotkin got fewer votes than Harris. In Wisconsin, Tammy Baldwin got about the same number of votes as Harris.
8. What’s Next? Trump promised to fix the economy. It’s the reason he won on 11/5.
Trump won’t be able to fix the economy because (1) he, personally, has no idea what to do. And (2) the Republican Party’s economic philosophy does not provide the answer. Republicans believe in ”trickle-down” economics; they believe that if they give tax cuts to billionaires then “a rising tide will lift all boats.” Trickle-down economics won’t fix the current economic malaise.
The only thing that’s predictable about the next few months is chaos. Trump and his surrogates are guaranteed to promote outrage and division. When this happens, Democrats should say: “What’s this got to do with fixing the economy?”
