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ELECTION ANALYSIS – WHAT HAPPENS, WHY, WHAT NEXT?  
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Peter Dreier
November 7, 2024
Peter Dreier
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_ The country is evenly divided when it comes to party preference.
Trump did not win a landslide like FDR in 1936, Johnson in 1964, Nixon
in 1972, Reagan in 1980, or Obama in 2008. He won by a small margin in
the Electoral College and popular vote. _

Trump II marks revenge of the silent male voter., Photo credit: The
Australian

 

We are all grieving for the fate of our country and the world. We need
to take time to deal with those feels, surround ourselves with people
with love, and do things that bring us joy - music, cooking, sports,
hiking, travel, whatever. We can accept the reality that Trump and the
Republicans won the election, and try to understand why, but we need
to eventually translate our angry into action - what organizer Ernie
Cortes called "cold anger" that is strategic.   

Here are my random thoughts about the election, which I'll probably
add to over the next few days. There is a lot to take in.

1. The country is almost evenly divided when it comes to party
preference. Trump did not win a landslide like FDR in 1936, or Johnson
in 1964, or Nixon in 1972, or Reagan in 1980, or Obama in 2008. He won
by a small margin in the Electoral College and the popular vote. Even
so, public opinion polls show that Americans are NOT divided on most
key issues. For example, a vast majority think there's too much wealth
and income inequality, that rich people and big corporations should
pay more in taxes, that the government should do more to protect the
environment and consumers, that labor unions are a good thing, that
undocumented immigrants deserve a path toward citizenship, that the
government should help limit drug prices, that all Americans are
entitled to health insurance, that the federal minimum wage should be
at least $15 an hour, that same-sex marriage should be legal,  that
police should not engage in racial profiling, and so on.  But public
opinion doesn't get translated into policy without politics, and
elections are about politics - mobilizing people to vote around issues
they care about.

2. Trump won the popular vote, so the Electoral College - which is
always a popular whipping boy and usually well-deserved -- isn't the
problem this year.  Trump is a unique figure in the history of
American politics - a demagogue, the leader of a personality cult, and
pathological liar.  So it is hard to evaluate this election with
other elections, because doing so tends to normalize what should be
causes for outrage.  Even so, we can evaluate this election to
understand how Trump won the White House, and how the Republicans took
back the Senate. We don't yet know whether the Republicans will hold
onto their House majority.

3. Overall turnout was down this year compared to four years ago. In
2020, 66.4% of eligible voters actually voted. This year, 64.5% of
eligible voters cast ballots. This is according to the University of
Florida Election Labor, which keeps tabs on this.

4. The Democrats' turnout efforts were inadequate. Many Americans
didn't vote. We'll know more later about who the non-voters were, but
here are some preliminary factoids. In 2020, Trump got 74.2 million
votes. This year he got 72.1 million votes - 2.1 million fewer. In
2020, Biden got 81.2 million votes. This year, Harris got about 67.2
million votes. That's 14 million fewer votes. That means that lots of
people who voted for Biden in 2020 didn't even bother to vote this
year. Both the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates got
fewer votes this year, but the Democratic candidate (Harris) got FAR
fewer votes. Some version of this occurred in almost every state.

5. There are many hard truths we have to face if we're to move our
country in a better direction. Trump is a fascist, but most Americans
are not fascists. Even so, more than half of those who voted, voted
for a fascist, mostly over their concerns over the economy, and next
most important over immigration. In Missouri, about 58.5% of voters
voted for Trump. At the same time, 58% of voters voted for Proposition
A, which will hike the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour and
guarantee paid sick leave. Trump is against raising the federal
minimum wage and against paid sick leave, while Harris is for both of
them. But obviously many Missourians voted for Trump AND Proposition
A. Similarly, quite a few Americans voted for Trump AND voted for
state ballot measures in favor of abortion.

5. Harris was seen as an extension of Biden, who was very unpopular.
She could never recover from that. Post-election polls show that the
most important issue, by far, was the economy and prices.  39% of
voters ranked this as the most important issue. Those for whom that
issue was #1 voted for Trump by a large margin 60%, according to an AP
exist poll.  In the AP post-election poll, 37% of voters thought the
economy was "excellent" (7%) or "good" (30%), while 64% of voters
thought that the economy was "not so well" (40%) or "poor" (24%).  By
a margin of 50% to 41%, more Americans think Trump would be better
than Harris at handling the economy. This despite the fact the
American economy is currently the best in the world and is improving,
that wages are going up faster than prices, and that unemployment is
at a record low. Lots of polls show that most Americans don't give
Biden credit for the improving economy. In fact, many blame him for
what they perceive as a "bad" economy. Trump kept repeating that the
economy is terrible and media let him get away with his lies. Biden
was also the most pro-union president in history, but many union
members voted for Trump, even though not a single union endorsed
Trump.

6. Immigration ranked #2.  20% of voters said that Immigration was
the most important issue. 88% of those voters voted for Trump. Trump's
racist stereotyping and scapegoating of immigrants was effective. This
was his most fascist demagogic issue and it worked.

7. Many people (including me) predicted that abortion would play a
major role in getting women to vote and to vote for Harris and other
Democrats in light of the Dobbs decision, made possible by Trump's
appointments to the Supreme Court and his opposition to abortion. We
still don't have all the facts, but it appears that this didn't
happen.  Abortion ranked #3 - 11% of voters said it was the most
important issue. 85% of them voted for Harris.  A majority of white
women, who accounted for 39% of all voters, voted for Trump. 
Non-white women (the AP didn't break it down by specific race) voted
overwhelmingly (over 70%) for Harris, but they account for only 14% of
all voters.  

8. Why did most of the polls underestimate Trump's support. It has do
to with the so-called "Bradley effect," named for Tom Bradley, LA's
first African American mayor. In 1982 he lost the California
gubernatorial race despite having a lead in the polls going into the
election. Some voters clearly told pollsters that they were going to
vote for Bradley because they didn't want to sound racist. This year,
some people who intended to vote for Trump lied to pollsters. They
know he's a despicable person and didn't want to say out loud that
they were going to vote for him. So they lied. That explains why most
polls underestimated Trump's margins.

9. Speaking of bigotry: Harris had a few disadvantages besides being
the VP to an unpopular president and having little time to build her
own campaign after Biden dropped out in July. Since the 1960s, more
and more white voters have voted for Black and Latinx candidates and
more male voters have voted for female candidates. As a result, the
number of Black, brown, and female elected officials has increased
dramatically. That's all good. But we can't discount the reality that
Harris' race and gender may have hurt her with quite a few voters.
Black and women voters didn't support her at the levels that her
campaign expected, and there are still many Americans who won't vote
for a Black candidate, or a female candidate, much less at Black
female candidate.

10. The turnout problem has much to do with the decline of the labor
movement over the past 40 years - from 30% of all workers in the early
1970s, to 20% in the 1990s, to 10% today. Unions used to be the key
turnout machine for Democrats. If union membership today was 20% of
all workers, Harris would have won, because unions would have put more
resources into educating its members about why to vote for the
pro-worker candidate, even those members who might be gun owners or
evangelical Christians. Typically, turnout by union members is higher
than average turnout. A stronger labor movement would have had put
more members to volunteer in campaigns and had more money to invest in
Democratic campaigns. America's corporate ruling class and its
Republican allies spent the past half-century trying to weaken and
even destroy the labor movement, and almost succeeded, in part by
weakening labor laws and enforcement, in part by engaging in expensive
union-busting. It turns out that unions have made a modest comeback in
the past few years, but they can't win many workplace victories under
current labor laws. Public opinion is solidly in support of unions.
Over 70% of Americans support unions, the highest figure since the
mid-1960s, when the Gallup Poll began asking that question. But public
opinion doesn't win union elections. Fair labor laws and good
organizing do. The Democrats should have enacted labor law reform
(then called the Employee Free Choice Act, now called the Protect the
Right to Organize Act) when they had the chance under Obama, but they
didn't. They are paying for that now.

11. Other key organizations within the Democratic coalition - Planned
Parenthood, the ACLU, the Sierra Club and other enviro groups, civil
rights groups, immigrant rights groups, community organizing groups,
LGBTQ groups -- don't have the resources or infrastructure that the
labor movement does. If they all worked together, that would be
better, but the liberal/progressive coalition is still
organizationally fragmented.

12. Anecdotally, my wife and I canvassed for Democrat George
Whitesides in a key battleground House race in northern LA County
(Palmdale/Lancaster/Santa Carita), against a Republican incumbent,
Mike Garcia. Most of the canvassers over those last few weekends were
NOT from that district, because there was very little Democratic
infrastructure there. We door-knocked homes and apartments of
registered Democrats who were low-propensity voters - who had only
voted in one or two of the least five election cycles. Most weren't at
home or refused to come to the door. We were not their friends,
neighbors, or coworkers. Others told me of their similar experiences
around the country. That is NOT a recipe for Democratic success. (By
the way, Garcia is leading by 51.1% to 49.1% with 69% of the vote
counted).  

13. Some people are surprised at Trump's victory because the media
kept saying that his campaign operation was in disarray and didn't
have a real ground game. But Trump DID have a ground game. It's called
the white evangelical Christian movement. Those churches and their
social networks mobilized their members for Trump and other
Republicans. In 2016 and 2020 they accounted for almost half (45%) of
Trump's total vote. We'll see how they did this year. It is possible
that a significant factor in Trump's increase among Latinos this year
was among Hispanic evangelicals and traditional Catholics.

14. There will be lots of post-election diagnoses and many reports
about what went wrong (and, in a few cases, right) around polling,
framing issues, media coverage, voter outreach, registration and
turnout, voter suppression, voter preferences and turnout of specific
groups (women, youth, African Americans, Latinos, union members) that
weakened the Democratic coalition, etc.

15. There’s lots to discuss about what Democrats, liberals and
progressives, should be doing during Trump’s presidency. Massive
civil disobedience and protest? General strikes in major cities?
Investing in and strengthening an infrastructure of local/state
issue-oriented groups to strengthen and expand the organizing base
in-between elections? Focus on building movements and winning
elections in cities and state legislatures? Lots of lawsuits to stop
Trump from pursuing his agenda?

16. Many of us feared that in an extremely tight presidential election
that would be determined by a small number of votes in seven
battleground states, the presence of Jill Stein and Cornel West on the
ballot could take enough "protest" votes away from Harris to hand
Trump a victory. This didn't happen. Trump's margin of victory in
those states was much larger than the combined votes for Stein and
West. Similarly, it doesn't look like Harris lost many votes among
young people and liberals upset with her stance on Israel and
Palestine. Even most leftist voters who declared themselves to be
"uncommitted" probably voted for Harris anyway, knowing that things
would be much worse for Palestinians, or the prospects for peace in
the Middle East, if Trump won the election. But because Harris got
fewer votes than Biden did in 2020, we don't yet know which Biden
voters didn't bother to vote this year.

17. The same is likely true about Arab American voters. In the
Arab-majority suburb of Dearborn, Harris lost the city to Trump by
more than 2,600 votes. Biden beat Trump by more than 17,400 votes in
Dearborn. That's more than a 20,000-vote swing that contributed to
Trump's triumph in Michigan. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat,
received over 9,600 more votes in Dearborn than Harris. Trump beat
Harris in Michigan by a slim margin of 84,029 votes - 49.8% (2,799,713
votes) to 48% (2,715,684). Trump's margin among Arab American voters
wasn't enough, on its own, to swing the Michigan electoral votes his
way, but it contributed to his victory. More important was the low
turnout by Black voters and the shift of some Black voters toward
Trump. The same is likely true in Pennsylvania, which has a relatively
large Arab American population, but where other factors were more
important in Trump's victory.

18. In many ways, the legacy of the COVID pandemic was a factor in
this election. It brought the economy to a standstill, first under
Trump, then under Biden. Biden's policies helped bring the economy
back, but that's now how most voters see it. Instead, they have short
memories and somehow blame Biden for higher prices for gas, food,
rent, and other necessities. They forget the devastation that Trump's
mishandling of the pandemic caused, including many unnecessary deaths
due to his lies about vaccines and his administration's failure to
quickly address the public health crisis. In early March 2020, weekly
claims for unemployment insurance was about 207,000. Two weeks later,
it was ten times that figure. By April, claims reached a high of
6,137,000. Having lost their jobs or working few hours, many Americans
could not pay their mortgage or the rent. Biden expanded resources for
testing and vaccines, but Trump and his MAGA movement opposed masks
and even vaccines, so that, ironically, COVID deaths were higher in
Republican areas. Through August 2024, the U.S. had 103 million
confirmed cases of COVID and 1.2 million deaths. COVID also had a
profound impact on increasing social isolation, with people becoming
less connected to family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers. That
certainly had an impact on voter turnout.

19. What can we expect from a Trump administration? Here are a few
predictions:
(a) He will hire more loyalists to run the White House and the
agencies, including bringing  fellow fascist Elon Musk and
anti-science whacko Robert F. Kennedy Jr. into high level posts. He
will continue to use the White House as a subsidiary of the Trump
family business empire. He will continue to rant and rage like a
deranged lunatic, encouraging hate groups like the Proud Boys to
engage in violence against immigrants, transgender folks, Blacks,
Jews, and others. 
(b)  He will try to persuade Supreme Court Justices
Clarence Thomas  (76 years old) and Samuel Alito (75) to retire so
he can appoint younger reactionaries to the Supreme Court.
(c) He will fill other federal judgeships with similar reactionaries
drawn from a list put together by the Federalist Society. This only
requires Senate approval.
(d) He will begin to deport immigrants, although it is unlikely he
can deport the 12 undocumented immigrants and, if he tries, he'll get
pushback from major employers who depend on them. Trump's efforts
will sow enormous chaos and racism,  and could result in violence
and certainly violations of basic civil liberties.
(e) If the Republicans take back the House, he will weakening federal
labor laws and eviscerating the NLRB to stall/reserve the modest but
impressive victories by organized labor.
(f)  He will cut Medicaid, food stamps, and housing vouchers.
(g) He will weaken Obamacare to return to allowing insurance
companies to deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions.
(h) He will weaken regulations that protect workers, consumers, and
community residents from dangerous health, safety, and environmental
practices by business. This means cutting budgets and regulations for
EPA, FDA, OSHA, NLRB, FTC, CFPB, HUD, and other regulatory agencies.
(i) He will enact even more regressive tax policies by reducing taxes
for the super-rich and big business.
(j) He will cut Pell grants and other financial aid for college
and  cancel all policies to reduce student debt, most of which is
born by working class Americans who attended four year public colleges
and universities.
(k) He will reduce funds for public transit and investments in green
jobs and green industries
(l) He will allow drug companies to dramatically raise prices for
prescription medicine, including reserving Biden's policies, including
for drugs like insulin. 
(m) He will  weaken federal laws that ban employment, housing and
other forms of discrimination on the basis of race and gender
(n)  He will encourage the Supreme Court to allow states to outlaw
same-sex marriage
(o) He will pre-empt states and cities from raising the minimum wage
above the federal level ($7.25 since 2009), among other changes.
(p)  He will pardon all those who were convicted for the January 6
insurrection.
(q)   He will end U.S. aid to Ukraine, guaranteeing Putin a victory
(r)  He will visit Israel to show support for Netanyahu 
(s) He will engage in all kinds of acts to diminish our democracy and
basic rights regarding free speech, assembly, dissent, unions,
surveillance, academic freedom, immigration and deportation,
separation of church and state, and others.  Rick Perlstein wrote an
excellent column in American Prospect, entitled "What Will You Do?"
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about this.

20. If I thought that the Democrats could take back the Senate in
2026, then I’d say that Trump will have to do most of his damage in
the first two years of his administration, especially if the
Republicans maintain control in the House. But a quick look at the
2026 Senate map seems to give Republicans the advantage. This is my
quick-and-dirty analysis, which I’d be happy to be wrong about. The
“out” party usually picks up seats in the midterm elections, but
the Democrats have a long climb to get to 51 Senate seats in 2026.
They’d have to hold onto all their existing seats and flip four to
six Republican seats, but it doesn’t look like there are four (much
less six) vulnerable Republican seats to flip. If am correct, then
Trump will have four years of a Republican Senate.

Current Senate
51 D (includes independents Sinema, Manchin, Sanders, King)
49 R
Republicans flipped at least 4 Senate seats in
Ohio (Brown lost)
PA (Casey lost)
Montana (Tester lost)
West Virginia (Manchin didn’t run for re-elections and was replaced
by a Republican)
Republicans could still flip three more Senate seats, but it is too
close to call
Wisconsin (Tammy Baldwin) – currently winning 49.4% to 48.5%
Michigan (Elise Slotkin) – currently winning 48.6% to 48.3%
Nevada (Jacky Rosen) – currently losing 47.2% to 47.3%
Democrats flipped
None
New Senate

If Tammy Baldwin (Wisconsin), Elise Slotkin (Michigan), and Jacky
Rosen (Nevada) all win, the Senate will be 53 R, 47 D
If Baldwin and Slotkin hold on to win, but Rosen loses, it is 54 R, 46
D
If Baldwin holds on to win, but Slotkin and Rosen lose, it is 55 R, 45
D
If Baldwin, Slotkin and Rosen all lose, the new Senate is 56 R, 44 D

Under the first, best-case, scenario, the Democrats have to flip 4
Republican Senate seats, and hold onto all their current seats, to
regain a majority. Based on my quick look (below), at which Rs and Ds
might be vulnerable in 2026, that doesn’t look promising.
2026 Senate Elections
_Vulnerable Republicans (% of votes in previous race)_
Tillis - NC (48.7%)
Ernst – Iowa (51.8%)
Collins – Maine (51%)
Cornyn - Texas (53.5%) [although Cruz’s win over Allred with 53.2%
of the vote makes a Cornyn win seem highly likely)

_Vulnerable Democrats (% of votes in previous race)_
Ossoff – GA (50.6%)
Smith – Minn. (48.7%)
Hickenlooper – Colorado (53.5%)
Peters – Michigan (49.9%)
Lujan – New Mexico (51.7%)

In the midst of this awful election, there was some GOOD NEWS, which
I'll have to write about some other time.  Besides some positive
votes on state ballot measures around the county, in Los Angeles,
Ysabel Jurado - a very progressive tenants rights lawyer -- was
elected to the LA City Council.  There's plenty of other
silver linings from yesterday's elections, but I'll leave it
there.  
To be continued....

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