What the 2024 Election Returns Tell Us

Some very preliminary thoughts on the 2024 results:

Trump is a political colossus. There’s no denying this now. Trump took the foundation of the Obama coalition, picked it apart in 2016, and ripped it to shreds in 2024. Whatever your thoughts on the “Emerging Democratic Majority” thesis that motivated Barack Obama’s ascendancy, it wasn’t supposed to look like an orange-skinned culture warrior winning 45% of the Hispanic vote and one in four African American men. The Big Blue Wall has been breached, twice, Georgia was brought back into the fold, and New Jersey, Illinois, and Virginia are single-digit states. You don’t have to like him, but there’s no doubt that Trump is an enormously consequential political figure.

The former and future president still causes problems for the GOP. At the same time, there are flashing warning signs for the GOP as a political coalition. Those Trump gains with minorities and rural voters put real pressure on the Democratic coalition, but they come with a cost. Namely, the GOP coalition is starting to suffer from some of the inefficiency problems that plagued Democrats. By running up the score in rural areas yet not quite breaking through with minorities, they now have a situation where there are multiple states that they win by more than 20% of the vote, but only a handful of such states for Democrats. That’s why the House still looks dicey for Republicans while Trump is winning big elsewhere.

Kamala Harris was dealt a bad hand and played it, well, just okay. We should acknowledge that Harris was put in a tough situation. She was the heir to a deeply unpopular administration. She had little time to put together a presidential campaign, which is a Herculean effort even under normal circumstances. She was basically forced to hope that her initial momentum would carry her through—in July, I likened it to the kids’ game of “don’t let the balloon touch the ground”. When it became clear in September that it wouldn’t be enough, it was a scramble. She needed to define herself better and in my view squandered some opportunities to do so, but that usually happens during the primary season (which she didn’t have).

That’s not to say she didn’t have advantages: The media and most U.S. institutions were largely on board. The Democratic Party fell into line with shocking ease; she trounced Trump in their lone debate, but I warned at the time that it may not have accomplished what she needed. She deserves a solid B+ for her effort. In this context, however, that wasn’t enough.

Social justice politics has to moderate, but it can’t. I don’t think this election was really about what we might broadly call social justice politics. I do, however, think it’s why two groups swung rightward: tech entities, and black and Latino men. 

The best way I can explain it is this: If you’re modestly “woke” but aren’t deeply immersed in social justice politics, participating in popular culture has been the equivalent of being a Catholic at a decade-long Protestant Evangelical revival. Even if you agree on 90% of Christian doctrine, the constant bombardment with messages that emphasize the 10% disagreement is extremely off-putting. 

What I think is important to acknowledge is that it’s easy to say, “Hey, just lay off the proselytization/damning people who agree with you on 90% of the issues.” But for evangelicals, the doctrine is their core. It’s offensive to tell evangelicals to lighten up, because they view their identity as turning on fine points of doctrine. 

The same is true for social justice warriors. Telling groups or individuals who feel marginalized to accept half a loaf is not only not an option for them, it is deeply offensive. I don’t know the answer. But that’s part of the problem.

Inflation is bad. This issue has been covered deeply, but it bears repeating: When unemployment is 10%, that means 90% of people are employed. Those with jobs might be nervous, they might not get raises, they might feel for those who are unemployed – but the brunt of the problem falls on a small subset of the population. It’s also usually resolved fairly quickly, as unemployment typically reverts to healthy levels in a year or so.

Inflation is different. It affects everyone. It affects them every day in everything they do. And its impact is cumulative: When the inflation rate flattens out, prices are still high. It takes a long time for expectations to reset. It’s among the worst things that can happen to an incumbent president, and Harris refused to distance herself from the administration that oversaw the worst inflation in 50 years.

We are less divided than we were led to believe. This is a positive note; we are far less divided in this election than we have been in decades. Donald Trump won with the most diverse Republican coalition in modern times. The racial divide is smaller than in any election since the 1950s. The age divide is the smallest it’s been since the early 2000s. The class divide is negligible. That’s not to say that we don’t suffer from pretty significant problems, but even as political polarization has increased, it’s an indisputable good that demographic polarization has declined.

There is always another election. For all of the hits the Founders take, they got one thing indisputably right. The new Congress and new president will be sworn in in two months. And then we will start talking about the midterms. After all, the next election will be just 22 months away.

If the country likes the job that the current administration is doing, they’ll reward it in the midterms. If not, Republicans will suffer. That’s the way politics in this country has functioned for almost 250 years, and will continue to do so two years from now.