Why did Trump win?
American Republicans are triumphant following the decisive victory of Trump, only the second president in history to come back to the White House on the back of a re-election failure. Democrats are reeling from the shock defeat. And so, to a lesser extent is Poland where polls showed that Harris was the more popular candidate, decisively so among supporters of the current left to centre-right coalition.
What just happened? How did a convicted felon, a 78-year old bigoted wide boy carry the day? Four interrelated factors come to mind. We can label them populism, pragmatism, culture war and social media. Three of these factors are very much global phenomena while one is, apparently, characteristically American.
Populism
Today, in the mouths of most commentators populism means: giving people what they want rather than what they need; short-termism; violating checks and balances; pushing liberal democracy towards electoral autocracy. A bad thing.
One less insidious thing populism has meant - with Trump, with the Brexit vote in the UK and with Law and Justice in Poland - is a reorganisation of traditional value systems. If I self-identify as right-wing, why do I need to be, say, conservative across the board - for example, mortally offended that Trump is vulgar and sexist?
A new global populism is emerging where parties and candidates can choose core values that have not traditionally gone together. This is connected to other neutral or positive elements of populism: the prioritisation of values and listening carefully to market research, basing your electoral pitch on what the voter wants. The 2024 American voter was concerned about the economy, immigration, abortion and the threat to democracy – and in that order.
The Vote Leave / Brexit campaign also took a careful look at what voters wanted – a top priority was and is the health service. “We already blame Brussels for losing control of our borders,” they thought, “so what we need is to blame the EU for the state of British hospitals.” So Vote Leave said that Brexit would give 350 million pounds a week for the Health Service. They even put that figure on the side of a bus. It doesn’t matter that health care is the traditional preserve of the left – or that this is creative accounting par excellence. Give them what they want so we get what we want.
Contrast this populism with the attitude of liberal and left parties in Poland and the US. There was not only a failure to listen carefully to the electorate, there was clear contempt for the "basket of deplorables" who vote for the other side, the Poland B who appreciates the 500+ benefits. Now if you don’t even like the populus, why would you expect to be popular.
From the perspective of the new populism, “Who cares if Trump is authoritarian, vulgar, sexist, racist. So what if Musk’s and Trump’s ties to Russia would make Joe McCarthy spin in his grave. If he delivers on inflation and immigration, I’m good.”
This populism can start to look rational, even suspiciously like the second factor: pragmatism in voting.
Pragmatism
American voters have long been said to be pragmatic: Just before the election, inspect the state of the roads and infrastructure in your district. If it’s all shiny and new and working, vote the incumbents in again. If not, vote them out.
The frequently quoted Professor Alan Lichtman (who predicted every president correctly until now but didn’t predict Trump this time) has a sophisticated version of this pragmatism. He calls it the "13 Keys to the White House". Each key is an objective assessment of the ruling party. Polls, campaigns and debates don’t matter.
But they do. Although Biden’s economic figures were quite good, good enough for Lichtman’s keys anyway, Trump’s campaign managed to pin earlier and painful inflation rates on the Democrats. “You never had it so bad,” as it were. Though this be pragmatism, yet there’s rhetoric in it.
Culture war
The third factor is the extraordinary culture war in which this election took place. Being a Democrat or Republican is no longer a rational choice. It’s a label, a flag, like which sports team you support or which side your family was on in the Civil War. Surveys show that unprecedented numbers of Americans don’t even want to socialise with people of diverse opinions. And the record low number of undecided voters in this election was the statistical result. This tribalism doesn’t, however, mean that the tribes are demographically the same as always. “Pay check to pay check voters”, as one analyst, Frank Luntz, put it, may come from very diverse ethnic, gender or religious groups.
The culture war not only meant that the campaigns had to focus on “getting out the vote” as we were told incessantly. It also meant that a key form of rationality - a discussion where one person might be expected to change their mind - was of minimal significance.
"So what if a member of your tribe has been convicted 34 times, he’s still a member of your tribe. Blood is thicker than water. If the courts convict my guy, so much the worse for the courts." Another situation with Polish parallels.
Social media and campaign strategies
This leads into the fourth factor: the campaign strategies and social media. Old-school door-knocking Democrat campaigns versus Trump rallies and Elon Musk. We heard so much from the media how the Democrats have a bigger marketing budget, a bigger team, millions of people knocking on doors. Their much-vaunted “ground game”. All the other side has got is the owner of one of the world’s largest social media companies. What could go wrong?
By no means do I want to praise Trump, social media, populism or the result of this election, but they do demand a deep rethinking of what a healthy democracy is in our times.
Patrick Trompiz