For once, the US presidential poll predictions were mostly right on the money. They all called a tight race for the seven battleground states, with former President Donald Trump holding a slight but negligible lead. That’s how the final results have mostly been. It was a tight contest, with Trump eking out victories in each of these states but without any of them being a very big win. That was enough for him to claim victory. With the elite Democrats losing touch with their voter base, Trump was able to get the better of them.
The one state where Trump clearly outran a prediction was Iowa, where the well-respected pollster Ann Selzer released a final poll last Saturday that showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading by three points. Though within the margin of error, the final result, where Trump won by over 14 points, clearly suggested that the Selzer poll was grossly mistaken.
The opinion polling aside, this was a unique election in recent US political history. No sitting US president has withdrawn from an election as close as President Joe Biden did when he pulled out—or more accurately, was forced out—in late July, after a disastrous performance at an election debate with Trump. On the other hand, no losing one-term president has been nominated to fight the presidential election again in recent US presidential history. The closest is Richard Nixon, who was Vice President to President Dwight Eisenhower. Nixon lost the 1960 election to John Kennedy narrowly but returned to win the presidency in 1968 and again in 1972. And of course, no major party has nominated a candidate without going through the internal party primary process, as was done in the case of Harris.
It was definitely a challenge for Harris because she was running for election in a country in which about 70 per cent of the voters thought the country was going in the wrong direction. These are historically bad numbers for any incumbent administration, and an impossible hill to climb as it turned out. Harris tried to distance herself from the administration in which she was the VP, which is not an easy task. She also fumbled on this issue when questioned on the campaign trail, stating once that she wouldn’t have done anything different from Biden. She clearly was in a bad spot, trying not to be seen as throwing her President under the bus but needing not to be tied too closely to such an unpopular administration. It was a balancing act that she clearly did not win.
Kamala’s balancing act
There were also strategy mistakes that the Harris campaign made. One that a lot of analysts will point to was not picking Josh Shapiro, the very popular governor of Pennsylvania, as her running mate, and picking instead Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota. Pennsylvania was a critical swing state. Harris absolutely needed to win the state because she really had almost no pathway to winning the election without Pennsylvania. Minnesota didn’t do anything for her campaign since it was already a Democratic dominant state. Though it is difficult to prove a counterfactual, she might have had a better shot in the critical Pennsylvania with Shapiro. Then again, considering she did not win any of the other battleground states, maybe Shapiro would not have made a difference.
Another possible mistake was the Harris campaign deciding on a defensive strategy of sitting on the slight lead she gained after she entered the race. She gave no interviews to the media nor conducted any press events for weeks, letting the impression gain ground that she was not capable of holding her own in such settings. That was to some extent overcome by her excellent debate performance when she clearly beat Trump. But it ultimately didn’t matter.
Similarly, the expected gender gap does not appear to have played much of a role. Especially after the Dobbs v Jackson decision by the US Supreme Court, which took away the federal protection for abortion, there was an expectation that women would vote on this issue rather than on the economy or border, the main issues in the election. It could be that the Trump campaign managed to turn out enough supporters among men to compensate for any slide in support among women. Whatever the case—only exit poll data would settle the issue—this was another Harris campaign hope that failed.
Also read: In victory speech, Trump calls for unity; tells supporters 2nd term ‘will be golden age of America’
Democrats losing touch
Ultimately, the structural condition of economic issues proved too much for the Harris campaign. The US economy has done relatively well but only in the aggregate. It grew at 2.5 per cent in 2023, faster than most other rich economies. But most working-class Americans see only the rising cost of living, and high interest rates, and could care less about the aggregate performance. A decade after the Democratic party first faced the prospect that it was losing its working-class support base, they have done little to address it effectively. As long as they don’t, they cannot expect that traditional base to stay with them.
The Democrats have become the party of elite social issues, which is losing touch with its traditional supporters and is becoming increasingly isolated. Even a candidate like Trump—who should have been easily beaten despite the economic conditions given his lack of political discipline, his complete unsuitability for such an office, his performance the last time he was president and his general yuckiness—was able to get the better of the Democrats. The Democrats have increasingly leaned into progressive social issues while largely ignoring concerns such as illegal immigration and crime and paid a price for it. They have increasingly lost support even among Hispanics, African-Americans and Jews, traditionally strongly supportive of the Democrats.
The Biden administration was an opportunity, but a wasted one, to reset the democratic party’s ideological and social roots. Unless the Democrats can come to terms with these issues, they are unlikely to be able to address their growing political marginalisation that allows someone like Trump to beat them.
Rajesh Rajagopalan is a professor of International Politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. He tweets @RRajagopalanJNU. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)