As the hours wound down and polls across the nation closed to count their votes, it became apparent that this election was not like 2020, but rather, it more closely resembled 2016. Former president Donald Trump’s campaign doubled down on its message to ‘Make America Great Again’ and the polls might be signaling a nationwide shift to the right. Against all odds, this was not a close contest.
Trump is likely to win the popular vote as well, a feat not accomplished by a Republican since 2004, when George Bush won re-election against John Kerry.
According to The New York Times, of the counties with nearly complete results, “more than 90 percent shifted in favor of former President Donald J. Trump in the 2024 presidential election.”
This resulted in Trump comfortably winning every state he was expected to win and even having a lead in virtually all the battleground states where both candidates were tirelessly campaigning for votes.
For example, Trump narrowly won the battleground state of Pennsylvania, a state that has turned red just once in the last eight presidential elections. That one instance is, of course, in 2016, when Trump beat Hillary Clinton.
As for Vice President Kamala Harris, she lacked the support that President Joe Biden received during his campaign in 2020, especially from male Hispanic voters.
Since 2016, Latino men have been increasingly leaning towards Trump, but the Democrats have always had a sizable advantage, with Clinton having a 31% lead in the polls and Biden with a less dominant, but still large, 23% lead.
In 2024, however, Trump completely flipped this trend on its head, maintaining a 10% nationwide lead.
Harris lagged in the polls due to issues that citizens blame the Biden administration for. For example, an NBC article reported that male Hispanic voters were concerned about the economy and thus were unlikely to vote for someone currently in office.
“I just want the economy to be better,” Chris Gonzalez, a salesperson for a roofing company, said. “I remember I was unemployed when [Trump] was when he first got office, and I always had job offers. The price of consumables was cheaper… And under this administration it’s like some months we barely get by.”
With the economy being the most important issue for Hispanic voters, it’s no wonder that Trump’s promises to fix the economy and set prices back to normal enticed many of them into voting for him over Harris.
Even independent voters seemed to swing in favor of Trump. According to The Guardian, exit polls show Republicans to be up by 54%, compared to Harris’s 30%. What’s notable is that in 2020, Biden held a 9% lead over Trump.
Voters just do not seem to trust Harris to lead the country as much as Biden. Men of all ethnicities were more likely to vote for Trump.
Whether or not it was due to a nationwide shift to the right, Trump is set to begin his long-awaited second term in January 2025.
In any case, this election paints a clear picture of where Americans’ priorities lie.
“Voters have really short memories,” Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who helped lead Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign in 2016, said in an interview with NPR. “And while I think everyone is appalled by what happened on January 6, they’re also appalled by what they have to pay for eggs today. People think about inflation every single day when they’re buying gas, when they’re going to the grocery store.”
