The defeat of the Democrats in 2024 – not a shock but a very real probability in the run-up (a coin-toss likelihood) – represents the death of the old order. To recover from Donald Trump’s return to power, Democrats need to look beyond their comfort zones. They need to rethink and reform completely.
First, a few words on the polls. They underestimated Trump once again. Not by much, mind. In polling, to be within three points of the result is the expected norm. Polling is a science. And in these elections, that is what came to pass.
But the fact that Trump’s numbers were systemically understated by a margin of 1-3 points does point to pollsters’ failing at sampling. Sampling is the batch of respondents a pollster gets to answer the questions. The samples, it seems to me, are still too “aware” of the news – still too “logged-on” – to be as representative of the voting public as they could be.
Assumptions that Joe Biden’s base would turn out for Kamala Harris as historic rallyings would have you expect did not come to pass. Historic assumptions and overtly logged-on respondents – these are the two primary reasons the polls got it “wrong” once more. (Though, let’s be honest here, they only barely got it wrong.)
The rout for Democrats came because their base did not come out to vote. Harris lost more than a million votes on Biden in New York, but Trump was only able to add on a few hundred thousand. In the Bronx, Harris could bring out only two thirds of what Biden turned out in 2020 – a damning drop in turnout in a city that has only grown in size since 2020.
Along the US-Mexican border, the Dems found themselves in a state of collapse. From San Antonio down through to the actual border, Dems suffered some serious losses as Hispanics, less loyal to the Dems the more assimilated to America they become, turned out for Donald Trump.
In the north and along the East Coast, Harris’s suburb strategy failed. Dems thought that turning out more black voters in counties with a greater proportion of African Americans would deliver for them the wins they needed. But they did not bank on black voters – black men, specifically – diversifying in their voting choice. At the same time, the Dems were shedding serious, necessary support, in predominantly white counties.
This is the mistake liberals continue to make when strategising with demographics. Just turn out more young people and more minorities, and you can be assured of victory. Except the party that young people and minorities vote for is no longer as easy to predict as it once was.
How to recover?
You cannot have opinions on this election without looking at voters’ views on the economy. Donald Trump finished up 6 points ahead of Kamala Harris on the subject. The oft-mentioned adage that Republicans are almost always ahead on the economy is irrelevant when it still proves a decent indicator as to strength of feeling. Barack Obama was able to establish a commanding lead in 2008, and neutralise Mitt Romney on the subject in 2012. Biden was likewise able to do it with Trump in 2020, whereas Hillary Clinton shed support over it in 2016.
The economy is not a theoretical issue. For Democrats to think abortion could serve as a counterbalance to prices and the general cost of living was wrong – it spoke to a strategist’s view that immediate issues to the median American could be ignored. But prices are in front of all Americans every day. For Dems to focus on abortion over prices and prescription charges – a real success story for them – was idiocy. It is the mark of bubble-thinking.
There are only two routes of recovery for Democrats now. Recalibrate the strategy on immigration, recognising that American attitudes have hardened in recent years. Or recapture some semblance of competence and capacity on the economy.
On immigration, the strategy needs to prioritise “putting our own people first”. Chest-beating populism is a hard nut to crack when your candidates seemingly hail from elite circles alien to the median American. And while that isn’t an argument to indulge xenophobia, it is an argument that Democrats need to start sounding like the voters – and not just their voters.
The economy should be an easier route of recovery for Democrats. It hasn’t escaped my notice that some of the worse falls in turnout for the Dems happened in areas where housing affordability was non-existent.
Take these examples. In the Bronx, where average incomes are the equivalent to only 9 per cent of the average house price, Dem turnout dropped by more than 30 per cent. In other NY counties, there is more of the same: obscene housing prices, obscene falls in turnout. But in Lafayette County, Wisconsin, the average earner makes 42 per cent of the average house. And Dem turnout dropped by only – only! – 5 per cent.
The data is more muddied in the middle. The drop for Dems was cross-county. But it is notable that in the ten counties with the highest house-price-to-income-ratio that I’ve so far analysed, the drop for Dems was above the national average. That tells you something.
If the Democrats want to win back America, they need to speak less in platitudes and more about the reality of what’s happening to people. Primarily, Dems should learn that, no, really, Bernie Sanders isn’t all that radical. No American is happy with the status quo – two thirds are disaffected with the economic order. It wouldn’t hurt to act on that. This is the mood music of now. It is not the stuff of left and right any more. This is the politics of the content and uncontent. And for quite some time now the uncontents have been in the majority.
If Democrats won’t learn from this defeat and argue for systemic change, rather than the status quo, then Donald Trump will. And he will carve a new tomorrow. That consequence, that free rein for America’s radical right, will be the responsibility of weak-willed Democrats.
[See also: The new Trumpian bargain]
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