Welcome Back, Donald Trump

Strassel nails it as usual.

Welcome Back, Donald Trump

Trump romps to re-election (and possibly unified government), as Democrats reel.

By Kimberley A. Strassel, WSJ

Nov. 6, 2024 4:38 pm ET

Welcome Back, Donald

Donald Trump on Tuesday became the first president in more than 130 years to be re-elected to the White House after an ouster. If this comes as a shock to about half the country (and much of the legacy media), it’s because they weren’t studying history or the mood of the country. Rare is an administration that has overcome the low approval ratings and foul mood currently directed at Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. In the end, it wasn’t even close:

States: Of the seven battleground states, five have already been called for Trump. North Carolina was the first to fall, though this “battleground” is a state Trump has now won three times. It was the Georgia collapse that truly set off Democratic alarm bells, followed by rapidly gloomy news out of the “Blue Wall” states Harris needed for victory. Fox News was among the first to call both Pennsylvania and Wisconsin (thus making Trump the winner). Michigan followed early Wednesday afternoon. He’s leading by nearly 60,000 votes in Nevada (with 84% of the vote counted), where the state’s politics guru, Jon Ralston, says “its over for Harris in NV.” And Trump is ahead by 100,000 votes in Arizona (with 61% counted).

The vote: The outright victories give Trump 295 electoral votes. If he wins the final three states, he’ll end up with 312. Just as noteworthy, as of publication, Trump had 51% of the nationwide popular vote, in part because of his significantly improved performance in blue states like New York and New Jersey. Maybe the nation will get a brief reprieve from Democratic whining about their Electoral College “disadvantage.” Trump’s victories in most swing states were substantial enough to render Democratic complaints about third-party “spoiler” candidates (for instance, the Green Party’s Jill Stein) irrelevant.

Demographics: Despite media and liberal promises that suburban women would deliver the election to Harris, the Democratic nominee underperformed everywhere. Trump’s victory rest in gains in nearly every demographic: black men, Hispanics, white voters, union voters, women, young voters, and independents. He rocked the rural vote in particular. Further analysis of results and exit polls will yield more granular information, but a topline takeaway is that the Republican coalition is today much broader and more diverse than at any time in modern history.

Presidential elections produce a lot more winners and losers than just the official nominees. Here’s the score after this long and wild election season:

Winners:

• Conservative get-out-the-vote groups: The press (and even some Republicans) threw all kinds of shade on Trump’s get-out-the-vote operation, panning it for “outsourcing” the operation to groups like Turning Point Action and Elon Musk’s SuperPAC. But the effort does appear to have reached a significant number of those “low propensity” voters and made inroads with minority communities. A big piece of that surely still comes down to stalwart GOTV operations like Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition (which said this spring it was pouring more than $60 million into the effort) and Americans for Prosperity (which knocked on millions of doors in those Blue Wall states). But the newcomers to the field clearly also played a part and the GOP has a story to tell there.

• Policies: Voters made their decision on the issues, which won out over Harris’s vague promises and hazy agenda. Exit polls showed the top concerns of voters remained inflation and the border, and that to the extent many were worried about the “future of democracy,” about half voted against Harris. Harris’s final message that Trump was a “fascist” didn’t divert Americans from these kitchen-table concerns. Her refusal to distance herself from Biden policies—and her decision to duck explanations of her plans—proved her downfall.

• The system. After the drama of the 2020 result, Americans were pleasantly surprised to get a called election before sunup. Many states improved their vote-counting process, resulting in fewer election snafus and quicker results.

• Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. Expect to hear the phrase “she should have picked Shapiro” a lot in coming days, as Democrats regret Harris’s decision to choose the liberal Tim Walz as her running mate. Then again, it’s unclear even Shapiro would have saved her campaign from such a sweeping defeat. On the upside for the Pennsylvania governor, his distance from this mess could help position him for his own run in 2028.

The losers:

• The polling industry. Many of the nation’s survey takers owe the country an apology. Again. Particularly because many specifically assured that they weren’t underestimating Trump this time. Some pollsters landed closer to the final numbers (example: Atlas Intel) but overall the polls looked to have missed a notable Trump vote. And those fancy polling “models”—Nate Silver, 538—proved a fail. In the end, the straight-up averages of multiple polls provided by RealClearPolitics came closer to reality.

• The press. As the Harris campaign begins to point fingers, it could do worse than to direct a digit at its buddies in the Fourth Estate. Never in modern history has a media complex shilled so openly for one candidate. Yet all that did was allow the Harris campaign and elites to live in a bubble, while further eroding confidence in the media.

• Extra-electoral tactics. Democrats threw everything they had at disqualifying or wounding Trump via litigation—both from the Justice Department and Democratic state prosecutors. Both Biden and Harris attacked Trump as a “felon,” but the effort largely served to rally GOP support around Trump in the primary, while the majority of the rest of the electorate tuned out that noise and voted on the issues.

Democrats remain in shock, and the temptation will now be to blame this on tactical mistakes. But the result of Election 2024 was a strong rebuke of the progressive agenda launched under Barack Obama and doubled-down on by Biden-Harris.

So Long, Chuck

Few politicians will be feeling more bruised this Wednesday than soon-to-be former Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer—not just for failing in his bid to stay in power, but for blowing a small fortune in the process. Republicans owe a debt of gratitude to National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Steve Daines, for a savvy recruitment operation that (so far) has won Republicans 52 Senate seats. They owe an apology to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for doubting his wisdom that candidate quality matters.

Democrats faced a tough map this year. West Virginia unsurprisingly turned red when former Gov. Jim Justice was easily elected to replaced retiring Democrat Joe Manchin. Republicans dispatched Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown (replaced by Republican Bernie Moreno) and Montana Sen. Jon Tester (replaced by the GOP’s Tim Sheehy). Republican Dave McCormick leads Democratic Sen. Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, and the GOP’s Sam Brown is ahead by a whisker against Sen. Jacky Rosen in Nevada, while Democratic candidates for open seats are ahead in Michigan and Arizona. Wisconsin’s Sen. Tammy Baldwin narrowly won re-election. Democrats meanwhile fell flat in their hopes of pickups, with Florida’s Rick Scott and Texas’s Ted Cruz romping to victory.

The GOP number will give a returned Trump far more ability to name a cabinet (and later judges) of his choosing. If the number increases further, GOP caucus will also have more ability to work around the occasional GOP defection. It also gives Republicans some flexibility, should Trump choose to name a senator or two to his administration.

The loss hurts more given the dollars Democrats dumped in these races. More than $100 million overall was spent on behalf of Cruz challenger Colin Allred (compared with $65 million for Cruz), making it the most expensive race in the nation. Montana’s Sheehy was outspent by multiples by Tester. Schumer-linked groups threw some $330 million into ads alone in seven key races—yet all Schumer has to show for it now is a minority and an empty wallet. Lesson for Democrats: All the money in the world won’t make up for bad ideas and voting records. As for Republicans, after numerous cycles of swings and misses, the Senate win here came down to following McConnell’s advice.

House Status Quo

Thanks to glacial pace of vote-counting in too many states, we may not know for days which party controls the House. But the theme of the night appears to be trench warfare: Many incumbents look to be slogging their way to retaining their seats, in both parties.

Republicans went into the night with a four-vote advantage, and as of publication, had grown that advantage by one seat. Both sides picked up a seat or two due to redistricting (in Alabama and North Carolina). Democrats notched a few pickups in New York, defeating Republicans Marc Molinaro and Brandon Williams, while Republicans gained the Michigan seat vacated by Elissa Slotkin (who is competing for the Senate). The GOP is eyeing further wins in Pennsylvania and Alaska, while Democrats are pinning hopes on more switcheroos in California.

But the story of the night was tenacity. New York GOP Rep. Mike Lawler fought off a vicious Democratic campaign. Ditto GOP Rep. Jen Kiggans in Virginia. Yet so did Minnesota Democrat Angie Craig, and even indicted Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar is returning to the House. In short, a relatively uncompetitive House contest proved even less competitive on the night. And that, folks, is some pretty impressive gerrymandering.

By the Numbers:

3.5 Billions of dollars spent on this year’s presidential race between Trump and Harris, the most expensive in history. Harris and Democrats soundly outraised Trump and Republicans.

45 Percent of the Hispanic vote won by Trump, an unprecedented share for a Republican.

68 Percent increase in Google searches for the term “move to Canada” in the 30 days leading up to the election.

69 Percentage of voters who broke for Trump who in exit polls described the economy as “not so good” or “poor.”

State of the States:

The states had a huge number of issues on the ballot, from abortion to marijuana to ranked-choice voting. For a nice guide to many of those state ballot initiatives—and links to many of the results—see this Americans for Tax Reform page.