Republicans have promised a red wave in 2022; he arrived two years later. Not only did Donald Trump claim victory in 2024, but Republicans regained control of the Senate and appear poised to retain the House. (A number of House races on Friday are still too close to call.)

What Trump has done is a remarkable feat. Polls suggest a race for the margin of error in every swing state; Trump wiped out all seven. He improved his 2020 margin in more than 90% of the country’s counties, according to analyzes by The Washington Post And Financial Times.

Throughout an unpredictable and sometimes chaotic race, Trump proved invincible. The things that doomed previous presidential campaigns did not apply. In 2016, first reports on Hillary Clinton’s alleged mishandling of classified documents that sank her campaign; Trump was indicted on 40 counts of mishandling classified documents – no longer charged in two others prosecutions, and sentenced in a third – and he was not affected. In the final days of the 2012 race, Mitt Romney sank after offense supporters of Barack Obama; in the final days of 2024, Trump criticized Harris supportersVice President Kamala HarrisPresident Joe Biden, immigrants, Puerto Ricans, Haitians, journalists, Liz Cheney, Oprahthe city of Detroit And Fox News. It had no impact.

National results

See national results update in real time

Autopsies on Harris’ loss will take place in the coming weeks; analyzes of Trump’s victory will follow. There is no single reason why Trump won. Here are five possibilities.

Theory #1: Economic dissatisfaction. While the Biden-Harris administration deserved credit for avoiding a post-pandemic recession, it gained none from voters. By most indicators, the U.S. economy’s recovery has outpaced that of other developed countries: inflation had fallen since its peak in mid-2022; the S&P 500 is up more than 70% from Election Day 2020; unemployment is falling and wages are increasing.

But voters don’t want to be told that the economy is excellent, while their individual economic situation is not. Since mid-2023, polls have suggested that the economy (and specifically inflation) was voters’ top concern. Biden tried for months to convince them”Bidenomic“, telling them that the situation was not as bad as they thought. That didn’t make a difference, so Biden focused on democracy. That didn’t work either and Biden left the race. (An obviously simplistic narrative, but problems follow.) When Harris tried to pick up the leftovers, voters had already decided they wanted change — and their wallets were the main proponents.

Theory #2: The disease of the status quo. Voters wanted change, and Trump – more than Harris – was able to convince voters that he would deliver that change. Harris’ message was forward-looking, but when asked how her administration would be different from Biden’s, she could offer no coherent answer. It became a frequent line of attack from Team Trump: voting for Harris is a vote for more of the same.

David Axelrod, a key architect of Obama’s campaigns, noted that Harris faced “tremendous headwinds”: economic discontent, low popularity, a majority of voters seeing the country as on the wrong track. “Give Trump Team Credit,” Axelrod posted on. “They decided early on to define it as the status quo by tying it to a president who was unpopular on economic and border issues, and they succeeded.”

Theory #3: Blame (or thank) Biden. Not only did Biden hand the baton to Harris as they lost the race, he did so with an incredibly short lead. “We dug a deep hole, but not deep enough,” said David Plouffe, a top Harris adviser. posted on Wednesday. (The veiled jab against Biden was removed Thursday morning, as was Plouffe’s X account.)

It is common for rival segments of a party to argue following an electoral defeat. The divisions are particularly visible this time: Harris supporters think Biden should have stepped down sooner; Harris’ critics believe Biden should never have run for re-election, allowing a Democratic primary to feature the best possible candidate. The Trump campaign was not free from infightingbut at least it was ripe: while Harris had 107 days to launch a whole campaign, Trump had 710.

Theory #4: The class division. Much ink has already been spilled on Latino and black voters, who moved to the right in massive numbers. But a more effective reading of exit polls may not be a race-based shift, but rather a class shift.

In 2012, Obama won a majority of voters without a college degree; this year, Trump got 64%. In 2012, Obama won 57% of those earning between $30,000 and $50,000 a year; this cycle, Trump won most of them.

And although Trump assembled a more ethnically diverse coalition than in 2016 and 2020, it was led by men of color: Trump won 55% of Latino men, but only 38% of Latino women; it won 21% of black men, but only 7% of black women.

For many in Trump’s entourage, the election is seen as a referendum on the excesses of the progressive left and an abandonment of identity politics. “The elites can’t understand how alienated they are from the country,” said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker. The New York Times.

Theory #5: No more old people. Across the world, ruling parties are losing and their challengers are winning. By the Financial Times: “Incumbent candidates from each of the 10 major countries tracked by the global research project ParlGov that have national elections in 2024 have received a boost from voters. » In France, Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble coalition was ousted. The same was true for the British Conservatives and the Japanese Liberal Democrats. And so on. “This is the first time this has happened in nearly 120 years of recording,” FT note.

For what? Perhaps voters around the world are unsettled by the possibility of war; perhaps they are frustrated by the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2024 election, Derek Thompson of The Atlantic notewas “the second pandemic election.” Biden won the first, seen as an attempt to control public health. Trump won the second, which depended on the economic effects of the pandemic.

A note on the future of this newsletter

“On the Trail 2024” will continue, as we make sense of what happened in this election and track transition efforts, but it will become a weekly newsletter. Check your inbox every Friday for the latest news.

3 things to know

• An unpredictable election ends with an unpredictable outcome: a sweep of the battleground states. On election night, As Donald Trump’s victory became increasingly clear, the vice president-elect said we were witnessing “the greatest political comeback in the history of the United States of America.” My election night reflects on how we got here.
• Wednesday, Kamala Harris conceded; On Thursday, Joe Biden echoed the call for a “peaceful transition of power.” Both encouraged their supporters to accept the results. “I know people are feeling a range of emotions right now. I understand,” Harris said. “But we must accept the results of this election.” Learn more here.
• The Trump campaign is turning its attention to transition planning, and a long list of celebrities awaiting potential assignments. RFK Jr. is interested in health; Elon Musk wants to lead “government efficiency.” Read more here.