Contextualizing Donald Trump's Election

Doing politics now... not sure what I'm getting myself into

For most people who don’t like Donald Trump, his comeback that was cemented with November’s election was baffling to watch. He was at rallies just playing music for an hour, sexualizing microphones in front of evangelical supporters, having comedians make racist jokes at his rallies without any vetting, and just dropping on the country a week before the election that he was going to put RFK Jr. in charge of the nation’s health.

Even after eight years of watching Trump’s chaotic and inflammatory approach to politics, the way he closed was bizarre. It was almost like he was trying to lose - or he just felt like he was so far ahead that he could just mess around. Even amongst those who felt like he was going to win, you could find very few people not affiliated with the campaigns willing to go out on a limb before the election to say anything besides “it’s a toss-up”. The decisive victory, taking the house and senate along with him, has left a large chunk of the country utterly shocked that after having gotten rid of this guy four years ago, he’s back, stronger and and as more erratic than ever. In this article, we will try to look at the exit poll data to try to understand how this happened, and go through what to expect. As evidenced by the latest stuff about maybe annexing Canada, predictions are tough when Trump is involved, but there are certainly some things taking shape. Anyways, here’s a picture of a baby red panda laying on a tree branch to lighten the mood a little before we dig in.

But before we look at the data, however, we need to address the elephant in the room - Kamala Harris was a minority woman running against a white man in America. The impact of this is pretty much impossible to quantify by looking at exit poll data. They don’t ask the question “Did Kamala’s race/gender factor into your decision, if so how?” and even if they did, that’s a question that many people are not going to be honest with the pollster (or themselves) about.

But even if you don’t buy the argument that a large enough portion of the electorate didn’t want to vote for a black/asian woman to make a difference, it can’t be denied that she has to operate under different constraints than someone like, oh I don’t know, Joe Biden. Just think back to the 2020 debate when Biden turned to Trump and said “Will you shut the hell up man!” and imagine how differently that would be received if Kamala were to say it. So with that out of the way, let’s look at some graphs.

Chart tweeted by Derek Thompson of the Atlantic

The chart above shows the change in vote share for the incumbent party from the previous election, and there are a couple things to notice that tell the story of what happened here. Number 1 is that every single dot in 2024 is below the zero line. That means that every single incumbent party in the world lost vote share for the first time in at least 75 years.

The second thing to notice is that the red dot, representing America is up near the top. What that says is that democrats were facing major headwinds as the incumbent party in America, and Kamala actually outperformed her contemporaries around the globe. This is probably in part because of how bad Trump was on the campaign trail, but also because she ran a very good campaign by conventional wisdom.

In fact, the favorability ratings of each candidate were almost identical

Graphic taken from NBC News Exit Poll Data Summary

So although Trump and the Republican’s victory seemed emphatic (and it was to a degree), it’s less impressive in context that the election took place. COVID-19 caused inflation around the globe, causing hardship for working class and middle class families. While there were certainly other issues that motivated people when casting their ballot, the economy seems to have been the biggest driving force.

Graphics taken from NBC News Exit Poll Data Summary

Immigration, abortion, and foreign policy mattered on the fringes, and the state of democracy rating so highly is a bit confounding given the result of the election. Still, a third of the country rated the economy as their top issue and two thirds of the country viewed it in as being negative, including many democrats. It was pretty much only democrats who viewed the economy as positive. My guess (I don’t have data to support or refute this but it tracks logically) is that the democracy issues energized democrats’ more ardent supporters, but the economy energized more persuadable voters to go for Trump.

Assessing the actual condition of the economy and assigning blame is a very difficult and nuanced discussion and given that I’m not even close to an expert, I’m not going to do either of those things. That said, I will assign blame to democrats for presenting an absolutely unconvincing argument to anyone who didn’t already agree with them on their economic policies. Back in the early days of the Biden presidency, as inflation was starting to take hold, Democrats insisted that inflation was going to be transitory, it was mostly COVID related supply chain issues, and that the stimulus spending would not worsen the situation. They put their money where their mouth was with the American Rescue Plan Act, released on March 11th, 2021.

Graphic taken from Department of Treasure website

When the American Rescue Plan passed and took effect, it more than doubled the amount of COVID spending three months after vaccines had started to roll out and the pandemic looked like it was about to end. It’s possible that things would have been worse without this bill, as unemployment was still a problem and it kept people fed and in homes, but the optics were bad as republicans warned this would cause inflation which took hold very shortly after this plan went into effect.

Inflation spiked starting mid-2021, the fed jacked up interest rates, and American people felt the pain. It’s certainly possible that democrats made the right decision in passing this bill, but by insisting there would be no downsides, they lost America’s trust and the rest of their arguments fell on deaf ears.

As inflation came painfully under control via those interest rate hikes, the democrats shifted their argument to say that we had the best recovery in the world, and there is some truth to this. The next plot shows a comparison of “Real Private Consumption” across countries in the G10. If you’re like me prior to writing this article and don’t know what this metric is, it’s basically a measure of how much people are spending adjusted for inflation. A higher number is generally a sign of a good economy because it means that people still have money to spend.

It clearly shows that America was in line with other countries and came out of the pandemic much better than the rest of the world. Other metrics like unemployment and overall inflation are a little more muted for the United States.

Governments all over the world had to balance stimulus and restrictions, basically represented by spending and interest rates, and America seems to have done a reasonably good job of that balance in comparison with their peers. Unemployment stayed lower for longer here as a result of our large spending, and our inflation levels were about average compared with other countries. The big thing in our favor was that as a country, we were able to keep spending more so than everyone else.

This is maybe a factor in why that red dot representing the U.S. on the first plot was at the top. But democrats had a bear of a task in messaging the job they’d done. Inflation is associated with spending and democrats were the ones doing the spending. That coupled with the early inflation days they spent assuring the American people that it was not going to be a problem made it so that no one wanted to hear them tout what a good job they’d done. The next graph illustrates both why Democrats felt like they could claim success, and why Americans tuned them out. It shows real wage growth, which is how much more people make each year, adjusted for inflation. Basically a measure of whether people on the whole are feeling like their income makes them richer or poorer than the year before.

This plot shows that for half a decade, American’s were used to getting a little bit wealthier each year, and it fell off a cliff in 2021. Right as Biden took office and started doing things. Sure it turned around a year and a half later, and just peaked up above water by mid 2023, but that’s almost his whole presidential term of American’s feeling poorer than the year before, after four years of the opposite under Trump.

The conversation was basically:

Democrats: Don’t worry, inflation isn’t gonna stick, and we need this stimulus to get through this pandemic that’s almost over.

Republicans: If you do all that spending, we’re gonna get inflation.

Democrats: Too late, money spent!

American People: Why is a carton of eggs $7?

Democrats: Ok, time for interest rate hikes

Americans: Now my car/mortgage payments are through the roof and eggs are $7.25

Democrats: Technically, that’s a 3.5% price increase, which is the federal reserve target inflation rate, and we’re actually nailing this… Idiots.

Americans: …

Democrats: Oh shoot, this thing is still on?

Republicans: ANNEX GREENLAND

It was always going to be a tough sell, as evidenced by the election results around the world, and Kamala did a better job than Biden acknowledging that people were hurting, but it was too little too late. With the benefit of hindsight, a conversation like the following might have gone over a little bit better.

Democrats: Wow, this is a mess… We’re in damage control mode right now, so we’re going to put out a big spending bill here. Everyone know that runs the risk of causing inflation, but without it people might lose their homes and businesses will continue to go under.

Republicans: If you do that spending, you’re gonna cause inflation. We should never have done any of those COVID restrictions in the first place

Democrats: We acknowledged the inflation thing, and we were trying to keep people safe from a deadly virus.

Americans: This sucks, but thank you for being up front with us.

Republicans: See we told you!

Democrats: You didn’t tell us anything we didn’t say ourselves.

Republicans: YOU STOLE THE ELECTION AGAIN!!!

I fully admit that is a very idealized way that things could’ve gone with the full benefit of hindsight, and it’s still not a sure winner of a message. But I still think there are some lessons to be learned. All this is not to discount other salient issues like abortion, immigration, Israel/Palestine, Ukraine, etc… Those are all very important and certainly contributed to peoples’ decisions, but the economy seems to be the largest factor and the democrats clearly failed to convince voters that they’d done a good job. That outweighed negative feelings surrounding January 6th, the incoherent COVID-19 stances from the Trump White House, and the general erratic behavior on the campaign trail.

And that’s how I think we’ve gotten here, with Trump about to be sworn in as president. I said up top that I would try to make some predictions about how this would go, and I also said that’s very difficult with Trump because he says things he doesn’t always mean, and he does things he’s never mentioned before. The best way to look at what he might do is to look at the actions he’s taken so far, which pretty much includes his cabinet nominees. There have been a lot, so I’ll just highlight four that are particularly illuminating.

Kashyap “Kash” Patel - FBI Director

There’s a lot of talk about Trump appointing “loyalists” to his cabinet, and this nomination is the one that really stands out in that regard. Every President deserves a cabinet that will be at least somewhat loyal to them and execute their agenda, but when opponents lob this criticism at Trump, what they’re really talking about is people who will do whatever he wants without an ethical boundary.

Kash is qualified on paper for this role. He’s served as Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Defense and was also second in command at Department of National Intelligence (DNI) prior to that. He also wrote a children’s book where a merchant named Donald Trump wins a surprise victory over “Hillary Queenton” and she fabricates a whole bunch of lies claiming he cheated by conspiring with the “Russionians.” The lack of creativity in and of itself should be disqualifying.

He’s a big proponent of the stance that the whole Russia-Gate situation was a completely fabricated hoax, despite many Trump campaign staffers being convicted for their roles. He’s threatened to prosecute the journalists who covered the story in a manner unfavorable towards Trump, and any journalist who in his view aided Joe Biden in stealing the 2020 election. He’s also promised to shut down the FBI headquarters on day 1 (where a lot of intelligence gathering officials work) and turn it into a “museum of the deep state” and make them go outside and “be cops.”

This nomination is one that shows Trump is likely to respond to the criminal prosecutions he faced in 2020-2024 with some of his own against political opponents and journalists alike.

Pete Hegseth - Secretary of Defense

Besides Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth has faced the most scrutiny for his nomination. The criticism has been based around some personal issues (drinking and infidelity) and for being unqualified (he’s a news anchor, and he’s run a few charities poorly).

Less discussed are some of his religious views. He appears to be a christian nationalist who believes that "We don't want to fight, but like our fellow Christians 1,000 years ago, we must. Our American crusade is not about literal swords, and our fight is not with guns yet."

He’s referring to the crusades, a period of time when Christians tried to spread their religion through violence to take back holy sites like Jerusalem. Many jews and muslims were killed as a result. I know he said the fight is not about literal swords, but I couldn’t help but feel a chill when the statement ended with “…yet”.

I will just recommend that we keep an eye on what Hegeth’s nomination means for freedom of religion in America. I don’t think that making everyone be Christian is high on Trump’s to-do list, so these personal opinions of Pete’s may not see the light of day as policy, but any time the head of the military is talking about trying to foist a particular religion on people, it should at least raise eyebrows.

Pete has also faced scrutiny over his opinions regarding women in the military. It initially sounded like he basically wanted to ban women from combat roles, but he softened that stance to say that they should just have to pass the same standards as men (which I think is already the way it works). Just speculating wildly here, but he probably feels deep down that women shouldn’t hold combat roles but was forced to back off in order to keep Joni Ernst’s vote (Iowa Senator and Female Combat Veteran).

I’m not as concerned with Pete’s personal issues, given that Trump’s president, I doubt America is going to care about that. We’ll just have to hope he’s sober when he’s needed.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - Department of Health and Human Services Director

This one was just purely transactional for Trump. RFK openly asked Trump for a cabinet position related to health in return for his endorsement, and sure enough, here we are. The fact that no one cared about that just shows how cynical Americans have become about their politicians. No one cared, because everyone assumed this goes on behind closed doors all the time. They’re probably right about that to an extent, but it’s just crazy that they didn’t even bother hiding it and it didn’t matter.

I don’t know how much Trump believes or discounts RFK’s pseudoscientific stances related to health, but it probably didn’t matter. He felt like the endorsement would help him, and he’ll be dead by the time our teeth our falling out because we stopped putting fluoride in the water. RFK is pretty much THE guy in the anti-vax movement that all started from a study linking childhood vaccines to autism that even the publisher of the paper vehemently disavows.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2831678/

If childhood vaccination rates drop, diseases like Mumps, Measles, and Polio that haven’t been problems for decades are almost at risk of coming back.

He does say some nice things about combatting obesity by making our food healthier, and reducing doctors’ reliance on prescriptions, but I highly doubt there’s going to be a will within this republican government to place the regulations he wants on the food industry and big pharma that it would take to accomplish these goals. He’s also “refused to take sides on 9/11” referring to conspiracies about it being an inside. Oh, and he dumped a dead bear in Central Park and tried to make it look like some sort of bicycle accident.

https://www.npr.org/2024/08/05/nx-s1-5063939/rfk-jr-central-park-bear-bicycle

Anyways, this was just a transactional appointment of an unserious guy that helped Trump shore up support in some potentially vulnerable areas in the election and now if he’s confirmed, we have to sit on pins and needles and see whether he does any of the crazy stuff he talks about all the time.

Linda McMahon - Secretary of Education

Nothing screams “Idiocracy” more than nominating the head of the WWE’s wife to be in charge of education for the whole country.

She’s on record wanting to abolish the Department of Education as a whole, a thing that unlike Hegseth and RFK’s craziest opinions, Trump has actually expressed support for. This one could very well happen. Trump has done some things that seem crazy or impossible, but he just says to do it and people scramble to make it happen.

McMahon is an advocate for the school choice movement, which has a pocket of quiet, but very passionate support in conservative circles. The idea is that we should have more charter schools that parents can choose to send their kids to if they don’t like the public school in their neighborhood. Unlike private schools, charter schools are still public, don’t charge tuition, but are run by a non-profit board and set up with specific academic goals in mind.

If you can’t tell already, I tend to lean left on a lot of issues, but given the state of public schools, particularly those in less affluent neighborhoods, it’s an issue where I feel conservatives have a point and offer a solution. The potential downsides are that charter schools could pick and choose what they want to teach (think, dinosaurs lived 3000 years ago, or, American slavery wasn’t all bad), but if there’s some requirements on the curriculum and the education standards end up being higher, it’s something I could get behind.

Anyways, this is a case where Trump appointed someone with conservative views to run a department. I don’t necessarily agree with all of her stances, but that’s what you expect when someone you don’t agree with wins the presidency. And yeah, they might take it to the extreme and abolish the whole department, but hey, maybe they won’t.

Of the four I listed, the pro wrestling chief’s wife running education is the least alarming. I really just included her because couldn’t resist making the Idiocracy joke. In hindsight, I probably could’ve worked that into RFK’s write-up (he seems like the type of guy who’d water plants with gatorade), but I still think it was worth my time briefly writing about Linda.

Anyways, happy Inauguration Day everyone. Here’s a quokka eating a leaf to get you through it.