Going into the 2024 presidential election, the consensus was that the Biden Administration was unpopular, yet its own Vice President was in a dead heat for the White House. The contradiction was puzzling but went under the radar during the campaign season. Eventually, though, it had to give.
As the results rolled in on Election Day, warning signs for Kamala Harris came early. Florida, expected to swing right heavily, came in as even more Republican than expected — Donald Trump won Miami-Dade county (which Hillary Clinton won by 30 percent in 2016) by 10 percent. Rural counties shifted four to five percentage points higher toward Donald Trump compared to his numbers in 2020. The suburbs, where Harris was expected to gain ground, came in as either stagnant compared to Joe Biden’s 2020 numbers or running behind. The biggest early indicator of the GOP’s big night was Loudoun County, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C., where Biden won by 24 percent. Harris only did so by 17 percent.
North Carolina was the first key swing state to fall for Trump, and Georgia followed soon after. As Republicans were projected to retake the Senate, it seemed like Harris’ hopes relied on the former Blue Wall: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
The votes never materialized.
Like the rest of the country, Trump outran his 2020 numbers in rural counties, made gains in urban areas (which often had lackluster turnout), and either held suburban margins level or improved them. The electoral coalition that the Democratic Party tried to assemble — voters of color, women, and suburbanites — fell apart quickly. At 2:24 a.m., the Associated Press (AP) called Pennsylvania for Trump. Three hours later, the AP called Wisconsin and the presidential election as a whole for the former president.
Trump’s margins across the country were reflected in the performance of down-ballot Senate and House elections, where his big victories in Ohio and Texas fended off strong Democratic pushes and came exceptionally close to helping weak candidates in Wisconsin and Michigan do so, too. The GOP holds 53 Senate seats — likely enough to keep the Senate red even if a blue wave hits in 2026.
Similarly, in the House of Representatives, Trump made his mark. His top of the ticket performance was just enough to carry a handful of Republicans in tough races to victory, and it made all the difference for the GOP: the party is likely to scrape by with the slimmest of majorities (220 out of 435 seats). Down-ballot Democrats outran Harris by a few points consistently, implying that she may have had the electorate she needed to win — it just chose Trump instead. The Freedom Caucus will maintain a sizable amount of influence in the GOP’s House majority, given the party’s small margin of victory in the chamber.
During an era where political trends are more localized than ever, the country saw a near-uniform shift to Trump and his Republican Party. Fears of illegal immigration and the effects of inflation resulted in voters of nearly every demographic moving toward the right. However, Harris didn’t win over enough of the groups she needed to — when compared to Biden in 2020, she lost ground among women, young voters, and suburban voters — while Trump gained among non-college-educated Americans and brought his share of the Latino vote from ⅓ to nearly ½, according to exit polls from CNN. Therefore, it’s no surprise that he improved his margins in Florida and Texas by 10 percent and 7 percent, respectively.
The hemorrhaging of the non-white vote for Harris, combined with reduced Black turnout, led to Harris losing more in states Biden won solidly in 2020 than in states that he won by small margins. New Jersey was ground zero for this: Biden won the state by 16 percent in 2020, but Harris could only scrape a victory of just over 5 percent. Meanwhile, New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island all shifted significantly to the right. In fact, Harris did not improve on Biden’s margins in any state marking the first time a candidate didn’t improve on their party’s margin from the previous election anywhere since Gerald Ford in 1976.
On the other hand, Harris performed the best compared to 2020 in swing states, likely due to her advantage in the ground game and get-out-the-vote operations. Wisconsin only shifted to the right by about 1.5 percent, primarily thanks to the state’s small population of Latino voters mitigating the effects of the demographic’s shift nationwide. Conversely, Nevada and Arizona moved further to the right, though not as much as safe blue and red states. Harris ended up with the worst showing in Nevada for any Democrat since 2004.
The fact that the swing was so uniform implies that this election wasn’t necessarily one that displayed a realignment in American politics but rather a backlash to an unpopular administration. Whether they were left-wing or right-wing, incumbent parties all around the globe faced sobering defeats due to economic hardship. If this is the primary reason for Harris’ defeat, it’s likely this is the best-case scenario for Democrats — though they still have to worry about the rapid rightward shift among Latino voters, who are one of the fastest-growing voting blocks in the country. Democrats’ fortunes in future elections will likely depend on what a post-Trump Republican Party will look like and if this election implies something deeper about America as a whole. The country appears to view Trump as a necessary evil: a figure that is deeply unpopular but will bring about a strong economy.
The polls weren’t necessarily wrong, per se — they were a normal polling error in swing states and the national popular vote (which Trump won, improving on his 2020 numbers by 6 points). A comfortable win in a race that was projected to be incredibly close always feels like a miss, though, and the polling industry will likely be in for another round of adjustments as they come to terms with the fact that they underestimated Trump for the third presidential election in a row. The untouchable status of Ann Selzer’s polls, which had accurately predicted the margins in Iowa elections for decades, including in 2016 and 2020, has also come to an end. Selzer had Harris winning Iowa by 3 percent. She actually lost by 13 percent.
The political consensus that Trumpism doesn’t work for anyone but Trump hasn’t been necessarily shattered by this result but has instead been brought into question by the unilateral shifts towards Republicans across the board. In any case, the MAGA movement is the future of the GOP. JD Vance is likely to be the party’s next candidate for president, for better or for worse. As for the Democratic Party, a party autopsy, similar to what the Republican Party performed in 2012, is in order. What conclusions the party draws about the direction of their platform will determine the future of American politics.
It’s difficult to project the effects of a second Trump term. Will he be able to enact his policies in a friendly House and Senate? Will those around him provide pushback to any of his ideas? What ramifications will his governance have on the state of American democracy? He will most likely be able to appoint a handful of Supreme Court Justices once again. As for everything else? We won’t know until it hits the country square in the face.
“Would-be 2022,” “the second coming of 2016,” or whatever you want to call this result, one thing is clear: Donald Trump has every single tool of the federal government at his disposal. The future of his presidency — and the country — lies solely in his hands.
A correction was made on November 27, 2024: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the GOP won 221 seats in the House of Representatives. They won 220 seats, not 221.
A correction was made on December 9, 2024: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the Harris improved on Biden’s margin of victory in Washington. She won the state by 18.2%, one point less than Biden won it by in 2020.
