The USA 2024 Presidential Election is not only the battleground between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris or the classical fight between the Republicans and Democrats. There were also other independent candidates and third parties, such as Jill Stein (Green Party), Robert Kennedy (Independent), and Chase Oliver (Libertarian Party) (Gomez & Astor, 2024). Their presence, though not influential in terms of electoral votes, added diversity to the political discourse and influenced the strategies of the leading contenders, Trump and Kamala.
Despite being a logical outcome, Trump’s resounding victory in his third presidential race surprised many political scientists and pollsters worldwide. Even as Kamala gained momentum after taking over the race from President Joe Biden, her electability soared, and she garnered significant support from previously undecided swing voters. With such a promising start, the question remains: why did Trump win?
A Remarkable Win
The New York Times, contributed by Shane Goldmacher and friends (11/07/2024), summarizes their findings with the following brief words: “Not every decision Mr. Trump made was genius because he won, and not every decision Ms. Harris made was poor because she lost. But in a race and in a nation so narrowly divided, Mr. Trump and his team made just enough of the right ones.”
Goldmacher and friends reveal that Trump’s victory is not due to his extraordinary capabilities or his team’s brilliant strategy. They just won because they had made enough accurate strategies and because of other exogenous factors, such as the socio-economic polarization within the society, which played a significant role in shaping the election outcome.
Unlike Goldmacher and his colleagues, who seem to downplay the significance of Trump and his team’s victory, William A. Galston believes that Trump and his team’s strategic approach was a key factor in their win (Galston, 2024). This suggests that Trump’s victory was not merely a stroke of luck but the result of a well-executed political strategy by a formidable team.
As Jean Francois Lyotard says in politics, “everything goes” (Malpas, 2003), but nothing coincidentally occurs. Everything is by design. Trump deserves the victory thanks to his ability to form a great working team.
When we consider the significant disparity in election results, both in popular and electoral votes, it becomes clear that Trump’s victory was truly remarkable. Trump secured 312% of electoral votes with 74,845,360 (50.4%) popular votes, while Kamala gained 226% with only 71,255,400 (48%) popular votes. This substantial win secured Trump’s presidency but also led the Republican senators and House of Representatives to a majority in Congress.
After suffering four criminal indictments, three expensive lawsuits, a conviction on 34 felony counts, and two attempted gunshots, Trump should be in a more vulnerable position compared to Kamala. The vice president just took over the race after Biden dropped out in July 2024, only three months and a half before the election, a very short time to fight in the election (Wendling, 2024).
This surprising win was deemed the most remarkable political comeback in US history. Trump’s victory in his first race against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, though his performance was more confident, was not as enormous as the current election. In 2016, Trump secured the victory with only 304 electoral votes, whereas Hillary got 227 in the same category. Regarding popular votes, Hillary had more votes, 65,853,514 or 48,2%, while Trump only got 62,984,828 popular votes or 46,1%. As electoral votes cast by members of the Electoral College determine the outcome of the US presidential election with at least 270%, Trump became the 45th president of the US at that time (Kimont, 2024).
Trump Standout Strategies
A monocausal factor did not induce Trump’s victory. Many variables have come into play. Based on the article by Goldmacher and friends from the New York Times and Galston from the Brookings, Trump and his team employed several strategies.
Firstly, Trump and the team successfully tapped into the anger and frustration of many Americans toward President Biden’s administration. In addition, Trump’s team capitalized on Harris’s struggles to articulate her differences from Biden, who had low approval ratings. Secondly, their campaign strategies to save money for a final advertising push rather than deploying a traditional ground game to turn out voters like what the rivals did.
Thirdly, they ran campaign ads attacking Harris’s stance on transgender issues, specifically her support for taxpayer-funded surgeries for transgender inmates, and countered Kamala’s team’s attack on Trump as an anti-abortion by letting the issue open to each state’s decision. Here, they focused on defining Kamala as radically liberal and out of touch with mainstream voters still upholding religious and traditional social norms. This tactic successfully captured most moderate suburban white women and mainstream voters.
Fourthly, Trump’s team mobilized young adult, Black, and Hispanic men who were struggling with inflation, felt alienated by left-wing ideology, and were pessimistic about the future of the country, with a hypermasculine image. They exploited the size of white working-class voters, which had been associated with Democrats but had been abandoned in recent years, and created a multi-ethnic working-class coalition. This success solves the issue of the Republican party’s classical dilemma where the wealthy class co-opts the party, preserves wealth inequality across the country, and undermines democracy (Hacker & Pierson, 2020).
Fifthly, Trump’s team successfully catch the aspiration of the majority of Americans who care more about the tangible impacts of policy than democratic normative and abstract values, which have become Democrat’s weapon to attack Trump since the last election (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018; Runciman, 2018).
Lastly, they utilized Kamala and her team’s other pitfalls, such as uncertainty about illegal immigration and the border, spending a large amount of funding on Ukraine and the European Union, and identifying Kamala as a liberal extremist who is anti-Christian and Jewish.
Despite claiming to pursue the democratic values of the American dream and represent the voice of LGBTQ and women, Kamala and the team failed to account for the majority of the electorates. Trump and his team won because they are brilliant at figuring out effective ways to capture most Americans’ interests.