Getty ImagesDonald Trump won Tuesday by eliminating groups of voters that Democrats believed would help them win the White House for a generation.
After Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, many triumphantly declared that the liberal voting coalition that elected the first black president was growing stronger as the face of America changed.
Older, white conservatives are shrinking in number, and non-white Americans are projected to be the majority by 2044. College-educated professionals, young people, black Americans, Latinos and other minorities as well as blue-collar workers are part of this trend. “coalition of the ascendant”.
These voters are culturally inclined and favor a proactive federal government and strong social safety net. And they won majorities in enough states to ensure Democrats hold power in the Electoral College — and the presidency.
“Demography,” these left-wing optimists like to say, “is destiny.” However, sixteen years later, that fate seems to have turned to dust.
Cracks began to form when non-college educated voters abandoned the Democratic Party in the 2010 and 2014 midterms. They then turned en masse toward Trump in 2016. While Joe Biden, with a working-class-friendly reputation built over half a century, won back enough to take the White House in 2020, his success proved temporary.
This year, Trump added to his gains with blue-collar workers by narrowing Democrats’ advantage among young, Latino and black voters. He created a coalition of ascendants.
According to opinion polls, Trump won:
– 13% of the black vote in 2024 compared to Republican John McCain’s 4% against Obama
– 46% of the Latino vote this time, while McCain got 31% in 2008
– 43% of voters are under 30 years old compared to McCain’s 32%.
– 56% do not have a college degree – back in 2008, it was Obama who won the majority of votes
Speaking Thursday after his comeback victory, Trump celebrated his own diverse coalition of voters.
“I’m starting to see a realignment that might happen because the Democratic Party is not in line with the thinking of the country,” the president-elect told NBC News.
Immigration policy and identity
Trump did that with a tough message on immigration, including border enforcement and mass deportations — policies that Biden and Democrats rolled back when they regained power from Trump in 2021, lest they anger immigrant rights activists within their liberal base.
Illegal border crossings hit record levels under Biden administrationwith more than eight million encounters with migrants at the border with Mexico.
“If you watch Hillary Clinton’s video during the 2008 primaries, she talked about making sure the wall was built, making sure immigrants who broke the law were deported, making sure everyone learned the language. You,” said Kevin Marino Cabrera, a board member. Miami-Dade County Republican Commissioner. “It’s funny how far left it is [the Democrats] gone.”
This week, Trump became the first Republican since 1988 to win a heavily Latino district in Florida. He also won Starr County in south Texas, which is 97% Latino, with 57% of the vote. In 2008, only 15% of the population voted for McCain, a Republican.
Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump Republican strategist who specializes in Latino voting trends, told the BBC that the problem with “demographics as destiny” is that it risks treating all Americans as non-whites are a “nasty minority race.” “But that is not and has never been how Latinos see themselves,” he added.
“I hate that if you’re black you have to be a Democrat or you hate black people and you hate your community,” Kenard Holmes, a 20-year-old student in South Carolina, told the BBC in presidential election. primary election earlier this year. He said he agrees with Republicans on some things and feels Democratic politicians take black voters for granted.
With some states still counting results, Trump has now improved his poll numbers in at least 2,367 US counties, while falling behind in only 240.
It’s not just the number of counties Trump won that makes a difference. Kamala Harris needs to make significant gains in cities to offset Republican strength in rural areas. She was constantly falling short.
For example, in Detroit’s Wayne County, where the latest US Census report had it 38% black, Harris won 63% of the vote – significantly less than Joe’s 68%. Biden in 2020 and Obama’s 74% in 2008.
Polls have consistently suggested that the economy, along with immigration, are the two issues of highest importance to voters — and polls show Trump with an edge over Harris.
His economic message transcends racial divides.
“We are fed up,” said Nicole Williams, a white bartender with a black husband and mixed-race children in Las Vegas, Nevada — one of the key battleground states that Trump flipped this year. sick of hearing about identity politics.”
“We are just Americans and we only want what is best for Americans,” she said.
The Democrats’ blame game has begun
Democrats have begun considerable soul-searching as they face an election defeat that leaves the White House, the Senate and perhaps the House of Representatives in Republican hands.
Various elements within the party are offering their own, often conflicting, advice on the best path from the wilderness back to power.
Left-wing senator Bernie Sanders, who twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, also criticized identity politics and accused the party of abandoning working-class voters.
Meanwhile, some moderate Democrats argue that the struggle to connect with voters goes beyond economics and immigration. They point out how the Trump campaign could also use cultural messaging as a wedge to disrupt the Democratic coalition.
Among the positions Republicans are targeting in this year’s election are calls to shift funding away from law enforcement, legalize undocumented border crossings and criminalize as small as shoplifting, while providing better protections for transgender Americans.
Many issues have arisen following the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as other efforts to promote social justice and acknowledge the darker parts of history USA.
Within a few years, however, some of those views proved a liability for the Democratic Party as it tried to win over persuasive voters and keep its coalition from fracturing. For example, Harris has stepped back from several positions she took when she first ran for president in 2019.
During the final month of the presidential campaign, Trump’s team considered the vice president’s past support for taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgeries for federal prisoners and Detained immigrants are the focus.
One ad ends with the line: “Kamala is for them. President Trump is for you.”
According to data compiled by AdImpact, the Trump campaign spent more than $21 million on ads about transgender issues in the first half of October — about a third of its entire ad spend and nearly twice as much. Double the amount they spend on immigration and inflation.
That’s the kind of investment a campaign makes if it has solid data showing an ad is moving public opinion.
After Trump’s convincing victory, Congressman Seth Moulton, a moderate from Massachusetts, said his party needed to rethink its approach to cultural issues.
“Democrats spend more time trying not to offend anyone than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face,” Moulton told the New York Times. “I have two young daughters, I don’t want them to be run over on the playground by a male or former male athlete, but as a Democrat, I have to be afraid to say that.”
Progressive Democrats, meanwhile, reject that characterization and say standing up for minority rights has always been a core value of the party. Congressman John Moran wrote on X in response: “You should find another job if you want to use an election defeat as an opportunity to attack our most vulnerable.”
Mike Madrid, the political strategist, has a harsh assessment of where the Democratic coalition stands today.
“The Democratic Party is predicated on what is really an unholy alliance between the working class of color and wealthier white progressives driven and motivated by cultural issues,” Madrid said. chemistry”. “The only glue that holds that coalition together is anti-Republicanism.”
Once that glue peels off, he said, the party is ripe for failure.
Future elections will certainly be held in a political environment more friendly to Democrats. And Trump, who has shown a unique ability to appeal to new and low-propensity voters, has made his final campaign run.
But the 2024 results will add fuel to Democrats’ worries in the coming days.
Harris’s campaign itself believes that she lost to Trump because she was facing a disgruntled public angry at the economic and social chaos in the wake of the Covid pandemic.
“You have seen unprecedented headwinds and obstacles that are largely beyond our control,” campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote in a letter to her staff. “The whole country has moved to the right, but compared to the rest of the country, the battleground states have had the least movement in his direction. It’s closest to where we play.”
Moses Santana, a Puerto Rican living in Philadelphia, comes from a demographic that seemed reliably Democratic a decade ago. But when he spoke to the BBC this week, he had little confidence in what the Democrats delivered when in power – or that their message today is relevant to Americans like him.
“You know, Joe Biden has promised a lot of progressive things, like he’s going to cancel student debt, he’s going to help people get citizenship,” he said. “And none of that happened. Donald Trump is delivering [people] something new.”
Additional reporting by Bernd Debusmann Jr and Brandon Drenon
North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher gets the inside scoop on the White House race in his twice-weekly U.S. newsletter Unspun Unspun. Readers in the UK can Register here. Those outside the UK can Register here.
