I wrote two posts on the eve of the national election on November 4th, The Eve of the Election: Is it Over Yet? and on Election Night 2024, November 5th. I went to bed on the 5th certain that Donald Trump would be elected. Upon waking the next morning, the news confirmed that Trump was indeed elected and by a rather impressive margin of Electoral and soon the popular vote.
I decided to reflect on the election and mandate that the Republicans were claiming the people gave them. I arrived at school early and wrote a good start to the piece before my first class. I figured I would finish it later that day… which didn’t happen. I figured, OK, the next day then. That didn’t happen. Maybe the next week and here it is the end of the month and I just getting to it.
What I wrote on November 6: I woke up to a confirmation that Trump was elected as the 47th President of the United States. Social media was already overflowing with the gloating of Trump supporters and bewildered disbelief of those less enamored with the man.
On my drive to the university, I was listening to NPR as usual. Some talking pollster head made two important points. The first point was that people who did not like Trump, because of any number and mix of character and moral reasons, voted for him. The obvious question is… why? It is simple. They perceived him as a strong leader who could shake things up and get things done. This has been true of Trump since he first began to run for President. This is the source of the aforementioned bewilderment of those who would vote for anybody Trump because the, also aforementioned, character and moral issues.
The second point is more subtle and a law of economics and politics. In periods of high inflation, the incumbent party loses the Presidency and often the Congress. It is the result of the simple question Reagan asked the voters on his way to defeating Jimmy Carter: Are you better off now than you were four years ago? People that answer no to that question, tend not to vote for the incumbent party. It matters not if the inflation was an inevitable consequence of the disruption to the economy due to the COVID pandemic. If this point is true, the odds were against Biden or Harris… no matter who ran.
Are people less happier now than four years ago? In October, Gallup posted an article on a recent survey. The title of the article says it all: Majority of Americans Feel Worse Off Than Four Years Ago. Dial it back to 2020. Did people feel worse off than they were in 2016. Yes, it was due to Covid. Covid was not Trump’s fault, but the people voted for Biden nonetheless. Inflation was a leading reason people felt worse off this year. Was inflation an inevitability of the aftermath of labor shortages due to the economic disruption of Covid. I believe the answer to that question is a pretty obvious yes!
I will add a third point. It is harder for polls to be accurate. In 1997, 36% of the people responded to polls. By 2019, the number of people responding to polls was down to 6%. This year it was down to 2%. Michael Segal had an OpEd in today’s WSJ article, “When Is a Poll not a Poll?” At 2%, Segal says researchers should call them projections because of the small sample. Why are people not responding as they used to? I believe most polls were conducted by phone and many home phones did not have caller ID. Now with most people using cell phones, people simply do not answer calls from anyone they don’t know. So, who answers the phones? I believe it is older people with land lines who either have phones with no caller ID or they simply ignore the caller ID. This elderly demographic is simply not representative of the whole population.
November 27: So, does Trump have a mandate. It is easy to make a case for that given that he had a 312-226 victory in Electoral votes and a 75.9 million to 74.4 million win in the popular vote. The Republicans won both the House and the Senate. So, claiming a mandate seems like a reasonable conclusion. I cannot fully attribute the election results to the “are you better off now than you were four years ago” theory alone. The folks that support Trump seem to really like the way he gives voice to opinions they have long stifled for political correctness. This scares the people that didn’t vote for Trump and fear him, and Project 2025, as a threat to our democracy.
Celebrities are threatening to move out of the US. Barbara Streisand, Cher, and Sharon Stone have expressed they considering leaving the country. Ellen DeGeneres is in the process of doing so. Others, more common folk, that are upset about the election say they are contemplating the same, but it is very likely that any of them will actually do anything this drastic.
So, half of the country got what they wanted. They feel vindicated and look forward a Trumpian nirvana. The other half is certain our democracy is doomed, and despotism is in our future. Me? I cannot buy into either extreme and believe, perhaps, naively in the checks and balances built into our government structure. I also believe that if people are not happier in two years, the midterm election will go as many elections do as elections do as many do after a mandate election like we just had.
We shall see.
No comments:
Post a Comment