Democrats were stunned to find themselves once again losing to former President Donald Trump, whom they once believed was spent as a political force after his 2020 loss, subsequent refusal to concede, Jan. 6, two impeachments, Republican underperformance in the 2022 midterm elections, and multiple indictments.
But Trump’s performance on Tuesday night should not have come as a surprise. The signs that he remained a formidable opponent were there all along.
None of the indictments dented Trump’s support among Republicans. If anything, they improved his standing among GOP primary voters. His conviction in the New York hush money trial briefly had a modest impact, but she soon rebounded.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) emerged as a real rival to Trump after being the big winner of the 2022 elections. But it did not last long. In addition to Republicans rallying around the flag after the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, Trump hammered DeSantis and eventually made short work of him. DeSantis, one of his party’s rising political talents, dropped out after Iowa. Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley was able to beat Trump a couple times, but her campaign ended after Super Tuesday.
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Trump built and maintained a small but durable lead over President Joe Biden starting in late 2023. Inflation, the border crisis, and the withdrawal from Afghanistan all hammered Biden’s job approval ratings, which have been consistently underwater for more than a year leading up to the 2024 presidential election.
While there were concerns about Biden’s age, which became impossible to contain even among Democrats after his disastrous June 27 debate with Trump, they weren’t his only political liablity.
This election occurred amid a global anti-incumbent wave as voters across the political spectrum in numerous countries turned against the parties in power because they were dissatisfied with the post-pandemic economy.
Biden had to contend with the same wave of dissatisfaction. Democratic discouraged any primary competition for him despite polls showing their voters wanted a different choice and revamped the primary calendar to give him a leg up over anyone who dared to oppose him.
When Democrats ditched Biden as their nominee, only after he had received some 14 million primary voters and under pressure from leaders who had ostensibly ceded their positions to others, they chose Vice President Kamala Harris in an uncontested convention and still attempted
Harris had been an unpopular vice president. Her policy portfolio in the White House was not seen as a success. She was regarded as a poor manager and had significant staff turnover. Her campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination did not last until the first votes were cast. She has never won a small-d democratic Democratic primary to this day.
The vice president did get a bounce from relieved Democrats who felt they now had a chance against Trump. She briefly put the Sun Belt and the popular vote back in play. But Trump continued to poll better than he ever had in his three presidential campaigns. As the election drew closer, Trump regained his Sun Belt leads, reducing Harris to the same “blue wall” path to an Electoral College majority Biden had. And those Rust Belt states were toss-ups.
Harris played defense on the electoral map the whole time. Six of the seven battleground states went to Biden in 2020. North Carolina was the only Trump state from four years ago where she was on offense. She did not unambiguously lead in any of these states.
With the exception of a few outliers like the Des Moines Register poll that erroneously showed a Harris lead in Iowa, most of the national and battleground state polling showed a close race. Nate Cohn warned when the final New York Times-Siena College poll was released that they weren’t certain they had fixed the response bias that underestimated Trump’s support in the past two presidential elections.
Only 27% of Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction. Biden’s approval rating going into the election was just 41.1%, according to the RealClearPolitics average. In the last Gallup poll before Al Gore lost to George W. Bush in 2000, Bill Clinton still had a 57% approval rating. Ronald Reagan’s was above 60% when his vice president, George H.W. Bush, won the race to succeed him in 1988.
For his part, Trump showed courage under literal fire during a failed assassination attempt shortly before the Republican National Convention. He survived a second one near Mar-a-Lago, though that gunman never got as close. Whether donning a McDonald’s apron or driving around in a garbage truck, Trump’s political showmanship remained on point, while Harris often seemed overly rehearsed and unwilling to publicize her views.
All these things helped Trump bond further with his supporters, who already swooned at his rallies.
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Even Trump’s 2020 defeat was not the overwhelming repudiation Democrats had hoped. He came within less than 43,000 votes in three battleground states of winning a second term. If the pandemic hadn’t happened, he likely would have been reelected, however narrowly. A rightward shift smaller than what took place on Tuesday would have made Trump a competitive general election candidate.
Now Trump will get his second term. But unlike in 2016, it is hardly a shocking upset, even if it is a major political comeback.