President Trump’s political comeback is complete. Talking about the American electorate: An analysis

In 2016, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton and won the presidency, shocking the world.

Some called it a fluke.

But eight years later, President Trump lost re-election in 2020, was impeached for a second time after his supporters stormed the Capitol, and was found guilty of 34 felonies, the first conviction of a former president. Despite this, he has come back stronger than ever. of crime.

As vote counting continued, Trump was predicted to be the winner in the early hours of November 6th. He won six of the seven battleground states (ABC News has not yet made a prediction for Arizona, but Trump has a lead in Arizona as well). Blue states like Virginia and New York performed better. He could be the first Republican candidate to win the popular vote since wartime George W. Bush.

This is the culmination of his singular appreciation of American politics, which has been defined by his relentless defiance of institutional norms.

What many Americans now expect from their president has changed dramatically. And some experts argue that by persuading them, Trump has changed America.

new coalition

Trump won in part because he built an unprecedented multiracial coalition within the Republican Party. As in 2016, Trump’s success was driven by white working-class men, but he also attracted black and Latino voters who traditionally vote Democratic.

Among first-time voters, 54% to 45% flocked to Trump, a reversal from 2020, when they overwhelmingly supported President Joe Biden.

“It’s hard to imagine other Republicans doing this well, but Trump captured this feeling of people who felt like they couldn’t move forward despite working hard and playing by the rules.” ” said presidential historian and university professor Brandon Rottinghaus. University of Houston.

“In politics, there’s a difference between being seen and being seen,” Rottinghaus said. “And the Trump campaign made people feel like they were being watched.”

In declaring victory, President Trump claimed that he had received a “powerful mandate.”

“This was a movement like no one had ever seen before, and frankly I believe it was the greatest political movement in history.”

How President Trump flipped the script

Trump tested democracy with his election denialism, which led to his supporters violently storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and was shunned by many in his party.

And the failure of the expected “red wave” in the 2022 election to materialize, as many of Trump’s handpicked candidates lost, raising questions about Trump’s influence over the party. When he announced his third presidential campaign that year, it was relatively lackluster and received a lukewarm response from Republican leaders like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The turning point, according to Republican strategist Mark Weaver, was the criminal investigation and indictment of President Trump in 2023.

“So many Republicans were disgusted by the weaponization of the legal system against one person, and their anger led to the rise of President Trump. Not quite out of the ashes, but close.” Weaver said.

At his first campaign rally in Waco, Texas, President Trump’s message to his supporters was that the “deep state” was also after them and their way of life. He said he would be their “revenge.”

This theme remained an undercurrent of the campaign even after President Trump shifted his focus to immigration and the economy. He portrayed Democrats as indifferent to cultural issues such as transgender rights. America is broken in every way, he said, and he is the only one who can “fix” it.

Along the way, Mr. Trump has turned to a level of authoritarian rhetoric that has alarmed his critics and even some former staffers, including a retired general who said Mr. Trump fits the description of a fascist in his view. It was included.

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris spent much of their campaign attacking President Trump as a threat to democracy. They pounced on his proposals to expand executive power, eviscerate civil servants, and use the military to go after Americans, proposing further policies that ignore the Constitution’s guardrails.

But most voters either didn’t believe that Trump would carry out such extreme actions when he took office, voted for him anyway, or were dissatisfied with the idea of ​​Trump’s “strongman” style in the White House. He seemed to like it.

According to an ABC News exit poll, voters rated “leadership” as the most important quality in a candidate. A close runner-up was whether a candidate “can bring about the necessary change.”

Trump outperformed Harris in both categories. Among those who cited leadership ability as a candidate’s top quality, Trump beat Harris by a whopping 33 points. The changes widened to 50 points.

And even though democracy ranks high as an important issue for voters, with a majority (73%) seeing it as under threat, However, that did not automatically lead to Harris’ success.

“Democratic polls are strong, but threats to democracy are in the eye of the beholder,” Weaver said (blaming government weaponization and censorship), adding that the real danger lies with Democrats. He argued that President Trump’s prediction must have resonated with the public.

“They think, ‘He’s just as angry as I am.’

For all the debate over democracy, abortion rights, or President Trump’s dark and inflammatory rhetoric, the issue of the day for voters was the economy.

More than two-thirds of voters said the economy is in bad shape, according to ABC News’ preliminary exit poll. 45% say their financial situation is worse than it was four years ago, higher than the level of those who said the same thing during the Great Recession in 2008. Much of the frustration stems from Biden and, by association, Harris.

The key to President Trump’s political staying power is that Trump himself is a billionaire, and despite some of Trump’s proposals to change the image of the Republican Party from a “country club Republican” to a party of the working class. It’s a successful way to change course, strategists on both sides said. , like tariffs, is frowned upon by economists.

“He’s completely reshaped the party and reshaped its appeal so much so that non-college voters of all races are now willing to vote Republican,” said Whit Ayers, a longtime Republican pollster. “We’re much more likely to consider it than ever before.”

Democrats are wondering how these voters slipped from their hands as they grill who is to blame for their defeat. Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders eviscerated the party, saying it had “abandoned” Americans. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi countered that she spent too much time on cultural issues rather than alleviating economic concerns caused by high prices.

Elaine Kamarck, a political scientist at the Brookings Institution who worked in the Clinton administration, believes that the economic divide between Americans with four-year degrees and those without is one of the biggest factors in modern politics. , the latter said they feel increasingly left behind.

“This is a very difficult public policy issue, which is why President Trump won’t solve the problem either, but at least President Trump speaks to them in a way that they understand and they know he understands their lives. I feel it,” she said.

“He’s an angry guy, and they think, ‘He’s just as angry as I am,'” Kamarck said.

Experts say the anger doesn’t just apply to the economy. President Trump has taken advantage of the deep dissatisfaction of the American people, who are extremely polarized and disillusioned with the political system.

“It has become clear that our country is divided into two completely separate Americas.Whether Trump wins or Harris wins this week, Americans of either side either don’t really understand the other, or They don’t seem to have much interest in learning about the other.” Daniel Schnur is a political analyst at the University of California, Berkeley.

Schnurr said Trump’s accession to the White House in 2016 was seen as a sign of an angry and distrustful nation. Since then, these divisions have only intensified, in no small part because President Trump has inflamed them.

“We had another eight years to make them better and make them worse,” Schnurr said.

According to ABC News’ exit poll results, Trump won by a wide margin among so-called “double haters,” a small group of voters who are unfavorable to both candidates.

“What strikes me is that the issues, the candidates, the ideology are probably more important than people’s overt dissatisfaction with the current state of American politics,” Rottinghaus said.

“You can call it the economy, you can call it immigration, you can call it borders. There are a lot of reasons to tie this election to specific issues, but the underlying nature of people’s preferences is what drives them to reject the status quo and support the status quo. Donald Trump. ”