IN MY US FOCUS GROUPS over the last month, we have heard from crucial voters in all seven swing states. I would like to say that our conversations in Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania and Georgia and North Carolina point to a clear winner, but they don’t. What they have done is helped to reveal the forces at work.
If we’re no closer to knowing the outcome of today’s election, we know more about what will have brought it about.
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Here, then, is why Trump could win. After years of inflation, many say his presidency looks better in retrospect than it felt at the time. People look back on a time of relative prosperity – thriving businesses and affordable groceries – and a strong American presence in the world during which Russia and Iran were contained and the southern border was reasonably secure. The kinder political culture that many voted for in 2020 did not materialise. The Biden administration’s liberal approach to cultural issues rankled with many.
The legal cases against Trump, together with what sounded to some like his opponents’ increasingly naggy and self-righteous tone – not to mention President Biden’s description of his supporters as “garbage” – bolstered rather than undermined his standing. The Democrats squandered trust by insisting that Biden was fully capable of a second term until the moment Kamala Harris replaced him on the ticket.
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The qualms that many felt at having a new nominee imposed on them without their say-so were exacerbated by her failure, or refusal, to be clearer about her policies and values. Voters wondered who would really call the shots in a Harris White House. Her public performances and interviews did not always inspire confidence, and people registered her insistence on talking about her opponent when asked about her own plans.
Her talk of Trump as a “fascist” seemed to contradict her professed desire to end hatred and division. Some minority voters shifted, attracted by Trump’s record and persona and repulsed by what many saw as Harris’s pandering and the Democrats’ wider tendency to take them for granted.
And here is why Harris could win. As in their successful 2022 midterm campaign, the Democrats focused ruthlessly on reproductive rights, which are at or near the top of the priority list for many female voters. Her campaign’s ubiquitous slogan – “we won’t go back” – is for many Americans a powerful invocation to resist a return to the chaotic circus of a Trump presidency and, for minorities in particular, a former age in America which they remember as anything but “great”.
If Harris has not clearly defined herself, this allows a broad swathe of voters to project their hopes onto her with no risk of disappointment until she is safely inaugurated: those unhappy with the current administration can anticipate something different, and those who like the status quo can reassure themselves that she has been part of it. For many people the fact that she is not Donald Trump is more than enough reason to vote for her, and she inspires a good deal more excitement and optimism than Biden.
Her opponent’s campaign has been haphazard and unfocused, repeatedly drawing attention back to Trump himself rather than the issues Americans prioritise and on which he performs best. There is a perceptible feeling that Trump lacks the fire and drive that enthused his voters in 2016. Despite occasional hits like highlighting her support for state-funded sex-change surgery for prisoners, the Republicans have not managed to paint Harris as a dangerous radical.
Though he has a wafer-thin edge in several state polls, some analysis suggests Trump’s numbers rely on lower-propensity voters who are less likely to show up. They may yet – but when it comes to getting out the vote, Harris’s financial advantage could really come into its own.
When we know the outcome, one of the above paragraphs – or a version of it – will quickly become the received wisdom, and all sorts of surprising people will tell you that they thought things were heading that way all along. But the fact is that both are true, and both are happening at the same time. It’s just that, as of today, we don’t know which of these combinations of forces will prevail.
Moreover, the result need not necessarily even be very close. One candidate could win most or even all of the swing states by narrow margins, producing a substantial victory without the polls – which all operate with a margin of error – even having been wrong.
These factors will also form part of the reason why one side or the other feels hard done by when it loses. With all these things in their favour, some will believe they were robbed of victory by the antiquated electoral college / deplorable voters / shady goings on / outright fraud (delete as applicable).
What they won’t be able to blame, I think, is disinformation. Trump’s imaginative versions of history are well documented, and it is true that they are often taken up by his followers. But for every Republican who believed the 2020 election was stolen, we found an otherwise reasonable-sounding Democrat who told us the Butler assassination attempt was staged to boost Trump’s appeal – dead shooter, murdered fire chief and all. Don’t let anyone tell you the lie machine only works one way.
We have found that people tend to have confidence, at least provisionally, in the process for casting and counting votes. Even so, many fear unrest, whoever prevails. Harris supporters say they expect January 6 on steroids if Trump is beaten. Others point out that the left has form on this score too, as the residents of Portland and Seattle, among other places, can attest.
Whatever happens after election day seems more likely in the short term to deepen divisions rather than heal them, and the same could be true of the new president’s actions: if Trump really does use the power of the state to revenge himself on his opponents as they claim to fear, or if Harris takes a narrow victory built largely on anti-Trump sentiment as a mandate to enact a radical agenda she has declined to spell out.
But victory for one side or the other will not be the end of civilisation, despite the epidemic of pearl clutching (not least from those on this side of the Atlantic who like to look down on the US, despite its success over the last fifteen years or so in comparison to Europe and the UK). Yet the divisions will continue whatever happens, and however Trump or Harris goes about doing the job.
This is because whoever wins the election will not conclusively have won the argument. The competing worldviews at play will endure whoever ends up fronting them. There are genuine, principled and practical disagreements on everything from the economy, trade, tariffs and energy independence to transgender rights, immigration, identity politics, reproductive rights and America’s role in the world.
Whether Trump or Harris leaves the political scene tomorrow, in four years’ time or in another decade, those debates will continue, and fiercely. So they should. Anything else would be unAmerican.
The article has been reprinted from https://lordashcroftpolls.com/ with the author's permission. You can find the original here.
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