Five reasons why Donald Trump won the US election
The president-elect has completed a remarkable political comeback. Here are the key elements behind his victory over Kamala Harris.
Donald Trump has completed a monumental comeback after winning the US presidential election four years after he was voted out of the White House.
The 78-year-old Republican candidate's victory in the swing state of Wisconsin pushed him over the threshold of 270 electoral college votes needed to secure the presidency. It was expected to be a close race with Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris neck and neck in the polls.
However, early results pointed to a landslide for Trump, who as of 2.30pm UK time, had 277 votes in the electoral college compared to 224 for Democrat Kamala Harris, with four of the five states still counting ballots leaning red.
Trump’s political career appeared to be over after his false claims of election fraud led a mob of supporters storming the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, but he swept away his challengers within the Republican Party and made a fresh bid to return to the White House, going on to claim to become the 47th US president as he declared to supporters: "America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate".
Here, Yahoo News highlights some of the key elements that made Trump's comeback possible.
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> 'It was the economy, stupid'
> Shifting loyalties of voters helped Trump win
> Trump is stronger than four years ago
> Trump supporters motivated by immigration
> Trump overperformed in rural areas
'It was the economy, stupid'
There will be no end of numbers to crunch after the darkest, most dramatic White House campaign of our lifetimes. But here’s one to focus on: 45%.
That’s the number of US voters nationwide who, in exit polls, said their family's financial situation was worse off today than it was four years ago. It compares to only 20% who felt worse off after the 2020 election, following Donald Trump’s first term.
For now, the old adage coined by Bill Clinton’s strategist James Carville has proven true. What matters most? “The economy, stupid.”
What won the US election for Donald Trump? It was the economy, stupid (The Evening Standard)
Shifting loyalties of these voters helped Trump win election
A realignment among Latino voters – and a smaller shift among Black voters in key swing states – helped catapult Donald Trump to his election victory over Kamala Harris as the Republican nominee expanded his support by peeling off voters from two core Democratic constituencies.
Although Trump didn’t win a majority of either group, he won support from about 13% of Black voters nationally and 45% of Latino voters, according to CNN exit polls. In the 2020 election, Trump won just 8% of Black voters and 32% of Latinos.
Trump’s gains with Latino voters came despite his hardline rhetoric against immigrants... Arturo Munoz, a truck driver from Phoenix, Arizona, said Trump’s overarching message to address high costs resonated with him, as well as other Latino men, who are still struggling to make ends meet.
Trump is stronger than four years ago
Trump didn’t lose reelection in 2020 by much. If a few thousand votes in a few key swing states had broken the other way, he would have been president instead of Joe Biden.
So any shift toward Trump in 2024, even a minor one, had the potential to be decisive. Much of this movement — winning red states by more than expected; losing blue states by less — didn’t scramble the electoral math.
But it reflected larger demographic and geographic trends that could propel Trump to victory in the all-important battlegrounds once all the votes there are counted.
5 key takeaways from Election Day 2024 (Yahoo News US)
Trump supporters motivated by immigration, data shows
Voters for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump who cast their ballots for Tuesday’s presidential election had vastly different motivations.
Trump voters were more motivated by economic issues and immigration... About half his backers labeled the economy and jobs as the top issue facing the country, while about one-third said the top issue was immigration.
Harris’s base, by contrast, was focused on a broader range of issues. About 3 in 10 called the economy a top issue, while about 2 in 10 said abortion and about 1 in 10 named health care or climate change.
AP VoteCast: Harris voters motivated by democracy, Trump supporters by inflation and immigration (Associated Press)
Trump overperformed in rural areas
Trump’s margins in rural America appear to have been simply too large to overtake.
It turns out that there were, in fact, more votes for the former president to mine in counties like central Pennsylvania’s Huntingdon, a short drive from the campus of Penn State University, where he’s on pace to outperform both his vote total and margin from four years ago.
Harris’s performance in corresponding strongholds was pretty much the inverse. Small numbers in the grander scheme of an election so big, expensive and plainly complicated could seem negligible – but they add up. And on Tuesday, the math appeared to be on Trump’s side.
