2024 US Presidential Polls: What Trump’s Win Means

The election of Donald Trump as President of the US cannot be explained exclusively by any one factor, but the principal factor is the economic travails confronting the country. As argued previously, the US has been in relative decline with respect to its strategic rivals for some decades. This principally involved a squeeze on the working people though the impact of this squeeze was felt disproportionately by minorities as well as by communities living away from the coastal areas and in rural and semi-urban areas.

For instance, the spike in inflation that prevailed during the years of Joe Biden’s presidency arose due to the way that commodity speculation (coalescing with international finance capital) exacerbated profiteering.

This exacerbation was made possible by the current round of military conflict in Ukraine (which was induced by the policies of the US government) and stimulus policy measures (which involved a response to Covid-19 slowdown, rising military expenditure and amplification of industrial policy to deal with the challenge from China) in a largely financialised economy (accompanied by a rise in the degree of monopoly) which resulted in sectoral shortages and inflation.

Inflation control in this neoliberal set-up was achieved by squeezing real wages. Since nominal wages were already low due to the existence of under-employment and precarity (besides unemployment that is undercounted due to the discouraged worker effect), this process of inflation control further squeezed the living standards of the working people (and minorities disproportionately). Therefore, attempts by the Democratic Party leadership to claim that inflation is under control while employment is high, expectedly did not reflect the actual conditions of the working people.

Trump’s neo-fascist White supremacism sought to falsely attribute this economic setback to the working people to the ostensible influx of immigrants (who he deceptively claimed also disproportionately increased the incidence of crime). His falsehoods could not be countered by the “centrist” Democrat leadership since they too were wedded to the neoliberal project.

The “centrist” Democrat leadership is also loath to point out that it is the imperialist hegemony of the US whose adverse impact on Latin America has been amplified under neo-liberalism, that is the principal driver of immigration into the US. Instead, they little by little compromised with Trump’s neo-fascist falsehoods on immigration.

The arguments by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party about the need to expand the welfare state financed by taxation of the super-rich were peripheralised. Consequently, an increasing number of working people even in urban areas tended to vote for Trump. Others have tended to abstain or vote for third party candidates. Given the undemocratic nature of the electoral system in the US, even a relatively small shift can change the election outcome, especially via the outsized role of battleground states.

Likewise, the “centrist” Democrat leadership compromised with the adverse climate change denialism of Trump. This happened due to two reasons. First, in the context of the ongoing strategic conflict with China, the US has hindered any role that Chinese exports (solar panels, electric vehicles etc.) could play in green transition in the US.

Second, the envisaged green transition does not place working people in the centre through adequate subsidies that accelerate a shift to green technologies, besides prioritising net positive employment (new green jobs less jobs decline in fossil fuel industries) at living wages. Instead, the “centrist” Democrat leadership has not only compromised on the green transition, but has also gone on to support fracking (related to shale oil and gas) keeping immediate electoral considerations of some battleground states in mind. Thereby not only have ecologically conscious activists of/aligned with the Democratic Party been demotivated but the possibility of making the green transition a means to undertake a popular mobilisation has been squandered.

Also, the Democrat leadership sought to combat Trump’s misogyny by foregrounding his threat by instituting a country- wide ban on abortions. However, they did not situate this legitimate campaign point within the broader framework within which economic and social reproduction rights of women and people of all genders are sustained.

This pusillanimity of the “centrist” leadership, which further depoliticised the working people, was exploited by Trump in two ways. First, he was able to escalate misogyny against a female candidate that seemed to partially work not only among White working male voters but also Hispanic and African-American working male voters, albeit to a lesser extent.

Second, Trump disingenuously but repeatedly raised the question of whether the working people in 2024 were better off or worse off when compared to 2019. We say disingenuously, since his policies are likely to heighten the squeeze on the working people.

The “centrist” Democrat leadership cannot deal with neo-fascism unless economic issues of the working people are brought to the fore with effective solutions. There is some belated realisation of this fact after the elections, but that is still confined within the walls of the neo-liberal project.

Likewise on foreign policy, too, the “centrist” leadership’s support to Israel on the genocide against Palestine (which currently involves Israel carrying out a holocaust in Gaza), the Israeli war on Lebanon and the conflict with Iran, was strongly condemned by a robust movement of students, teachers and progressive activists. It’s direct impact in terms of voting was possibly limited to some battleground states. But its indirect on effect of demobilisation of progressive students and other activists and the consequent setback to the vigour of the campaign of the Democratic Party throughout the country cannot be underestimated.

Pointers from Election Data

Let us briefly turn to some relevant election data. The Democratic Party has lost the Presidency (both in terms of electoral college and the popular), the Senate and are quite likely to remain a minority in the House of Representatives. In terms of actual votes cast, Trump’s votes, when compared to 2020, are lower but his share of total votes cast has increased. Even in strongholds of the Democratic Party, where she was victorious, such as California and New York, the vote share of Kamala Harris has declined. This seems to indicate that potential and past voters of the Democratic Party have been demotivated to vote and campaign for reasons discussed above.

Trump won in all seven battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Nevada in 2024. In 2020, Biden had won six of these seven states, except North Carolina.

Table 1: Number and Share of Popular Votes for Trump and Harris in 7 Swing States

Table 1 provides the vote numbers and vote share of both candidates in the seven battleground states in 2024.

The data seems to indicate that those states whose official unemployment rate significantly exceeds 3.5% tended to vote Republican. This seems to be more valid for battleground states that shifted from Democrat to Republican between 2020 and 2024. Out of 20 states won by Harris, eight states have less than 3.5% unemployment.

Educational levels of voters also seem to have an impact on voting patterns. Figures 1 and 2 seem to indicate that states which had a share of voters with an under-graduate degree that was less than 35% bachelor degrees and whose official unemployment rates exceeded 3.5%, tended to support Trump.

As per the exit polls reported in the Washington Post, higher educated-college graduates preferred Harris with 55% as compared to 42% for Trump. The voters with no college degrees voted more for Trump at 56% as compared to only 42% for Harris.

In other words, the neoliberal squeeze on the working people seems to be disproportionately felt by those with relatively low wages (which is likely to be at least correlated with lower educational attainment). This disproportionate squeeze seems to have been both a cause and consequence of depoliticisation.

As per the exit polls reported in the Washington Post, 55% men voted for Trump and 42% for Harris. And 53% of women voted for Harris and 45% for Trump. This shows that the gender gap among men in favour of Trump exceeded that of the gender gap in favour of Harris among women.
 

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About 54% of the youth in the 18-29 age group voted for Harris, while 43% voted for Trump. But the vote share of Harris among this segment of the youth was lower than what the Democratic Party obtained in 2020. Among those in the 30-44 age group, the vote share of Harris at 49% was almost the same as the 48% vote share for Trump. The decline in voter turnout that disproportionately impacted the Democratic Party seems to have played a role in these trends.

Expectedly, only 41% of White Americans voted for Harris while 57% voted for Trump. This lead that Trump had among White Americans could not be made up by Harris obtaining 85% of the African-American voter, which was slightly lower than in 2020. But the 52% vote share that Harris obtained from Hispanic-Latinx Americans was substantially lower than in 2020, when it was 65%. Among Asian Americans, too, 54% voted for Harris while this was higher at 61% in 2020.

In other words, Trump’s misogyny and White supremacism could not be combatted effectively by the “centrist” leadership of the Democratic Party since they were operating within the terrain of the neo-liberal project that is intrinsically favourable to neo-fascism.

Source: This figure is constructed by the authors using data from the US Bureau of labour Statistics.

Race, gender and age-wise differences among voters with respect to Harris and Trump mattered more in the battleground states. The breakup of male voters between Harris and Trump in the seven battleground states was as follows: Arizona (45/53), Georgia (42/56), Michigan (44/55), North Carolina (41/58), Nevada (42/55), Pennsylvania and (41/57), Wisconsin (43/56).

On the other hand, the breakup of female voters in these seven battleground states was as follows: Arizona (49/50), Georgia (53/46), Michigan (54/45), North Carolina (55/44), Nevada (54/44), Pennsylvania (55/43), Wisconsin (55/45). Thus, the male gender gap in favour of Trump was much more significant than the female gender gap in favour of Harris in the seven battleground states.

The breakup of the vote share among the voters in the 18-29 age group between Harris and Trump in the seven battleground states was as follows: Arizona (64/35), Georgia (59/39), Michigan (49/49), North Carolina (50/49), Nevada (59/38), Pennsylvania and (53/44), Wisconsin (53/45). Barring Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, the youth vote orientation towards Harris was not very significant in the other four battleground states.

The White American vote share break up between Harris and Trump, according to the exit poll in the seven battleground states, was as follows: Arizona (45/56), Georgia (29/71), Michigan (44/55), North Carolina (38/62), Nevada (43/55), Pennsylvania and (43/55), Wisconsin (46/53). Among African Americans, the share of African American voters who supported Harris was the following in six battleground states (Arizona has a very small African American population): Georgia (86), Michigan (88), North Carolina (86), Nevada (82), Pennsylvania (89), Wisconsin (77).

Among Hispanic-Latinx Americans, the vote share break-up between Harris and Trump was as follows: Arizona (55/42), Georgia (56/42), Michigan (39/58), North Carolina (50/50), Nevada (48/48), Pennsylvania (57/42), Wisconsin (57/43).

Thus, the relative lead of Harris among youth, women and minorities (already lower than in 2020) was not large enough to deal with Trump’s lead among White Americans and male voters in the seven battleground states where such skews mattered the most.

What to Expect from Second Trump Presidency?

Domestically, Trump will seek to further his neo-fascist agenda against the working people on the one hand (squeeze on real wages, worsening of working conditions, increase in precarity, further attenuation of the already emaciated welfare state etc.) and accelerate primitive accumulation (via fiscal means for instance) by monopoly capital. Trump has promised mass deportation of (“illegal” i.e. non-white) immigrants. However, the scale of the deportations is unlikely to be large enough to increase real wages.

The motivation of such undemocratic actions would include: one, terrorise immigrants so that their wages can be squeezed further; two, deepen segmentation of workers, which would not only weaken the collective bargaining power of the working people but manufacture some consent for the furthering of the neo-fascist agenda.

Trump’s assertions that amount to the claim that there will be a domestic manufacturing resurgence (that will also be employment intensive) is quite unlikely to fructify. It will be quite a stretch to see firms in the US outcompeting Chinese firms in terms of price and quality given the astronomical levels of profiteering by monopoly capital in health and education, infrastructure deficits relative to China, direct and indirect import dependence on China for both capital goods and some raw (and refined) materials, the evident hurdles in recreating an extended production network (spanning many segments of value chains), lack of skilled labour that can’t be readily made up by immigration etc.

Internationally, the fundamental constraint for the US is not the quality of its policy (or identity of the policy maker) but as pointed out previously, its relative strategic decline with respect to its rivals. Behind the domestic public debates, there lies the fundamental challenge that can be stated approximately as follows: if concessions to Russia in Europe are necessary to prioritise the limited strategic resources of the US to try and contain China, then these concessions have to be large enough to attenuate the imperialist hegemony of the US in Europe and elsewhere (such as West Asia).

In other words, the US will try to wind up the conflict in Ukraine and limit the conflict in West Asia (with minimum concessions possible) in order to focus on the containment of China. However, the changed correlation of strategic forces in international political economy is likely to result in the cleavage between its intentions and outcomes being significantly undiminished.

In this context, the Left’s principal task is to combat Trump’s neo-fascism, through a broad-based popular mobilisation of the working people, by decisively breaking with the neoliberal project (spanning all dimensions of policy) without being constrained by its ties with the Democratic Party.
 

Narender Thakur is Professor, Department of Economics, Dr. BR Ambedkar College, University of Delhi. C. Saratchand is professor, Department of Economics, Satyawati College, University of Delhi. The views are personal.