Quick Analysis of the 2024 Presidential Election
The explanations for the U.S. 2024 Presidential Election are flying off the shelves like items on Black Friday. You can find unlimited results from a quick Google search.
In my scouring of the web, I returned to CNN’s Senior Data Reporter Harry Enten. Enten has the knack to explain complicated phenomenon in non-controversial, bite sized videos. If you’re exhausted by the partisanship yet still yearn to understand American politics, check him out.
A week before the election, Enten revealed why Trump could win. He had three reasons:
1. 28% of the American public thinks that the country is on the right track. When the incumbent party wins, 42% (on average) of the country thinks so. When the incumbent party loses, 25% (on average) of the country thinks so.
2. In the history of presidential elections, when the incumbent president’s approval rating was negative, his successor did not win. Biden had a net negative approval rating of -15 at the time of the election. Harris made a few mistakes that solidified her with Biden, most specifically her comments on The View.
3. In the swing states of Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania, Republican party registration was up by several points. Those states were very close in 2020.
As Enten said, Harris would have had to break history to win considering these factors and that she was thrust into the campaign super late, after a brief Democratic civil war. Not exactly a recipe for success.
In addition to Enten, Nate Silver, founder of the political analysis and forecasting websites 538 and the Silver Bulletin, provided 24 reasons why Trump won. I’d like to focus on a few that stand out to me.
Trump supporters mentioned several podcasters at his victory party, among them comedian Theo Von and giant Joe Rogan. These podcasters have a huge audience, especially of men under 30. Trump made solid gains with voters aged 18–29, getting 46% of that group compared to Harris’s 52%. Harris did appear on podcasts, such as Call Her Daddy, that have a more female audience. As a point of comparison, Per YouTube, The Joe Rogan Experience with Trump gained 49 million views and an excerpt of Harris’s with Call Her Daddy achieved 872,000. Both podcasts are on Spotify, which doesn’t release data of listens to the public.
I recall a political pundit saying that as a former prosecutor, Harris wants to see young men succeed. Maybe that message could have gotten through better if Harris appeared on more podcasts directed to this demographic.
The Harris campaign raised about half a billion more than the Trump campaign, but didn’t seem to spend it all wisely. (Both together spent $3.5 billion.) The Harris’s campaign close courtship of celebrities such as Beyonce and Oprah when many Americans were struggling was sort of tone deaf and missed the point. According to the right-wing Washington Examiner, the Harris campaign constructed a 100k set for the Call Her Daddy interview. I’m not going to take it on faith considering the source but it does follow with other spending patterns in the campaign which allegedly is in debt.
In sum, Kamala Harris lost and Donald Trump won because:
1. Voters don’t approve of the Biden administration or President Biden. Trump successfully painted Harris as synonymous with him and Harris made a few key blunders to cement that perception.
2. Harris targeted her campaign at women and could have engaged with men a bit more.
3. Harris’s campaign raised a ton of money but spent some of it in a questionable manner.
At least the ads are over. Now we have wonderful confirmation hearings!