The Greatest Showman
How a professional charlatan pulled off the most remarkable political comeback in American history, by the numbers
Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election was not unexpected, but it is extraordinary for a number of reasons. To begin with, he is currently winning the popular vote by nearly 5 million, making him the first Republican candidate to win the popular vote since George W. Bush in 2004.
As of November 7 at 4:31 p.m. EST, Trump had 72,812,408 votes to Harris’s 68,168,188, and 295 electoral votes to Harris’s 226.
Trump's easy path to 270 included breaking the supposed blue wall and flipping 5 of the states that Biden flipped in 2020 (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin).
Points to consider:
He will have a Republican Senate, which has disastrous implications if there is a Supreme Court vacancy, and it also doesn’t look good for the confirmation of federal judges
In addition, he will possibly have a Republican House to implement his preferred legislation
Key demographics/Demographic gains
The key to Trump’s success was ultimately his coalition-building. The only minority group with which he didn’t improve over the past four years is Black women. He actually lost ground, falling from 9% of the vote in 2020 to 7% in 2024.
On the other hand, white voters as a whole have always been Trump’s most reliable voting base. In 2024:
57% of all white people voted for Trump
60% of white men voted for Trump
53% of white women voted for Trump
66% of white voters with no college degree voted for Trump
However, he made his most significant gains with Latinos, improving +14% over 2020.
All Latino voters
2020: 32%
2024: 46%
Latino men
2020: 36%
2024: 55%
Change - 2020: +23% for Biden; 2024: +10% for Trump
Latina women
2020: 30%
2024: 38%
Change - 2020: +39% for Biden; 2024: +24% for Harris
With Asian voters, Trump improved +5%
2020: 34%
2024: 39%
With Black men, he improved +2%
2020: 19%
2024: 21%
Overall, Donald Trump’s over-performance was reinforced by Kamala Harris’s marked under-performance, as she lost states and demographics that Biden had either brought into the fold in 2020 or managed to hold onto. The myriad reasons why that occurred are for another post and another day, but this is the state of things:
Trump, an unhinged megalomaniac, is back in the White House, with weakened Congressional checks and balances, a favorable Supreme Court, and virtually no guardrails. As a Black queer woman in America, I’m not panicking about this election. I’ll survive, because we always have. Oppression and threats our basic civil rights are just business as usual.
With that said, I also know that business is about to be booming.
Sources for statistics
nbcnews.com/politics/2020-elections/exit-polls/
nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/ap-polls-national.html
nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/exit-polls
reuters.com/world/us/results-nevada-exit-poll-us-presidential-election-2024-11-05/