On a shockingly quick election night in the United States, Former President Donald J. Trump won the election by an overwhelming majority. This was forecasted and seen by absolutely no one in the political world. The shocking result has ultimately left political nerds and often self professed “experts” utterly dumbfounded.
Not even Trump’s team had predicted him winning at the rate he did, most pollsters and analysts had highlighted a tight 50-50 split between the two candidates all the way through the election. They had predicted Harris could marginally swing the election in tight states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan or Wisconsin. This was far from what transpired, in no single state did Kamala Harris outperform Biden’s results in 2020, Trump increased his advantage by 5-10% in every state (even in those he lost), and for the first time, Trump won the popular vote. This was not a tight-margin victory, when presented with a decision between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the nation’s reply was resoundingly pro-Trump.
Political analysts across the board have been left scratching their heads to understand how they didn’t see this coming. This is reminiscent of 2016 where political analysts couldn’t understand how nobody saw this coming, and 2020 after the attempted insurrection when political analysts spent a week trying to understand how they didn’t see it coming. It has become increasingly clear in American politics that the analysts and alleged professionals have no clue which way the electorate might swing. This is indicative of a broader problem not just in American politics but in how polarised societies are becoming across the globe.
The polls for the presidential election showed a tight 50-50 split in all seven battleground states, a 50-50 split that never materialised. When political experts talked of the essential factors facing the election, they reflected that Trump’s abortion stances, rhetoric towards women, felony indictments, and role in an attempted insurrection would lose him the election; yet the general republic seemed not to care, and resoundingly so. It seems now as though the so-called “experts” in politics, the analysts, commentators, and pundits do not understand why populist parties are on the rise and how their base feels about the political state of the world.
In the coming weeks, there will be lots of coverage attempting to explain this shock result, an attempt to understand just why people might still vote for Trump in 2024. This all rings with an air of “too little, too late”. The imperative should be to understand how voters feel far before they have cast their ballot; an achievement it seems experts are growing further and further from being competent at in civil society.
Perhaps it is this scramble that explains the result itself. The rise of populism across the world has been met with scoff and scorn, the U.S is no different here (in fact it may be the most egregious). Populist rhetoric and populist leaders are something the liberal elites have treated as a fanciful joke, something late night talk show hosts sneer at and liberal politicians warn people to the danger of. In this zero-sum game it seems populism is the winner.
Trump’s simplistic rhetoric can be boiled down to “your life isn’t good and I will make it better”, when compared to the complex rhetoric of “threats to democracy” the triumphant winner should have been obvious all along. When CNN stands tall and says “women can never vote for Trump” they neglect the dire economic needs of everyday women, when they think Trump’s rhetoric will sway ethnic minorities, they fail to understand what it is like to live as an ethnic minority in America. They overlook and dismiss just how powerful populism rhetoric can be. They fail to engage with those Trump’s rhetoric is primed to sweep up.
As Ireland stands only three weeks out from a general election, this is something we too should be concerned about. It feels imperative that there is a mutual understanding between the politicians, the so-called experts in the media and the general public. It feels self-destructive to allow a breakdown in this communication to emerge, to allow the media to be blindsided completely by the political atmosphere of the general public.
There are as many reasons Trump will now be the President of America as there are reasons he absolutely should not be. This is a debate that will ensue for the next four years and perhaps a single consolidated answer will never emerge. What is important to draw from the recent US Presidential election is that as the world becomes more polarised, as those on the left and those on the right lose any common ground to possibly unite on, it will become more difficult to predict these elections. There is also a whole host of the public that don’t think in the parameters the media expect them to, that simply don’t entertain the larger political implications of an election but rather focus on the tangible effects of their day-to-day lives.
This leaves both the left and right unable to understand each other but also a regime of supposed political experts (who sometimes pose as economic experts) ultimately don’t understand how the general public feels and where their priorities lie. This is a conundrum that is better solved before than after the fact. It is little use attempting to understand how things were misunderstood and had gone unseen, it would be far more beneficial to create some sense of consensus far before the public makes their way to the polls.
