On the Trump Coalition

“The economic situation during the Biden administration eroded and degraded the average American’s ability to participate in the life of the nation as an economically self-sufficient citizen.”

The result could not be clearer: President-elect Donald Trump decisively won the presidential election of 2024. With the former President at the top of the ticket, Republicans won the Senate, retained the House, and led a nationwide swing to win the popular vote. Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris, the cipher for the left wing of the managerial elite, failed to outperform President Joe Biden in all but a few counties in the United States. Instead of smashing the glass ceiling, the Harris campaign turned out to be standing on a glass floor. President-elect Trump smashed through this, sending the remnants of the Obama coalition, which Vice President Harris attempted to mobilize, tumbling into electoral oblivion. President-elect Trump achieved this by becoming the Caesar (a term I will discuss more later) for the disaffected middle of America.

Between 2020 and 2024, President-elect Trump gained ground in all but two states. He won approximately fifty-six percent of white voters and over thirty percent of the ethnic minority vote. This included almost half of Latino voters, seen most starkly in swing states like Michigan and Arizona and border states such as Texas. The Texas election result demonstrated that the racial depolarization seen from 2016-2020 has only continued. Meanwhile, gender polarization actually lessened. Men aged eighteen to twenty-nine shifted right around thirty points from 2020, while women aged eighteen to twenty-nine also shifted toward the right, by over ten points. The eleven-point gap in the Republican/Democratic female vote mirrored the marriage gap. The trans issue was also far more important than many pundits assured voters it was, and the Trump campaign expertly highlighted it in its advertising.

On election night, it became apparent that the counties with a median household annual income between $25,000 and $75,000 saw President-elect Trump’s vote share climb above seventy percent. The Democrats are now the party of high education and high income. The net worth of the bottom half of American households grew by 8.5% in real terms during President Biden’s term. Meanwhile, this figure was 127% during President-elect Trump’s first term. Furthermore, the average disposable income of Americans grew by around twelve percent. This shrank to four percent under President Biden. This was reflected in the fact that, according to data compiled by The Telegraph, city grocery prices rose by twenty-two percent since January 2021. On top of this, a gallon of fuel rose by thirty-seven percent. In mid-2022, this rose to 123%. While this was going on, rents in cities also increased by twenty-three percent. The working and lower-middle classes were hardest hit.