None of the conventional explanations for Trump's victory stand up to scrutiny | Ben Davis

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

71% : Trump did better consistently with every demographic almost everywhere in the country, including college-educated white people and women.
66% : This is why voters view Trump as a better shepherd of the economy.
51% : By the time it's all said and done, it's quite likely Trump received more votes in 2024 than he did in the record turnout 2020 election, probably millions more votes.
50% : Understanding why thousands of people might vote for Trump and an avowed democratic socialist and vocal supporter of "woke" causes like trans rights is a key to understanding the election.
48% : Most highly-educated areas that had swung consistently against Republicans in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 moved back toward Trump this year.
48% : And who is better at that than Trump?
40% : To voters, however, the material reality is that when Trump left office, this safety net existed, and by the time of the 2024 election, it had evaporated.
39% : Why were Democrats unable to counter the idea that Trump was an economic savant?
38% : Who voted for Trump and why?
38% : And the idea that this is why voters flocked to Trump is just not compelling.
37% : Trump is the only candidate who ran aggressively on the persecution of trans people, for example, and also did better than the partisan baseline.
32% : So why did people vote for Trump?
31% : Fifty-four percent of voters thought Trump was "too extreme", 65% were pro-choice, and, even on immigration, 56% of voters supported a pathway to citizenship rather than mass deportations.
30% : It's important to note that Trump is resolutely not a social democrat, and these policies came into place during an emergency rather than due to ideological conviction.
27% : Millions of voters voted for Trump at the top of the ticket and Democrats down-ballot to check his unpopular agenda.
26% : It would be a mistake to think Trump has a mandate to remake society in a hard-right, socially conservative image.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.