Consider This from NPR - Who's sending Trump back to the White House and why?

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

In the days leading up to election night, news outlets across the country were predicting a historically close race, one that could take days to call. But as election night progressed, it became clear former President Donald Trump was on a path to victory. So much so, that before anything was official, he thanked his supporters from his campaign headquarters in West Palm Beach.And then, Wednesday morning at about 5:30, it became official when the Associated Press called Wisconsin for Trump. We're still awaiting final tallies, but it appears Trump is on track to win the popular vote for the first time. Trump's agenda for a second term will be dissected over and over in the days ahead. Today, we break down how America sent him back to office --- how Trump won in 2024.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The last time Donald Trump declared victory in a presidential election, it was a lie. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. He was speaking at the White House deep into election night 2020, with many decisive states still too close to call. Of course, Joe Biden would go on to win. Trump would spend weeks trying to overturn that win. And a crowd of his supporters would try to stop Congress from certifying that win with an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. This time around, when Trump addressed his supporters in West Palm Beach, Florida, the election was very clearly going his way. This is a magnificent victory for the American people that will allow us to make America great again. And now President-elect Trump can reasonably claim he has a mandate, one he plans

to get busy enacting. I will govern by a simple motto, promises made, promises kept. We're going to keep our promises. Those promises include massive tariffs on imports. We're going to lose a trillion dollars in deficits to China. A trillion. That's not sustainable. We're going to turn it all around and we're going to do it through taxation and tariffs. It will be done in 24 hours and it'll change the whole planet. Trump claims other countries will bear the costs of this tariff. Economists say they will raise costs for U.S. consumers and increase inflation. Trump has also promised that on day one he will, quote, seal the border with Mexico and I will begin the largest deportation operation in the history of our country. Immigration advocates warn his plan

could create chaos for legal U.S. citizens and could cause labor shortages. And he's promised to overthrow decades-old norms and direct the Justice Department to prosecute his political enemies. I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family. This is from a speech last summer. I will totally obliterate the deep state. We will obliterate the deep state. And we know who they are. I know exactly who they are. Consider this. We will spend a lot of time in the days ahead digging into what Trump intends to do when he returns to the presidency.

Today, we're going to break down how America sent him back to office, how Trump won in 2024. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Joe Biden's on his way out. Donald Trump's on his way back. Want to know what's happening as the presidential transition is underway? The NPR Politics Podcast has you covered with the latest news and analysis. Listen to the NPR Politics Podcast. Hey, everyone.

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On the Sunday story from Up First, a look at the opportunity and dangers of mining the ocean floor. Listen now on the Up First podcast from NPR. It's Consider This from NPR. In the days leading up to election night, news outlets across the country, including ours, were predicting a historically close race, one that could take days to call. But as the night progressed, it became clear former President Donald Trump was on a path to victory. So much so that before anything was official, he thanked his supporters from his campaign headquarters in West Palm Beach. They came from all quarters, union, non-union, African-American, Hispanic-American, Asian-American, Arab-American, Muslim-American. We had everybody.

Then, Wednesday morning at around 5.30, the Associated Press called Wisconsin for Trump, giving him more than the 270 electoral votes he needed to become the 47th president of the United States. And though we are still awaiting final tallies, it appears Trump is on track to win the popular vote for the first time. Wednesday afternoon, his opponent, Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, called now-President-elect Trump and formally conceded the race. Later, Harris addressed a crowd of supporters at Howard University. While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign. Now, with a race that was expected to be historically tight behind us, the question is, how did Trump win so decisively? That is something my co-host, Juana Summers, and I unpacked with two veteran political strategists, Democrat Anna Greenberg and Republican Sarah Longwell. She is also publisher of The Bulwark, a conservative

news and opinion site. Welcome to you both. And I want to walk through who turned out for Trump and what issues drove them. Let's start with women. Anna, early indications showed women were going to turn out in high numbers. The thinking was that would help Harris. It didn't. What happened? Well, first of all, I think that, like many people, myself included, we got a little bit ahead of our skis in the early vote, where you saw actually a pretty significant gap in turnout between men and women, suggesting that there would be an even bigger gender gap than there normally is in turnout. And it turned out that it was not the case. 53% of the electorate was female, which is fairly standard. And there was a gender gap,

but it wasn't as big as many were predicting. And so Harris won 53% of women, while Trump won 55% of men. And clearly that wasn't enough. Yeah. So Sarah, jump in on this and your take on the so-called gender gap, which didn't really materialize. Does that tell us female voters were not as fired up over reproductive rights, over the issue of abortion as everybody thought they were? Yeah, I also think that it was just, look, it was the economy. The economy, look, I do focus groups all the time, and I always start them by asking people, how do you think things are going in the country? And for years now, people have been saying they do not think things are going good. Inflation has been killing them.

They're frustrated with immigration. And so the Dobbs effect was just minimized. nearly at the scale she needed to make up for the fact that, you know, Democrats were doing poorly with men of all races and the bottom was falling out with Hispanics. They really needed white women to make up for those numbers and they didn't. If I can just jump in here, I want to talk about Latino voters because an NBC News exit poll found that Trump won Latino voters by 25 percent. Particularly interesting was Latino men. So, Sarah, do we have a sense of what it is about Trump's message that is driving such seemingly decisive support with this group in particular? Yeah, when I do focus groups with Hispanic voters, you know, they sound just like sort of

white voters who vote for Trump. And there's been very little difference, and they tend to be very hawkish on immigration. They, too, cite the economy as the number one issue, hit hard by inflation. And then there's also certain cultural elements. A lot of it is just they sort of do not like the sort of Democratic Party's more identitarian politics. They tend to reject that. And they have been culturally breaking more and more for Republicans now for a while. And then the bottom really fell out this election cycle. Anna, let me bring you in here. I mean, this is a group that has

traditionally supported Democrats. I will just note that Vice President Harris trailed President Biden's 2020 numbers with this group. Explain to us what you're seeing here. Why is the party losing support? Well, I think that there has been a change in the Hispanic electorate that has been underway for some time because as the population grows and more and more Hispanic voters were born in the U.S., are native English speakers, consume more English, almost exclusively English language media, they start politically seeming like just everybody else, right? And as the population grows in that segment in particular, you would expect just like historically Irish immigrants, Italian immigrants, Polish to assimilate and be like everybody else. So in some ways, from a demography standpoint, it's not that much of a surprise. And Hillary Clinton also underperformed among Hispanic voters. And I think that Democrats

need to think about this in a way as the new normal and start thinking differently about how you reach out to Hispanic voters, in particular, understanding the differences in the population and communities from state to state, from region to region, generationally, language, even country of origin. We've already touched on one of the other big issues of the campaign. So let me just park us for a moment on the economy. I want you all both to listen to what we heard from a voter in Michigan earlier this week. This is Michael G. He was talking about how he sees the difference between the economy now and the economy under President Trump.

I think people were more confident. Things were running smoother. Could provide for our family. I was in 7-Eleven yesterday. Eggs were $6.99 for a dozen eggs. I've never seen eggs that expensive in my life. Sarah Longwell, did Trump's victory really boil down to something like the price of eggs? I actually think yes, that that

is one of the biggest factors. And we heard it all the time in the groups. And in fact, I do think it's sometimes tough for people in big cities to understand that how price sensitive these voters are. When I do focus groups with voters, and this is one of the reasons I think Democrats underperformed with young people, people just, they know exactly how much milk costs. They know exactly how much eggs cost. They're very sensitive to the price of gas. And this is, look, in the inflationary environment that we had post COVID, it has felled incumbents across the globe. People have, you know, incumbents are losing at a rapid rate in this post-COVID environment because inflation is something that really does end presidential elections. Although we know, Anna, that inflation has returned mostly to something resembling normal

levels. So why didn't that resonate? Right. And incomes have risen and the stock market's doing great. All those things. I think a couple. First, I agree with Sarah, but I think it also more broadly suggested this was a failed administration. And if you look at Joe Biden's job approval numbers and his favorability, obviously incredibly low, stayed incredibly low, even after we saw the switch in the ticket, his numbers did not get any better. And in many ways, this was a change election. And so I think the inflationary pressures and the sense that it came from the Biden administration was part of, you know, a vote for change. One more thing we heard in our exit polls, our reporting from swing states, is that people, including Republicans who didn't necessarily like Trump, I interviewed one Republican in Georgia a few weeks back who said, look, I wouldn't want to marry the guy,

but he's a strong leader. He's going to make my life better. Reconcile those two things for me. Well, I think we have to keep in mind that people are living in siloed information environments. And so I think the perception that the economy was better under Trump, which is actually in many ways not true, and that the Biden administration didn't do anything for people, also not true. But if you are living in siloed information environments, whether it's the media you consume, the people you talk to, the places you work, you're going to have a certain sense of how things are going, not just where you are, but all over the country. And that was very, very negative for most of the Trump voters. Sarah, let me ask you this. I've got just a big picture question for you. We saw Trump win big last night. He made gains in nearly every demographic. He's won

all five of the seven swing states that have been called so far. You look at a map, it looks quite red. One could surmise that the whole country is swinging right. Is that the case? It is, and it's not just the swing states. Places like Illinois, New Jersey, they all saw swings to the right. But I don't know that that necessarily means that the country is getting more conservative per se. I do think it has much more to do with the fact that people were really frustrated with the economy. It was a widespread situation. You know, the fact that there was that much movement in states where they weren't having advertising, they weren't having get out the vote operations, you know, like the swing states were, indicates that there was a massive macro, you know, frustration with the Biden administration and the economy and immigration that led the country to sort of roundly reject Kamala Harris as somebody who was seen as the incumbent.

Anna Greenberg, the Democrats have lost the White House. They've lost the Senate. We don't know yet where the House will land, but it's not looking great. Are Democrats ready now to change their message, to do you know, an autopsy just like there was for the Republicans in 2012. But I think when you are a party that represents a diverse coalition racially and regionally in terms of education level, the notion that you can sort of turn on a dime and say, well, I'm just going to talk about things that men care about and hopefully I'll win an election isn't really how it works. And I'm not suggesting that Democrats have a wonderful message to men. I'm not even suggesting that all men are actually a good target for the Democratic Party. But the idea that it's such a diverse, I mean, the Republican advantage in terms of message is its homogeneity. And the Democrats' advantage around its diversity is that it makes it, is both that it is broadly representative, but also much more challenging for, is both that it is broadly representative,

but also much more challenging for this, what I think is a minority, homogenous set of voters, even though Trump obviously won the popular vote. Sarah Longwell, a very quick last word from you. Are Republicans ready to do the work to welcome all Americans? Because Donald Trump's going to be president for everybody. Look, I do think the Republicans have been making an active effort to become a multiracial working class party, and that that is where the party is going. It is not going back to the party of Mitt Romney or George W. Bush.

Okay. That is Republican strategist Sarah Longwell and Democratic pollster and strategist Anna Greenberg. Thanks very much to you both. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This episode was produced by Connor Donovan and Michael Levitt. It was edited by Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan.

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