Bill Clinton’s strategist, Jim Carville, coined the quip “It’s the economy, stupid!” to explain his successful strategy for winning the 1992 U.S. presidential election against incumbent George HW Bush. Although Carville advised Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, he apparently didn’t share that advice with Harris.
In Harris’s defense, as one pundit explained, any incumbent president, and by extension, the Vice President, would have been blamed for the hammering our economy suffered in Covid’s tailwind. Inflation was a scourge that hurt Harris as it did for two previous presidents, Ford and Carter, who lost after serving one term each due to significant inflation.
Multiple polls before the election ranked the economy as the top issue, and Trump received a higher approval rate for managing the economy than Biden. However, these views were based on perceptions, and the data didn’t support them.
For example, the number of small businesses has grown by more than 50 percent since the first Trump administration. Biden’s regulations on large corporations allowed smaller businesses to survive. This growth was also due to a bi-partisan vote in Congress, which Trump supported, pumping a $2 trillion of economic stimulus legislation in response to COVID.
Trump claimed credit for the $1,200 stimulus checks that 70 million Americans received. He ordered that “President Donald J. Trump” appear on the payment in an unprecedented requirement.
In addition, the legislation provided $790 billion in low-interest loans to small businesses through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). The money saved the economy but triggered inflation, which stretched into Biden’s term in office.
Unfairly and manipulatively, former President Donald Trump accused Harris of creating our economic troubles by allowing a flood of illegal immigrants to cross into our country. In coupling these two trends, Trump linked financial problems with cultural biases, stoking financial and safety insecurities and framing them within a cultural context.
Asylum seekers, some sneaking into the country, were portrayed as foreign strangers invading our nation without any checks on their character. At more than 250 rallies he held in the last few months of his campaign, Trump called immigrants criminals, rapists, and drug dealers preying on peaceful communities.
Trump targeted his outreach to low-propensity and first-time voters from all ethnic groups. These potential voters are wage workers most affected by inflationary prices at grocery stores and gas stations. They were likelier to compete with migrants for low-paying service and industry jobs and the most affordable housing.
Pursuing low-propensity voters, other than youths, is a longshot play since they generally have low interest in elections. Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, found that in a recent poll, the national average for interest in this election was 77%. However, it was nearly 10% of Hispanic voters, and 52% among 18- to 34-year-old youths.
This was a dangerous sign that the Democrats’ most reliable voting blocks were not motivated to vote for Harris. Trump’s messaging may account for the fact that 66% of Hispanic men saw Trump as better for the economy versus 33% seeing Harris better. While Trump was trying to fuse economic concerns with cultural biases, Harris was focused on allowing women access to abortion.
However, she didn’t highlight the significant financial burden on families by denying that access. So, she missed connecting economic concerns with the abortion issue.
Consequently, for all the legitimate concerns about the Republican Party promoting a culture war over policies, the Democrats appeared to be more concerned about cultural issues, like abortion and gay/trans rights, than inflation. Trump’s campaign took advantage of that orientation.
They spent more than $17 million on 30,000 TV ads replaying Harris’ past talks supporting access to gender-affirming healthcare for transgender individuals. Audiences of NFL and college football broadcasts were targeted to reach a predominantly male audience in the swing states.
Nevertheless, Harris understood that women’s freedom over their bodies was fundamental to women voters. Unlike Hillary Clinton, she did not emphasize running as a woman. Instead, she reached out to women through the abortion issue.
Before the final votes were tallied, Harris seemed to have some success in a get-out-the-vote strategy that emphasized abortion as the top issue for women. In Pennsylvania, data suggested that early voting included a relatively high proportion of Democratic women who did not vote there in 2020.
Since women make up a larger proportion of the population and historically have voted at higher rates than men, the Brookings Institute ran the numbers. They predicted that if women voted in the same proportion as in 2020, Harris would win Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—enough to win the election. Surprise, all those states went for Trump.
Men supporting Trump from strong Democratic constituencies illustrate how the Trump campaign officials created a “boys vs. girls election.” Their campaign reinforced the values of adhering to traditional gender roles. Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, J.D. Vance, suggested during interviews that the sexual revolution made it too easy for women to leave bad marriages.
In the final weeks of his campaign, Trump appeared alongside former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who popularized the notion that the country needed Trump to be a “dad” who would deliver a “spanking.” Meanwhile, Trump dumped former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley from the campaign trail. He wasn’t interested in appealing to her independent female voters.
Trump winning the popular vote lends credence that his tactic of peeling off enough Black and Hispanic men, who traditionally vote Democratic, could offset losses among independent women voters. We now know that the Republicans’ appeal to men was far more successful than the Democrats’ appeal to women. Here are a few statistics:
Although exit polls found women backed Harris over Trump by a 12-point margin, 55% to 43%, the majority of white women (52%) voted for Trump. In comparison, men turned out for Trump by 16 points more than for Harris. And Hispanic men backed Trump over Harris 54% to 44%.
The Free Press, a conservative medium, noted that the Democrats’ vote share among women actually fell. Harris won 53% of female voters this year, while Biden won 55% in 2020. Meanwhile, Trump increased his percentage of female voters by 3% from the 2020 election. More significantly, Trump’s margin of young male voters leapt by 28%.
Does Trump’s victory mean we will Make America Great Again by getting women back in the kitchen? I don’t think so. But the Republican Party, despite Trump declaring that he loves women, will now have to deliver a better economic future for women and their daughters.
Democrats must take the opportunity to introduce specific plans to achieve that goal. They can initiate working with constituents to write new legislation to protect the Obama and Biden administrations’ programs that improved women’s health and welfare.
This task will be a challenge if Republicans control both chambers.
That challenge must strengthen the party’s resilience in thoughtfully listening to citizens’ needs and systematically addressing them with innovation and persistence, regardless of the hurdles they face.
