November 6, 2024 - 8:30am
Donald Trump didn’t just outperform expectations for the 2024 election — he likely redrew the electoral map for a generation to come. His impressive performance wasn’t merely about swing states or suburban voters but something far more profound: the complete realignment of America’s two staid political coalitions.
The story of Trump’s improbable comeback from felony convictions and endless bad publicity isn’t found in the usual metrics of male versus female voters or red states versus blue states. Instead, it’s written in the faces of young voters, black Americans, and Latinos who abandoned the Democratic Party’s increasingly out-of-touch messaging for Trump’s brash, countercultural appeal.
The numbers tell a stark tale. According to AP VoteCast data, Trump captured more than 40% of voters under 30, a dramatic increase from the roughly one-third who backed him in 2020. This shift among young voters — traditionally a Democratic stronghold — signals more than just campaign success. It represents a fundamental transformation of the Republican Party’s image and appeal.
In Michigan, a “blue wall” state essential to a Kamala Harris victory, the reversal was even more dramatic. Exit polls show that voters aged 18-29, who gave Joe Biden a commanding 61% of their support in 2020, appear to have narrowly backed Trump in 2024. The shift was particularly pronounced among young men, who seemed to respond to Trump’s unconventional alliance-building with figures such as Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, and even Hulk Hogan — moves that mainstream media figures regularly mocked as desperate or misguided.
But Trump’s coalition-building went beyond young voters. He secured 45% of Hispanic voters nationwide, trailing Harris by just eight points — a 13-point improvement from 2020. Among black voters, traditionally the Democratic Party’s most reliable constituency, Harris’s support dropped to around 80%, down from the roughly 90% who backed Biden four years earlier.
The Harris campaign’s response to these demographic shifts revealed the fundamental weakness of the Democratic establishment’s strategy. Rather than addressing the economic anxieties of working-class voters struggling with inflation, Harris pursued educated moderates and anti-Trump Republicans. Her campaign events, complete with carefully staged Saturday Night Live appearances and legacy media coverage, seemed to be lifted directly from Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 playbook — only with less substance behind them.
Harris never underwent the rigorous vetting of a primary campaign, and it showed. Her messaging focused on abstract “vibes” rather than concrete solutions, alienating lower-income households who had felt the sting of rising prices since 2020, as well as young people unable to enter a tight entry-level labour market. The contrast with Trump’s direct, often unpolished style couldn’t have been starker.
The magnitude of Trump’s coalition shift becomes clear in the state-by-state numbers. Buoyed by youth turnout and defections from reliable voting blocs, traditionally Democratic strongholds such as New York and New Jersey showed a nine to ten-point Republican shift from 2020. Florida, once considered a perpetual swing state, moved decisively into the Republican column.
This realignment suggests something more significant than a single election victory. Trump has effectively positioned the Republican Party as today’s counterculture — a genuine youth movement that finally matured after years of online activism and memetic warfare. By selecting J.D. Vance as his running mate, Trump further cemented his appeal to younger, digitally-native voters who see through the carefully curated “authenticity” of establishment politicians.
The Democratic Party’s embrace of what critics call “woke politics” — long stripped of any economic populism that made Bernie Sanders a compelling figure to young people in 2016 and 2020 — left it vulnerable to Trump’s unconventional coalition-building. While Democratic strategists focused on maintaining their grip on educated suburban voters, Trump’s team recognised that the real opportunity lay in expanding its base among working-class voters of all backgrounds.
The implications of this realignment will likely reverberate through American politics for the next decade or more. Trump made the Republican Party’s coalition younger, more diverse, and more working-class than at any point in recent history. The Democratic Party, meanwhile, finds itself increasingly dependent on affluent, educated voters — the very establishment figures it once defined itself against.
What emerges is a political landscape that would have been unrecognisable to those of us who came of age during George W. Bush’s presidency: a Republican Party beginning to embrace youth energy and working-class multiracial solidarity, facing off against a Democratic Party that increasingly represents well-off Boomers, the professional-managerial class, and corporate interests. The only question now is whether the Democrats can adapt to this new reality, or if they’ll continue running campaigns better suited to the political landscape of 2016 — where they bungled a near-certain victory — than the transformed America of 2024 and beyond.
Main Edition
US
FR
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeThis goes beyond the Democratic Party—the ‘left’ itself needs a serious detox. The old “agree with me or you’re a racist” routine barely gets an eye roll now. It must be infuriating to watch a pro-American, happy, modern and genuinely diverse movement celebrated right in front of their worn-out, guilt-wagging fingers.
If the left wants to modernise, it must purge itself of ‘woke’ entirely. It must start by calling out anti-white racism and removing those who promote it, even if it means pointing fingers at non-white racists – tough for a left that won’t even admit anti-white racism exists. But if they pull it off, purging the other ‘woke’ extremes will be much easier.
This is correct.
Nice idea, but so far I’ve not seen a single occasion where the American Left has learnt their lessons. They just “double down” as the saying goes. I’d expect them to carry on calling people Fascists and Nazis.
It’s a little like adverse possession. The right swiftly moved into the ‘classically liberal, common sense’ space as soon as they saw the left was distracted by the shiny woke ideology living beneath the sewer grates. The right is now in possession of that real estate and it will take a Herculean effort for the left to reoccupy that space.
“Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.” ― Martin Luther King Jr
Overall it looks like a massive rejection of woke politics by the US electorate. Hopefully we will pick up some echoes of it on these shores at some point. 2TK and knuckle-dragger lammy area going to have a challenging time of it though; couldn’t happen to a nicer pair.
What appears to have taken place in the West is that middle class women and to a lesser extent men, with humanities degrees living in suburbia, undertaking office work, have developd a contempt for blue collar workers and their families who build and maintain the industrial capacity and infrastructure which are needed for civilisation. The white collar has contempt for the blue collar. This has created a tectonic fault line in the Democratic Party and in many Western countries. Disraeli called this situation Two Nations.
A person may be wealthy and come from a family which has enjoyed wealth for generations. If the women socialise in communal activities and if the men fight and play sport together, as did the British landowners, their is respect for the courageous and sporting. Look at any church memorial for WW1 and WW2 , wealthy and poor died together. As The Black Prince said to the archers before Poitiers and Elizabeth I at Tilbury ” We will die together “.
To sum up: the status-quo liberal elite still don’t get it.
Funny watching Campbell and Stewart this morning scratching their heads when they haven’t got them buried in their hands. These ideologues still don’t get it. Luxury belief class
they do need to get it.. i.e, Do need to get their marching orders
Farage is following the MAGA playbook with strong support among Gen Z males on back of TikTok campaigns. Spectator last night – this wasn’t an ideological election, it was a gender one ….
Author says the only question is how the Democrats will respond. Even bigger is whether the Republicans can reorient the party in the MAGA direction of Trump while retaining enough of the Old Guard types to win elections. Until that is clear, we have a potential realignment that may complete itself or may flame out short of consummation.
For all those who doubted, those who said Trump was toast, or that Desantis would better, or that Kamala had it in the bag because she’s brat or because Taylor Swift endorsed her, all I can say is, in the words of the late Bobby Heenan, ‘I’m not the kind of the guy to say I told you so, but I told you so!’
Let’s be honest – the election was only as close as it was because some would rather die than vote for Trump. Otherwise, it might have been reminiscent of Reagan’s 49-state win in 1984. Kamala Harris, when asked what she would change about the past four years, answered “nothing.” THAT is weapons-grade tone deafness.
The GOP has become what the Dems like to think they are. Except they’re not that. They are a party of Wall St, Hollywood, academia, and assorted others who never have to live with the consequences of policies they inflict on others. Too late multiple blue cities discovered that sanctuary city status was a better virtue signal than reality. Even in California, the public voted to do something about crime through a ballot referendum that passed. Ironically, that referendum reverses a trend that dates back to Kamala’s time as the state AG.
An excellent article that accurately identifies why Trump’s campaign was so successful this time around. Many pundits in the MSM, both in Britain and in the US of A still fail to understand that electoral fundamentals in the US have changed, while blaming a gormless Harris and an aging Biden; one of whom was dethroned and the other foisted into position by a Democratic elite who have plainly lost all contact with the mass of the electorate.