5 reasons why Donald Trump won

Photo: Chip Somodevilla Getty Images via Agence France-Presse While taking back the keys to the White House on Tuesday, Donald Trump can now boast of having also garnered a majority of the popular vote, a feat that a Republican has not managed to achieve since George W. Bush in 2004.

Fabien Deglise In Atlanta

Posted at 16:10 Analysis

• United States

The ballot boxes have spoken. Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States in Tuesday’s election, marking a spectacular return to the White House for the populist, after seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 vote, contributing to an attack on the Capitol in 2021, and waging an acrimonious campaign against his political opponents by threatening them with military repression. A collective choice that surprises, but also explains itself.

1 — The pandemic

Donald Trump's catastrophic handling of the pandemic probably contributed to his defeat in 2020. But it could also have accompanied his comeback in 2024.

In the rural regions and suburbs of the United States crisscrossed in recent months, many Republicans have claimed that the lockdown measures during this health crisis, like the COVID-19 vaccination campaigns, have had a mobilizing effect this year against the Democrats, who have become their great promoters. This is because, far from having been perceived as a measure aimed at protecting them, this framework has above all confirmed among them the idea of ​​an authoritarian drift affecting their individual freedom by closing schools, churches and limiting their movements.

The inflationary era that this pandemic has ushered the world into, putting pressure on household wallets, coupled with the Democrats’ celebration of cultural diversity in every corner, has put the nail in the coffin.

“Much of modern liberalism has become deeply distasteful to much of America,” columnist Bret Stephens wrote this week in the pages of the New York Times. The Democratic Party, at its best, stands for fairness and freedom. But the politics of today’s left are also fraught with social engineering based on group identity. They represent, increasingly, the forced imposition of bizarre cultural norms on hundreds of millions of Americans who want to live and let live but don’t like being told how to speak or what to think. »

“Trump won because his message focused on the issues that mattered most to the American people: immigration, the cost of living and the Democrats’ grip on cultural issues,” summarizes Gary Sasse, a Republican strategist in Rhode Island. “With only 28% of voters believing America is going in the right direction, Democrats have shown themselves to be completely out of touch with their reality.”

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2 — Entryism

After Donald Trump's defeat in 2020, Arizona Republican activist Dan Schultz developed a strategy called “constituency.” The idea ? Bring the Republican back to power, calling on its supporters to take control of party bodies from the bottom up, and thus extend their influence to local governments.

Ironically, the concept borrows from entryism, a revolutionary political strategy stemming from Leninism and Trotskyism that led to the rise of authoritarian communist regimes at the beginning of the last century, in several countries of Eastern Europe.

Amplified by the great theoretician of Trumpism, Steve Bannon, the project has spread meticulously across the country, where the public agitator has called on the populist's supporters to “take back control village by village… neighborhood by neighborhood” and to also seize election monitoring posts to plant the roots of the ideological project of the American radical right.

For four years, fueled by conspiracy theories of electoral fraud that never existed, these activists were able to exert their influence on the electoral process by launching purges of electoral registers and complicating access to the ballot boxes in the hope of turning away votes that were less favorable to the Republicans. They also became propagators of Donald Trump’s founding ideas — on immigration, against diversity, on abortion, against Democrats, etc. — in their community and contributed on a micro scale to getting out the vote in favor of the former president during Tuesday’s election.

Photo: Chris Szagola Associated Press Donald Trump’s activists became propagators of his ideas in their community and contributed on a micro scale to getting out the vote in favor of the former president during Tuesday’s election.

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“To the thousands of election integrity warriors: thank you. You have made a huge difference over the past four years with your hard work on the electoral process,” Cleta Mitchell, one of the leading figures in the American conspiracy movement, wrote on the X network on Wednesday.

The result is more than convincing. While having regained the keys to the White House on Tuesday, Donald Trump can now boast of having also garnered the majority of the popular vote, a feat that a Republican has not managed to achieve since George W. Bush in 2004.

3 — Sexism and racism

It was easy to believe that the prospect of bringing the first woman of Asian and African-American origin into the White House would be a factor in mobilizing the Democratic electorate to carry Kamala Harris to victory. But that did not happen.

“We’ve just opened a Pandora’s box,” Joan Martin, wife of former Democratic congressman Jim Martin of Georgia, summed up in Atlanta on Wednesday. “Misogyny and racism are also a part of who we are as Americans and we’re not done overcoming them.”

Donald Trump understood this well, he who, throughout his campaign, posed as the defender of a pure identity, regularly attacked immigrants — constructed as a threat to this identity — and articulated the regressive idea of ​​a masculinity having, according to him, a natural power over the lives of women, “whether they like it or not.” These are his own words.

“Every message was infused with racism and sexism to prepare voters to interpret the world through that prism,” Tammy Vigil, a political communications specialist at Boston University, summarized in an interview. “There is a persistent socialization in the United States that encourages misogyny and racism, and Trump has been very adept at exploiting both of those components.”

The bet paid off. The populist has not only maintained his gains with white male voters, those in the regions and young voters. He has strengthened his 2020 majorities in thousands of rural counties with a strong Republican density, in suburban areas and even in several cities. Conversely, Kamala Harris has not been able to attract more women to her political project than Joe Biden did in 2020.

“Donald Trump gave voters an excuse to be their worst selves, and many accepted that invitation,” Vigil said. “Some hide their inclinations behind complaints about the price of eggs, but the sexism and racism are clear enough in the movement that has driven many Americans to the polls.” »

To go further

• When will there be a woman president of the United States?
• The defeat of Kamala Harris, or the failure of the Democratic strategy

4 — Disinformation

Between truth and falsehood, Donald Trump chose his side in 2016: that of speaking to Americans by twisting the facts, by constructing these facts to ensure that they stir up their atavistic fears and thus drive them towards him and his solutions. And the election campaign brought the strategy to its peak.

Under the influence of social networks that have been stripped of their disinformation surveillance and control departments in recent years, the latter has spread without limits throughout the campaign, amplified by the X network of billionaire Elon Musk, who has become the populist's ally. These alternative realities were then taken up by the constellation of conservative media, influencers from the radical right and the conspiracy sphere who have skillfully strengthened their structure and especially their hold on their audience since Donald Trump's defeat in 2020.

Photo: Evan Vucci Associated Press The disinformation spread by Donald Trump has been amplified by the X network, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, who has become an ally of the populist.

Pennsylvania, won by the Republican on Tuesday, has also become a hotbed of this disinformation with more than 60% of publications on X evoking electoral fraud targeting this key state, according to an analysis by PeakMetrics. North Carolina follows with 9%.

During the campaign, all it took was switching from CNN to Fox News, the ultraconservative American network, to take the full measure of a campaign that was ultimately not being played out between two political camps, but rather between two realities: one, anchored in verified facts and science, the other, in fears, resentments, personal attacks, lies and half-truths, seeking to titillate voters' emotions with great drastic disinformation. And one took over the other this week.

5 — The disengagement of millions of voters

Given the importance of the issues raised by the American election campaign, voters turned out in large numbers to vote, yes, but in a smaller proportion than in 2020, according to preliminary data from the vote count. With 68 million votes cast in her favor, Kamala Harris ultimately garnered almost 10 million fewer than Joe Biden. Trump emerged as the big winner in this election, with some two million voters who did not go out to vote for him compared to the last election. These figures are in addition to the 81 million Americans who have the right to vote, but who, year after year, do not exercise it.

On the streets, this disaffection was often expressed by dozens of voters we met, like Karol Smith, in her fifties, on the streets of Atlanta, boasting that she had not voted this year. “It doesn’t change anything. Candidates make promises, but once they get elected, they don’t keep them. Look: we had Barack Obama for eight years and this is where we are.”

More strangely: Lakashia Williams, a young African-American, came to cast her ballot at a polling station in the Georgia metropolis on Tuesday, not believing it either. “I did it because I was passing through,” she said. “But at the end of the day, my life is going to be exactly the same.”

Trust in democracy appears to be eroding. And Tuesday's election is perhaps a startling illustration of this; 73 percent of voters said at the exit polls that American democracy was in peril, according to an ABC poll conducted Tuesday. The majority, however, have just handed over the keys to power to the candidate who for years has promised, and is now preparing, to shake the pillars of this democracy.

This report was funded with support from the Transat International Journalism Fund-Le Devoir.