Myth and Reality on Elections (yes, plural)

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – William Faulkner

After missing as badly as I did on Election 2024, I thought it best to “take a step back” and review past assumptions. Of course, the Fed’s bizarre decision to lower interest rates brought me back for a moment, but outside of monetary mess-ups, waiting still seemed the best thing to do. When it comes to the incoming administration, I think it still is. I have no plans to comment on what Trump’s second term will do; instead, I’ll discuss what he has done – and that obviously will be nothing until January 20.

I do think, however, that I have seen enough actual data to review what happened in this election – and revisit previous ones.

It Wasn’t the Harris Campaign

There has been a lot of bandwidth spent on what the Harris campaign did “wrong.” I won’t comment on this or that detail, but from a broader perspective, this is simply the wrong place to look for an explanation of Trump’s return to power.

Nationwide, the nation shifted just over 6% to the GOP. The campaigns concentrated most of their efforts in the seven battleground states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Michigan). None of them had a swing as large as 6% (Arizona came closest at just under 5.9%). Of the five east of the Mississippi, the biggest swing was Michigan (just over 4%). In fact, the Democrats were so effective at slowing Trump’s movement in the battleground states that the GOP Electoral College advantage fell from over 3.5% in 2020 to less than 0.1% today.

In other words, Trump had his best improvements where the campaigns weren’t, while Harris was able to minimize losses where she campaigned. No campaign is perfect, but overall, the data clearly shows that Harris had the better campaign than Trump did.

It Started in 2021

There are elections in which having the better campaign makes all the difference. This wasn’t one of them. Harris – and Biden before her – faced a political environment deeply hostile to Democrats. They simply couldn’t overcome this. Moreover, one of the two big problems that the Democrats faced was already in place three years earlier – and Biden himself made it happen.

Take a look at 538’s history of tracking President Biden’s approval rating. The last day Biden was aggregately polling above 50% was 16 August 2021, the day after Kabul fell. The end of our withdrawal was the last day Biden’s approval rating was above his disapproval rating. I noted the possibility of electoral fallout months before Virginia’s elections that year. So it came to pass.

The other matter that set the table for Trump et al was inflation. I still argue that the inflation of the 2020s was a supply-side, “cost-push” inflation. Biden refused to even consider supply-side reforms that could have addressed the problem, especially the numerous Trump tariffs that were kept in place. On the demand-side, the vaunted Inflation Reduction Act won’t actually reduce deficit spending (a major macroeconomic cause of inflation) until 2027. The entire effort to reduce inflation was left with the Federal Reserve – yeah, the same Fed that started cutting rates before the 2% inflation target was even reached.

Contrary to what academics (including yours truly) think, recessions are far less damaging to a party in power than inflations. The latter effects everyone; the former only those out of work. Had Biden taken supply-side action to combat inflation, he could have not only made an impact on the metric itself, but given voters a sign he was serious about it.

Reviewing Past Midterm “Mandates”

I also feel the need to address the elections of 2018 and 2022. Both midterm elections have been interpreted as Democratic “victories” – due to the flipping of the House in 2018 and the holding of the Senate, against expectations, in 2022. I fell for this, too, to a point.

The reality is much murkier. Both parties had reason to cheer in those elections. Trump lost the House in 2018 but he gained two Senate seats and tripled his majority there. In 2022, Republicans still won the House – and won a majority of the popular vote for the House. In truth, both midterm elections were draws.

When you combine that with presidential elections in which the tipping-point state was decided by less than 1%, you have nearly a decade of 50/50 elections … including this one. Trump may have won the popular vote for the first time, but he did not win of majority. Trump’s tipping-point victory (1.7% in PA) is smaller than Bush the Younger’s in 2004 (2.1%).

What Does It All Mean?

Put it all together and you get a closely divided nation that barely rejected the incumbent party in a virulently anti-incumbent-party environment. Were it not for the dangers Trump et al present to American democracy and independence (we will see for ourselves how much those dangers are realized), Democrats would likely just brush themselves off and examine where the problem truly lies – with the mistakes of the Biden Administration. Alas, the party doesn’t seem to be there yet.

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