We all know who won the election, who received over 270 electoral college votes to win, as to say, Donald Trump. There are mixed feelings, to say the least, about his victory. This article is not about who the good guy and bad guy is. My objective is to tell everyone about the actual details of it because it is both important to know and completely fascinating. The main question I’ll be answering is how and why he won. So without further ado.
Donald Trump reined victorious primarily because of a Democrat campaign that underestimated his chances in several important places. They were overly confident in some areas, focusing marketing in the wrong areas at times. These weren’t stupid mistakes, Harris Campaign strategies played the game very well but clearly not well enough. Here are the main flaws that weakened the Harris campaign. First, the American people didn’t have enough time to get to know Kamala Harris. This is no fault of the Democrats but an inevitable issue due to her unexpected replacement of soon-to-be former president, Joe Biden; it truly is Joe-ver. Secondly, the Democrats didn’t focus enough marketing on the Hispanic vote leading to Trump getting the overwhelming lead among Hispanic males. Thirdly, the Democrats took the Blue Wall for granted. A blue state means a state that is consistently won by the Democrats. What is the Blue Wall you may ask. The Blue Wall is a large group of states who are believed by political analysts to be essentially Democrat territory as they are almost always blue states. The Blue Wall is made up of these states. (The number beside them is how many electoral college votes they have.) California (54), New York (28), Illinois (19), Michigan (15), New Jersey (14), Washington (12), Massachusetts (11), Maryland (10), Minnesota (10), Wisconsin (10), Oregon (8), Connecticut (7), Hawaii (4), Maine (4), Rhode Island (4), Delaware (3), and Vermont (3), as well as Washington, D.C.. And again, the Democrats took a victory in states such as Michigan, which they lost, for granted in most cases. Most of the Blue Wall was still won by Democrats but too much was seized by the Republicans for a victory.
A swing state to those not in the know is a highly contentious state, the votes in the state are split making victory harder to achieve causing a fight to win it. Many of the Blue Wall states were swing states. The quintessential swing state of the 2024 race was Pennsylvania. The analysts at the New York Times described Pennsylvania as the state to “make or break” the election, the thought process was whoever won Pennsylvania would win the election. Trump made the election after a knockdown drag-out fight where Democratic figures appeared in the state to campaign for the Democrats, the Republicans doing the same.
Almost everyone watching the election couldn’t help but notice a pattern; Harris did worse than Biden and Trump did incrementally or sizably better than Harris in those states. At the end of the day, the wire it came down to supported Trump. Outside of these states, Trump won all of the consistently red states, referred to as the Red Sea in opposition to the Blue Wall. In the end, Trump won 295 electoral college votes to Harris’s 226. An overwhelming victory. Analysts expected, pre-election, that Ms. Harris would win by a minuscule margin as reported in some, but not all, polls. The Republicans and their champion, Mr. Trump proved this wrong. Some said that Republicans were under-represented in exit polls. Trump ran on many things but taxes were his most sellable issue.
Mr. Trump claimed that under Biden the taxes had risen exponentially and that Ms. Harris would continue this trend. He offered himself as an alternative who would instead lower them. The diehard Republicans were almost only interested in his arguable stranger beliefs. Meaning, that they were a only medium-sized percentage of Trump voters but made the most noise by far.
While there are many other reasons why Ms. Harris lost and why Mr. Trump is President-Elect. But if you were confused or ecstatic by the results this should give you a better idea why you felt these things and why the election turned out the way it did.
