It is now three days after the election day and there still is no final result. News organizations are tentatively calling the election for Biden, but with several close states still in dispute. Conventional wisdom, as I write this in the early morning of Friday 11/6, is that Biden has won the election with about one state to spare.
Days before the election, I predicted, primarily based on polling, that these would be the results, other than that I also predicted Biden would win Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Trump, in fact, once again greatly improved his results beyond what the polls predicted, but not quite enough to win reelection.
The biggest surprise for me was Trump's second win in Pennsylvania. This has been a traditionally blue state which, before Trump, had not supported a Republican presidential candidate in the prior six elections, over a quarter of a century.
Polling Inaccuracies
In a close election such as this, I would have predicted, as the polls indicated, that Trump would win Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada before he would win Pennsylvania. That was not the case. If the tentative results are confirmed, it was Biden's ability to hang onto Nevada, as well as flipping Arizona, Wisconsin, and Michigan that gave him the victory. An razor thin Biden win in Georgia is icing on the cake for Biden, but not crucial to the outcome.
Pundits will debate for years why the polling was wrong once again. Clearly it was. However, until there are more detailed statistics about who voted and why, we can't say whether the error was a problem with predictions in the demographic makeup of the turnout, or simply an inability to get a truly random sample of honest answers to polling questions.
I had thought that a higher turnout would benefit the Democrats more than it did. While it did flip a few crucial states, it did not have the impact that most experts thought.
That said, there are still questions about some state outcomes. Trump is questioning the results in Arizona, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Whether legal efforts or claims of fraud will change any outcomes remains to be seen. However, a narrow Biden victory appears to be the final result.
While Biden appears to have won, it is far from the mandate that Democrats had wanted. Democrats lost several key Senate races, which appears to ensure that Republicans will maintain a Senate majority. Democrats also lost several House seats. These were mostly districts that were traditionally Republican, but where Democrats had won during the surge of 2018 elections. Democrats will retain a slimmer House majority. That leaves a divided government, with neither side able to implement much in the way of new policy.
Trump's loss can be attributed to the fact that he won several critical states in 2016 by only a few thousand votes. Those states turned, mostly due to increased turnout. Although Trump received more votes in most states than he did in 2016, Biden received even more than that. What changed in 2020 is that a relatively small number of people, who lean Democrat and who either did not vote in 2016 or who voted for a third party candidate, came out for Biden.
Why Trump Lost
I deliberately said that Trump lost and not that Biden won because this election appears to have been about Trump. People were either pro or anti Trump, and not particularly excited about Biden. Those opposed to Trump, however, rallied around Biden in record numbers.
Trump did not lose votes. In 2016 Trump got about 63 million votes nationwide. This year, he will probably be over 70 million once all the votes are counted. Clinton got about 66 million votes in 2016, while Biden will get about 74 million in 2020. So, everyone who voted for Trump in 2016 probably still voted for Trump again in 2020. But many Democrats, and Democrat-leaning independents, turned out in even greater numbers.
Look, for example, at Michigan. In 2016, Trump beat Clinton by about 10,000 votes. He won 2,279,543 to Clinton's 2,268,839. In 2020, Trump increased his vote total to
2,648,818, but Biden beat him by nearly 150,000 votes, garnering 2,795,714. So even though Trump increased his vote total in the state by 16%, he still lost a state that he won in 2016.
So, what changed? In 2016 many Democrat leaning voters were not crazy about Clinton. Many voted for third party candidates, about 4% nationwide, 5% in Michigan. By contrast, in 2020, only about 1.5% of all votes went to third parties. In 2016, many voters were convinced Clinton would win anyway and voted third party to express dissatisfaction with both major party candidates. In 2020, I don't think voters were more enthusiastic about Biden as a candidate. Rather, they preferred a Democrat to Trump and realized that voting for a third party could give reelection to Trump.
Many others stayed home four years ago. Voter participation in 2016 was about 55%. This year, it will be about 66%. Many voters who do not regularly vote, did vote this year, again mostly out of increased opposition to Trump rather than out of specific positive feelings for Biden. So the big change this year was mostly a matter of participation and focus on the two major party candidates. It was not a matter of any voters really changing party loyalty from four years ago. Biden did not win back any Trump voters. He managed to turn out non-voters or third party voters in greater numbers, which benefited him at the margins.
White working class voters still remain relatively hostile to the Democratic party. They like Trump as an anti-establishment candidate because they see the establishment as working against their interests. They accept the premise that Democrat taxes, regulations, and trade policies kill jobs and slow the economy. Trump promised to improve their lives. Even if he did not deliver, they blame Democrat opposition for that failure and not Trump's inability to keep his promises. As a result, they continue their support for Trump.
Because these close elections are won or lost at the margins, the margins favored Trump in 2016 but not in 2020. We have not seen any major shift in voters' views toward either party though.
Lessons for 2024
Trump was able to put together a winning coalition in 2016 by appearing as the anti-establishment candidate, just as Obama did in 2008 and 2012. Voters have never liked Washington insiders. That is why sitting Senators or Congressmen have only won the Presidency three or four times in the history of the republic.
Trump's victory in 2016 tapped into that anti-establishment voter sentiment. His loss in 2020 appears primarily the result of stirring up too much animus in the opposition, resulting in the far greater opposition turnout and focused voting against his reelection.
Critical to any victory is success in the mid-west. Democrats have a lock on New England, mid-Atlantic states and the west coast. Republicans have a fairly solid lock on the south (with the exception of Florida which always swings) as well as the middle plains states and most of the mountain states. If a major party candidate can come challenge one of those opposing strongholds, that can greatly change the election. For example, if the Democrats nominated someone who was popular in Texas, or the Republicans nominated someone popular in New York, that could change everything. But barring that, the election comes down to Florida and the Midwest.
Midwestern white working class voters tend to be very anti-establishment. They generally believe that government does not have their best interests at heart and that they are being left behind. Trump was able to tap into that sentiment in 2016 with his protectionist views and his claims that he could bring back manufacturing jobs. Despite a failure to deliver, he retained most of his support.
A future Republican candidate will need to be able to tap into that same pool of midwestern voters. Such a candidate must do so without alienating other groups that were able to defeat the Trump coalition in key mid-west states.
Similarly, a Democratic candidate must convince these same voters that he or she has their interests at heart. Biden had tried to express an emotional connection with these voters, but many still saw him as an establishment candidate who favored the traditional big government agenda that these voters distrust.
Both parties need to focus on the mid-west if they want to win the White House in 2024. Although appeals to Hispanics, women, young people, etc. are all important, appeals to the white working class voters of the mid-west seem the most critical to any future election.
