Ahead of election night, the 2024 presidential race appeared to be agonizingly close. Polls showed the race was neck-and-neck. Forecasting models said the odds were a coin-flip.
Despite the apparent tightness of the race, Democrats had reason to feel confident. For three decades, they have been the party of the American majority. The Republican Party had won the popular vote only once since 1992, following the nation’s rally around the flag after the September 11 Attacks. The Democrats had beaten Donald Trump before. Now he was a convicted felon.
Yet, in the end, the result was painfully simple for the Democrats. The vice president to a historically unpopular leader, whose net favorability on election day sat below negative 17 percent, lost to a challenger who promised change.
The discontent that returned Donald Trump to the presidency stems largely from economic concerns, particularly high inflation. While current year-over-year inflation has cooled to an unremarkable 2.44% – which Democrats have heralded as a massive success – prices have risen a cumulative 21.9% since February 2020. Worse for Democrats, price rises have been greatest among some of Americans’ most visible expenses. Grocery staples like eggs (up 79% since February 2020), bread (+40.9%) and beef (+40%) have been at the forefront of rising prices.
Despite strong wage growth in the United States – outpacing inflation by 2.5% for median income earners, and by over 12% for the lowest earners – elevated prices have damaged voters’ confidence in the national economy. Americans may have received a raise, but they have seen much of that additional income eaten away by rising costs. Consequently, the percentage of Americans describing economic conditions in the country as “poor” has risen from just 9% in February 2020 to 46% this October. Americans have not felt worse about the economy since the height of the 2008 financial crisis – not even during the depths of the 2020 recession, when unemployment skyrocketed to nearly 15%.
Americans are not alone in their dissatisfaction, as the global economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has left all leaders of the G7 nations substantially unpopular with the public.
Economic discontent has brought down governments across the globe.
Unsurprisingly, such widespread disapproval has been brutal for incumbent parties facing elections. Economic discontent has brought down governments across the globe. All types of nations have been affected, as the anti-incumbent headwinds of the post-Covid world have affected both presidential races and parliamentary elections, developing nations and wealthy countries.
Among the G7, four member states have held elections this year: all resulted in losses for the ruling party. This phenomenon, however, is by no means exclusive to developed nations. The contemporary political environment has weakened several of the world’s most electorally dominant parties. In addition to Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, this year has seen South Africa’s African National Congress and the Botswana Democratic Party – both of which have governed their countries since the end of colonial rule – suffer their worst ever results at the ballot box. Even the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in India could not avoid electoral losses this year, despite party leader and Prime Minister Narendra Modi enjoying a 75 percent approval rating, the highest of any major world leader.
Back in the United States, this worldwide rejection of incumbent parties did not extend to many down-ballot Democrats. Even as Trump swept all seven swing states, Democrats won key Senate races in Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona, as well as the governorship in North Carolina. Furthermore, defeated Democratic Senate candidates in Montana, Ohio, and Texas significantly outperformed Harris’ margin.
Democrats likely owe these strong showings to down-ballot roll-off among Trump voters. While Democratic Senate candidates nearly matched Kamala Harris, Republicans ran, on average, 6% behind Donald Trump’s vote totals in the swing states. The electoral results suggest that the voters who tipped the balance in favor of the former president at the top of the ticket didn’t bother to support his co-partisans in Congress.
Trump’s short coattails should cast aspersions upon claims that the Democratic brand is toxic in middle America. Voters rejected an administration, not a party: if Democrats are helplessly out of touch with the American people, control of Congress would not be sitting on a razor’s edge. If true, those who turned out for Trump would have rejected liberal candidates down-ballot. Instead, Republicans will enter the 119th Congress with a slim, ungovernable majority in the House, while knowing that they largely failed to capitalize on a favorable Senate map this year.
Voters rejected an administration, not a party.
Hindsight is not always 20/20, especially in politics. Pundits and politicians have already worked backwards from the results to explain how this election vindicates their particular ideology. For Bernie Sanders, Democratic losses among non-college educated voters demonstrates how the party must embrace the fight for economic justice. Moderate Democrats like Representatives Seth Moulton and Tom Souzzi have attributed their party’s loss to liberal positions on transgender rights. Former House Leader Nancy Pelosi, who pushed for Biden to drop out and be replaced with the winner of a mini-primary, expressed her frustration with the president’s late exit and Kamala Harris’ immediate anointment as the Democratic nominee. Donald Trump and the Republicans, for their part, have claimed that voters have delivered them a sweeping mandate to govern.
Presidential elections are always prone to over-interpretation: particularly in the age of social media and a 24-hour news cycle, when every campaign decision can be revisited and dissected. While debates rage over whether Kamala Harris should have campaigned with Liz Cheney or gone on Joe Rogan, recent elections from around the world indicate that Trump’s victory is not the result of Democratic incompetence. Economic dissatisfaction is pervasive in contemporary global politics, and incumbent parties have suffered the consequences. As the party evaluates its loss, Democrats should reject careless narrativizing and embrace context.
Will Gunter ‘25 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at gunter.w@wustl.edu.