Having fired Donald Trump in 2020, U.S. voters did an about-face Tuesday and sent him back to the White House. It was a remarkable political rebound, but one that owed as much to the Democratic Party’s weakness as it did to Trump’s strengths.
Despite heavily outspending her opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris carried not one battleground state in failing to reassemble the solid anti-Trump majority of four years ago. She also lagged behind Joe Biden’s 2020 performance with key Democratic-leaning groups: young voters, Hispanics, Blacks and even women.
The demographic and geographic sweep of Trump’s victory is impressive. He made inroads among urban and suburban voters, independents, young men and non-white working-class voters. The U.S. political map is getting redder.
Most importantly, Trump improved his 2020 performance with Hispanics by 25 points, despite his dehumanizing rhetoric about immigrants. Overall, he won 46 percent of the Hispanic vote, the most ever for a Republican presidential candidate.
The electorate’s rightward shift has sparked heady talk among Republicans about a new U.S. political alignment around education level and social class rather than traditional left-right polarities. It certainly is a rebuke to the left, which has been hailing the advent of a new progressive majority for much of this century.
