Snap Insight: US voters punished Kamala Harris as the incumbent in 2024 election

SINGAPORE: Former US president Donald Trump will return to the White House after defeating US Vice President Kamala Harris, becoming only the second chief executive after Grover Cleveland (1885-1889, 1893-1897) to serve two non-consecutive terms.
Trump triumphed in an election that was initially deemed too close to call, after receiving an unprecedented criminal conviction and surviving two assassination attempts. The tumultuous race also saw President Joe Biden step aside in favour of Harris following a disastrous debate performance that called into question his fitness for office and his ability to win re-election.
The election results are not close. Trump handily secured more than the 270 electoral votes he needed to win the presidency, along with the popular vote, something that eluded him in 2016.
This will prompt a reckoning among Democrats. Should President Biden have stepped aside earlier? Was Harris the best candidate? Should the party have held an open nomination process? Could the selection of Josh Shapiro as running mate have swung Pennsylvania in Harris’ favour?
The fact remains, however, that this was an extremely challenging electoral environment for the incumbent. Exit polls showed that 72 per cent of voters took a negative view of the country’s direction and a similar proportion saw American democracy as more threatened than secure.
The economy was also a sore point with voters, with two-thirds saying it is in a bad shape and almost half saying they are worse off than they were four years ago.
When the short-term forces of the vote weigh so heavily against the incumbent party, it is not surprising that Americans might suppress whatever misgivings they have regarding Trump’s character or his antics to cast a vote for him.
We can see this retrospective punishment of Harris in county-level voting data, where most of America’s 3,000-plus counties moved to the right compared to 2020. The rightward swing among voters could be seen in counties from deep red rural Texas, through the wealthy suburbs of Washington, DC, to deep blue counties in New York City.
This “red wave” – powered by voter disaffection – also helped Republicans to retake control of the Senate and may also be enough to help the party retain control of the House of Representatives.
The 2024 election cycle provides yet another data point indicating that the American party system is undergoing a realignment. The parties’ social bases are changing, as are the issues that matter to them.
This can be seen in Trump and Republicans’ continued inroads among African-Americans, Latinos, and Asians – hitherto stalwart constituencies of the Democratic coalition.
Older members of these groups, with their memories of the civil rights movement, remain reliably Democratic. Younger African-Americans, Latinos, and Asians, however, are less attached to the Democratic party identification and can be swayed by the Republicans’ conservative messaging on economic and cultural issues.
This election also suggests that abortion may have run its course as a winning issue for Democrats, at least at the national level.
In the swing states of Arizona and Nevada, winning ballot initiatives protecting abortion rights outperformed Harris. Even in Florida, where the initiative failed due to a super majoritarian requirement, it still outperformed the Vice President’s vote share (57 per cent vs 43 per cent).
Disaffection was strong enough that many Americans split their votes – protecting abortion rights while voting for Trump, despite Harris campaigning heavily on the issue.
Trump campaigned – and won – as the candidate of change. Now the wait begins for the kind of change that he will bring about in his second administration.
Will he build on his broad winning coalition to redeem his campaign promise to restore prosperity for all? Or will it be one that cracks down on perceived enemies at home and withdraws American engagement abroad?
Adrian Ang U-Jin is a Research Fellow and Coordinator of the United States Programme at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU).