Considerations on Trump’s victory in 2024
Vânia Penha-Lopes is a professor of Sociology at Bloomfield College of Montclair State University, co-chair of the Columbia University Seminar on Brazil, and research fellow at the Washington-Brazil Office. This article was written for issue 143 of the WBO weekly newsletter, published on November 15, 2024. To subscribe to the newsletter and receive it for free, enter your email in the field provided.
Shortly after 10 p.m. on November 5, 2024, with the vote count in the presidential race between Donald J. Trump and Kamala Harris already underway, I sent a message to a friend from the United States, a sociologist like me, and white: “I think Trump will win.” He promptly replied: “Kamala needs to be a stronger candidate.” I countered: “I think Americans need to be less racist.” He agreed with me.
As in 2016, I went to bed well before the news declared Trump’s victory. However, unlike that election, this time Trump’s victory did not surprise me. In 2016, Hillary Clinton would have been crowned president if it weren't for her defeat in the Electoral College, an institution created in the early days of the country to defend the political interests of slave states by equating each enslaved person – obviously prevented from voting – to three-fifths of a free man.
Although slavery was abolished in the US in 1865, presidential elections continue to be decided by indirect vote: 270 votes are needed in the Electoral College to elect a president. In 2016, Trump garnered 306 votes to Clinton's 232. When he ran for re-election in 2020, Trump got 232 votes to Biden's 206. Trump did not accept his defeat and incited a mob to invade the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the day Congress confirmed Biden's victory. To this day, Trump and his co-religionists maintain their “victory.” In 2024, there was no need for that. Trump won a landslide victory in the Electoral College: 312 to 226. He also received 50.5% of the popular vote, or almost 4 million votes ahead of Kamala Harris. Part of his success is due to the fact that he won in all the “swing states” or “battlefield states,” so called because their voters are not committed to either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. Therefore, depending on the election, they can swing in either direction, thus establishing a battleground for the parties. These are Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida, on the East Coast; in the Midwest, Ohio, Minnesota, Michigan and Iowa; Nevada and Colorado in the West complete the picture.
This result did not surprise me for three reasons: first, despite all the incoherent and unfounded statements that Trump made throughout the campaign, the polls put him neck and neck with Kamala Harris. If a white woman was not elected in 2016, why would a non-white woman be elected in 2024? Finally, part of the electorate historically loyal to the Democratic Party was showing signs of coming around to Trump's promises.
“Votes from white women and men, regardless of class, pointed to racial resentment that had been evident since the 1970s, in part due to affirmative action policies”
Among Trump's unfounded statements, his constant attacks on Harris's ethnic-racial identity stand out, claiming that she had always said she was Indian, but when she ran for president, she declared herself Black, which would make her a liar and a profiteer. In fact, during her public life, first as a prosecutor in California, then as a senator for the same state, and as vice president, Harris mentioned that her mother, although Indian, raised her two daughters as Black, because she knew that was how society would treat them.
Even more insidious was the claim that Trump made during the debate with Harris, on September 10 of this year: “They're eating the dogs! They're eating the cats! They're eating the pets of the people who live there!” “They” were Haitian immigrants who lived in Springfield, Ohio. Despite the debate moderator’s claim that there was no evidence of this, Trump insisted that it was true. The fact that Haitians were Black cannot be ignored. Since 2016, Trump has included banning non-white immigrants in his plan to “Make America Great Again.”
As I argued in my book The Presidential Elections of Trump and Bolsonaro, Whiteness, and the Nation (2022), Trump’s election in 2016 “reflected the racially hierarchical structure of their societies as well as the strength of the white supremacist ideology that is necessary for that structure to remain in place despite efforts to dismantle it.” Votes from white women and men, regardless of class, pointed to racial resentment that had been evident since the 1970s, in part due to affirmative action policies.
In 2024, these trends repeated themselves on a larger scale, dispelling the idea that Barack Obama’s election and reelection had made the country “post-racial.” Trump repeated his misogynistic tendencies in 2024, calling Harris “stupid” and promising to “protect women even against their will.” He also appealed to Black and Latino voters when he began claiming that immigrants take their jobs. Before that, he had become one with Black men by calling himself a “victim” of the criminal justice system after being found guilty of fraud in May of this year. As a result, the percentage of Nlack Republican voters, which has been increasing since 2016, grew in 2024. While more than 90% of black women supported Harris, close to 20% of black men voted for Trump. Latinos, who had supported Trump more than expected in 2016, increased their support for him in 2024, in part due to the performance of men under 45, who, like young Nlacks, believe that Trump will promote a more robust job market.
Trump also courted the Jewish vote by declaring that those who did not vote for him should be vetted, that Harris hates Israel and that only he can protect its interests. Predominantly Democratic voters, Jews overwhelmingly voted for Harris, although conservative sources say only 61 percent voted for her, progressive sources report 78 percent support for Harris.
Overall, a Trump victory in 2024 signals an electoral realignment, with much of the population shifting to the right, and away from socialist policies toward the individualism that has characterized U.S. history. The scapegoating of immigrants also brings to mind the nativist movement of the 1920s that resulted in the closure of the U.S. borders for 41 years.
