Main Reasons?

First, in an election this close, a few percent can change the result.  It’s true that if X factor gave Harris just 4% or so of the vote, she would have won – and that’s even more true when one considers that the election was really decided in just a few states (due to the electoral college, which is a whole topic in itself).  As a result, there are many factors that can give a *change in outcome*.  Sure, if X factor could make a difference in the outcome by making a tiny change like that, it would have changed the outcome – but I’ll ignore all of those.  Why? Because they aren’t big factors.  No, a few % won’t qualify as relevant in this discussion.  In addition to the reason just given, a difference of a few % could be measurement error too.  Instead, it seems that some factors account for large chunks of votes – well over 20% – without which the election wouldn’t even be close.

Everyone is Saying it – it must be true, right?

Here are several of the top reasons we’ve likely heard for Harris’ loss.  I’ve heard each of these from many different sources, both on the right and left.  Have you?  Multiple times?

“Reason” #1.  It’s the Economy, stupid.

This one is very common – that because the economy is horribly bad, people voted for Trump because he would improve the economy.
OK, let’s look at that.  First check – does that claim fit exit polls?  Here are the exit polls for the 2024 election (blue and red bars above).  We only need to look at the people who voted for Trump, because we are discussing why people voted for Trump (why he won).  So do the exit polls show that many Trump voters cited the economy as important?  The exit poll data is above, with the red bars showing the Trump voters.  The answer is very clear – yes, Trump voters very much do cite the bad economy as a main reason for voting for Trump, and the 80% who said so certainly passes my “more than a few % criteria”.  Check, right?

Poll Data taken in mid-2024 (Pew) showing party difference in views of the (actually good) economy

But hold on.  Importantly, what is the state of the economy itself?  Unemployment is the most direct and clearest measure of the state of the economy.  The unemployment rate is around 4%, and has been there or lower for literally a year before the election.  4% is a very low unemployment rate, and realistically can’t get much lower than that (for instance, people between jobs are counted as “unemployed”, which accounts for a lot of that 4%).  A 4% unemployment rate is a sign of a very good economy.  See the history at the left – “high” unemployment is something over 6%, and especially over 8%.  We are nowhere near that.  The unemployment rate shows a very *good* economy.

How about the stock market?  That has been at and near record highs for all of 2024, showing again a very good economy.  Gasoline prices have been low for all of 2024 – around $3.50 or lower – even though we hear republicans again and again complaining about high gasoline prices – even though any competent economist will remind us that the president doesn’t control gasoline prices anyway.  Inflation?  2.7%, not high at all.

All of these measures show that the economy is quite good in 2024, and that the line “the economy is horrible, so we need to vote Trump in to fix the economy” is a straight up lie.  It’s a double lie, of course, because not only is the economy not bad (it’s good), plus there is no reason that Trump (who promised tariffs, which will hurt the economy) would improve it.  The closest it could come to reality is to claim that because the economy was worse in 2022, shortly after Biden took office and started his administration (when inflation was ~8%), but of course then Trump isn’t needed to “fix” anything, because it’s already fixed (the same is true for gas prices).  And that’s of course not what we heard.  Republicans went on and on about how terrible the economy is *now*.  And the poll data (see at right) backs this up.  Republicans rated the economy as abysmal – with only 10% accurately stating that the economy is good.  At the same time, young democrats were also pessimistic about the economy (a big topic covered in Part II) – reflecting years of young pessimism (some of which is warranted to varying degrees).

So the real reason behind the “economy” is that Republican Propaganda worked

So the real reason behind the “economy” reason isn’t a bad actual economy – because that’s clearly false (and of course Trump can’t rescue a bad economy if it’s not bad in the first place).  Rather, the real reason here is that the Republican propaganda machine was *able to convince* dozens of millions of Americans – practically all of the right and a good chunk of the left – that the economy was abysmal and that Trump would make it good (both lies).  The fact that many on the right are Christian Nationalists who believe their leaders and have very little critical thinking ability left (because that’s what Christian churches’ main business model is) made this easier.

“Reason” #2. Violent Crime by Immigrants is an Increasing Threat to us all, and Trump will fix that

This one may be an even bigger theme than the Republican propaganda illusion that the economy is horrendous.

We hear it over and over, and see examples of the murders/rapes of white women by immigrants plastered all over the right wing channels, social media, and so on.  So again – first, are the commentators correct that this drove many Trump voters?  The exit poll data above shows a full 90% of Trump voters cited this reason, so that’s a definite “yes”.  Trump literally said that immigrants were eating people’s dogs and cats, on national television during the only debate with Harris, in addition to saying this over and over on the campaign trail (and Vance repeated that many times as well).

OK, now, as before, does this reason match reality?  Is there really a huge immigrant violent crime wave engulfing innocent Americans?  To start off – is there a violent crime wave (regardless who’s doing the criming)?  The answer there is clear:  No, crime is down.  There is of course some noise, but the overall trend is clear – crime, and especially violent crime, is way down, and has been for decades.  We are living in about the safest time to live in America that we’ve had reliable data, ever (see data at left).  But the right wing propaganda machine pumps out shrill stories about how bad crime is, some by cherry picking data (such as picking some location where crime is up a bit) or using other common ways to lie, most of them by simply making an emotional appeal.

And is most of that violent crime by immigrants? No.  Many studies show again and again that immigrants (illegal and legal) commit crimes, especially violent crimes, at rates lower than native born Americans.  For just one example – the data show that around 50 murders a year are committed by illegal immigrants.  For context, there are around 20,000 murders committed in the United States every year.   The numbers vary, and 19950/20000 = 99.7% of murders by people other than illegal immigrants (there are around 10 million illegal immigrants in the United States, or about 3% of the population).  So the “immigrant crime wave” claim is doubly false.

Trump’s constant alarmist fearmongering about immigrants, calling them “rapists”, “murderers”, “vermin”, “poisoning the blood of the country” and so on is both false and so transparently the same racist demonization that dictators have done for a long time.  We see yet again that it’s both factually false (yet more lies) and very harmful.  But it gets him votes because many dozens of Americans are racist enough to want their racism legitimized, making it even easier to fool them with the “immigrant crime wave” lie.

And of course, the whole “immigrants in Springfield Ohio are eating people’s dogs and cats!!” line repeated over and over by both Trump and Vance was of course a complete delusional fabrication.

So the real reason behind the “immigrants/crime” line is that Republican Propaganda worked

So again we see that the purported “reason” why people voted for Trump is simply false, and that it’s only a “reason” because the right wing propaganda machine has convinced dozens of millions of Americans that it’s true.  And again, the fact that many on the right are Christian Nationalists who believe their leaders and have very little critical thinking ability left (because that’s what Christian churches’ main business model is) made this easier.

“Reason” #3 Trump is “Authentic”

A common Trump supporter answer when asked “why do you support Trump” is “because he tells it like it is.”.  Like the reasons we saw above, this is completely detached from reality.  Trump lies much more than most people, and even much more than most politicians.  He tells more lies, and importantly, tells ludicrous lies – not just “stretching the truth” or exaggerating, but telling whoppers which are the complete opposite of reality – of the type used to undermine democracy, not just win elections.  And his followers eat it up.  They literally trust Trump more than they trust their own friends and family.  Anyone not in the cult can easily see the lies, and point them out – and the followers still believe the lie.  

So the real reason behind the “authentic” line is that the Propaganda worked

So again we see that the purported “reason” why people voted for Trump is simply false, and that it’s only a “reason” because the right wing propaganda machine has convinced dozens of millions of Americans that it’s true.  And again, the fact that many on the right are Christian Nationalists who believe their leaders and have very little critical thinking ability left (because that’s what Christian churches’ main business model is) made this easier.

“Reason” #4 is “Not Enough Women Voted for Harris”

Would Harris have won if enough additional women voted for her?  Of course.  But that’s a self-fulfilling claim.  Harris would have won if enough additional (any group) voted for her.  That’s literally what the word “enough” means.  In 2024, 53% of women voted for Harris, compared to 57% voting for Biden in 2024.  Even that (4/2 = 2%) would probably not have been enough for Harris to win (many other groups, such as Latino men, men under 40, etc., shifted towards Trump from 2020 to 2024), but even if it were, it’s a small shift, and not a main cause as we saw above.  Most importantly, any claim like this, where “Trump won because he got X votes from X group” is a tautology – it’s the same as saying” Trump won because Trump got more votes”, which tells us nothing we don’t already know.  So “reason” #4 isn’t a reason, it’s a result.  It’s just a word game to make you think that someone answered the question when they didn’t.  An actual reason would be to say *why* more these women voted for Trump – and we’ve already seen that, it’s the reasons #1, #2 and #3 above – all of which are because propaganda worked in convincing people of lies.

Other “reasons” in this category include “Trump won because he grew his support among Latinos”, “Trump won because he appealed to rural voters”, “Trump won because he expanded his base”, “Trump won because more white people voted”, “there was a ‘democrat cliff’ where fewer democrats voted” and many more that you’ve probably heard.  None of those are reasons.  Each of them is like saying that the reason it’s a hotter day today is because the temperature is higher today than yesterday.

The Common Thread Behind the Actual Reasons – The Right Wing Propaganda Machine

An election is a complicated event, and of course there are other factors involved (like significant sexism in America), but as stated at the beginning, this post is about big factors, not about factors causing a few percent of change.  Harris had many significant disadvantages (like the residual inflation after the pandemic) – and still got within a few percent of an older, white, Christian man (Biden) – so things like race and gender can’t be huge factors (and of course Obama won handily – twice!).

None of those are all that big.  We can see from the reasons 1, 2 and 3 above that the real reason behind them all is the effectiveness of the right wing propaganda machine.  That propaganda machine was able to get dozens of millions of Americans to believe complete lies (and ignore huge factors like a literal attempted coup on January 6th, the loss of a woman’s right to control her own body in 2021, and more), and is a huge factor – worth dozens of %s of the vote.  In so many more reasonable countries (like most of Europe), this election would not have been anywhere near even close.  The fact that this was a close contest at all shows how completely detached from reality, and how fully controlled, a very large chunk of the American population is.

As pointed out throughout this post, this is all because around half of the United States is easily controlled by the right-wing media.  Here’s a bunch of examples (at left) – a series of falsehoods pushed by the right wing media, and it’s not a surprise that those who believe these lies mostly get their news from right wing sources.

What is so different about America that has made it possible for right wing, corporate and oligarchic groups be able to control so many people to the point of getting them to believe open falsehoods?  A big factor has been the prominence of Christianity in America (a good, deep dive into this, based on evidence, is the book Fantasyland, by Andersen).  Other Western nations are not nearly so full of Christian believers as is the United States – and it’s no coincidence that the current authoritarian, theocratic takeover here is happening in the United States.  Christianity grooms it’s members to believe what the leaders say, to shut down critical thinking, and to follow under a threat of punishment – along with other hallmarks of authoritarianism.  We can’t be surprised that their politics matches what they are taught every Sunday, and what they learn from the time they are children in Sunday School.

The threat to democracy, to our ability to get information, and to make rational decisions is under severe threat, and it’s not at all clear that any of those will survive the next four years.  Part II will look at a possibly unexpected role of the political left in this, how so much of this is based on information control and gullibility, and in our vital, if small, role in our hope to turn things around.