How did a politician whose enemies continually associate him with white nationalism and male chauvinism manage to achieve a slam dunk victory in the US presidential election, building a growing coalition of non-white voters, while his opponent – a mixed-race woman – not only lost such voters but only won over a diminishing number of women?
How did Donald Trump do it and what did Kamala Harris get wrong?
For starters, the Left made the mistake – as it keeps making – of assuming non-white voters line up uniformly behind left-leaning policies.
This simply is not true. People of colour are not some unform group with the same agendas and needs. Even if many ethnic minorities in Western countries are the beneficiaries of left-of-centre economic policies (and even this is debatable) it is just as true that non-white people tend to be more socially conservative than whites, especially on issues like religion and family.
Trump – or at least his team – understood this better, and also realised voters will not simply back someone who looks like them solely because they look like them.
This can only be a good thing, and – as seen with the recent election of a black woman, Kemi Badenoch, as Tory leader – suggests voters actually care far less about race and gender than character and values.
Which leads on to a wider point about issues. US voters were never going to cast a vote based on nebulous concerns about democracy, while even the issue of abortion was probably over-emphasised by the Left.
Instead, bread and butter issues like the economy, crime, and immigration were forefront of voters’ minds, and on all three – whatever other misgivings they had – a larger number of voters saw Trump as the stronger guy.
To be fair to Harris it didn’t help that she was tainted with the last four years. Moreover, in constantly emphasising her race and gender, her team gave off the impression that her values and character were less important, and that her selection was more a diversity pick than anything else.
But voters who worry about jobs, inflation and security haven’t got time to worry about these things. They need to know their leaders will win for them on the gut issues, not simply “represent” for them while achieving little else.
For what it’s worth, I am minded to think the Dems can come back from this. US demographics still trend in their favour (less white, more secular, more urban, more college-educated) and, with a better candidate, Trump could well have lost.
I suspect non-white and female voters will still trend towards the Democrats. But in taking these voters for granted, and only celebrating diversity when one of their own is smashing the glass-ceiling (note the muted reaction to Badenoch’s victory), the Left may have sealed its own fate.
The diversity question must now be part of the Democrats’ post-mortem. Did they take voters for granted? Did they really pick the right candidate? Did they ignore the gut issues? Unless the Dems want to lose to a future President Vance in 2028 they need to start asking these questions pronto.
