NEW NORMALS: What explains the outcome of the campaign?

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2024

Great American Novels gone wild: When it comes to the nationwide popular vote, how large will Candidate Trump's victory margin be?

At present, we can't say. As of this morning, we still have counting of votes—but this is where the numbers currently stand:

Nationwide popular vote (to date), 2024
Candidate Trump: 73,407,735 (50.7%)
Candidate Harris: 69,074,145 votes (47.7%)
Turnout: At present, unknown

At present, the candidate's victory margin is three points. 

As we noted yesterday, Ezra Klein has estimated that the margin may end up at 1.5 points. We'll go ahead and take a guess, placing it at two points.

Among the votes which have been counted, the winning candidate received slightly more than half the total vote—slightly more than half the votes from the people who chose to vote.

He received none of the votes from the people who didn't vote. For the record, this is roughly the way the nationwide vote ended four years ago:

Nationwide popular vote, 2020
Candidate Biden: 81,283,501 (51.3%)
Candidate Trump: 74,223,975 (46.8%)
Turnout: 66.6%

As far as we know, California has finished counting its votes from that election. For the record, that turnout number suggests that something approaching 80 million people who were eligible to vote didn't turn out to vote that year. 

They didn't vote for Candidate Biden or for Candidate Trump. If you score them as voting for Candidate Neither, it can almost seem that Candidate Neither ran quite well that year!

These are some of the basic numbers from the last two White House elections. As a general matter, a lot of Americans turn out to vote, but it's also true that tens of millions of Americans don't.

Our elections involve large numbers of Americans! That said, nothing can match the volume of Great American Novels which swiftly appear in the wake of our presidential campaigns. That's especially true in a year like this, when the campaign was especially fraught and its outcome has struck many people as shocking.

According to some of our favorite experts, there is no cure for what happens when we start writing our novels. For one example of such a novel, we'll offer comments by a pair of readers at a Blue American blog.

A bit sardonically, the author of the blog post in question had offered a lengthy list of reasons—a list of reasons which have already been offered as explanations for the one candidate's loss. 

As best we can tell, the blogger was being a bit sardonic. That said, why did Candidate Harris fall short? The commenters offered this:

COMMENTER (11/7/24): Occam's razor: America wanted DJT. That's who we are as a people. It's depressing, but it's the simplest hypothesis that fits all the facts.

This one's on us, folks.

COMMENTER IN RESPONSE: Apparently, he got more than 50% of the vote. Every single day he showed us exactly who he is. No punches pulled. Thus, you are right. A bitter pill to swallow.

It's "a bitter pill to swallow." Is it one we're inclined to gulp?

"America" wanted Trump, the first commenter said. It's "who we are as a people."

Is it true that "America" wanted Trump? It's certainly true that many Americans went out and voted for Candidate Trump as opposed to Candidate Harris. 

(Some of them may have wanted something better. But that's who they voted for.)

We voted for Candidate Harris ourselves. So did almost half the people who turned out to vote.

That first commenter was writing a novel—a dystopian novel at that. He or she produced the screenplay for a political horror film. A third commenter offered this in response to the original comment:

COMMENTER IN RESPONSE: Among those people who did vote, "this is who we are as a people" by an eventual margin of maybe two percent.

Trump beat Harris by maybe two points. Is that "who we are as a people?" 

In all honesty, the formulation makes little sense—leads us away from clarity in the direction of horror. But according to experts, this is very much the way we humans, as a species, are wired to respond to important events of this type.

It isn't anyone's fault, these experts say. On balance, it's just the way we're built!

On balance, we humans aren't exactly "the rational animal." To a greater extent, we're the animal which is inclined to construct enormously simplified novels to explain major events.

As a species, we humans are inclined to construct simple stories about major events which take place in the world. On this very Friday morning, those novels are appearing all over the web site of the New York Times. 

These novels aren't coming from commenters jotting quick reactions at a blog. They're coming from journalistic mental giants who often went to the finest schools!

The author of one of these novels is nine years out of college (St. John's, class of 2015). His novel appears on the front page of this morning's print editions—but does this really make sense? 

CAMPAIGN NOTEBOOK
How Trump Connected With So Many Americans

The forces that propelled President-elect Donald J. Trump to victory will be endlessly analyzed. Many Americans woke up on Wednesday morning shocked that he could win again. But there is no doubt about one thing: Mr. Trump was a ferociously effective campaigner.

To watch him up close on this third run for president was to see him blend comedy, fury, optimism, darkness and cynicism like never before. He was an expert communicator, able to transmute legal and mortal peril to build upon his self mythology. He won new supporters and kept old ones in thrall.

At dozens of events, I watched as he connected with all sorts of people in all sorts of places...

That's the way the novel started. Our question:

Does this sudden new assessment—the candidate was "an expert communicator," we're suddenly being told—actually make good sense?

Nationwide, the candidate won by two points against a relatively little-known candidate who was thrown into the race very late in the game. Does a person have to be "an expert communicator" to achieve a two-point win in that unusual circumstance?

A second novel appears on the front page of today's print editions. That novel has a different theme—but does this novel make sense?

NEWS ANALYSIS
For Black Women, ‘America Has Revealed to Us Her True Self’

From the moment Kamala Harris entered the presidential race, Black women could see the mountaintop.

Across the country, they led an outpouring of Democratic elation when the vice president took over the top of the presidential ticket. But underneath their hope and determination was a persistent worry: Was America ready, they asked, to elect a Black woman?

The painful answer arrived this week.

It affirmed the worst of what many Black women believed about their country: that it would rather choose a man who was convicted of 34 felonies, has spewed lies and falsehoods, disparaged women and people of color, and pledged to use the powers of the federal government to punish his political opponents than send a woman of color to the White House.

[...]

“This isn’t a loss for Black women, it’s a loss for the country,” said Waikinya Clanton, the founder of the organizing group Black Women for Kamala. “America has revealed to us her true self,” she added, “and we have to decide what we do with her from here.”

As with the comment to the blog post, so too here. According to this presentation, "America" has revealed "her true self," and what she's revealed isn't good.

This novel is pleasingly simplified. That said, to what extent foes this "news analysis" hold up?

Needless to say, it's true! By a margin which may end up at less than two points, Americans who turned out to vote favored the one candidate over the other.  But as to why those (tens of millions of) people made that particular choice, this novel seems to have settled on One Possible Reason Only. 

Meanwhile, our favorite novel of the many appears in today's Letters section. According to experts, this novel turns on a formulation which is very common among us humans:

To the Editor:

If the results of this election teach us anything, it’s that American voters of all demographics consistently vote against their own interests. Tens of millions of women just voted for the candidate who is likely to remove their fundamental rights. Arab Americans favored the candidate who used executive orders to bar Muslims and Middle Eastern refugees from entering the country. Latino men voted for the candidate who tried to build a literal wall to keep people just like them out.

Do these voters not think that the pendulum of misogyny, racism and bigotry so readily wielded by their candidate of choice and his followers won’t soon come swinging for them?

There are many reasons for this electoral outcome, but one thing is certain: Americans no longer vote based on policies or principles. Instead, they vote for the person who promises them what they want to hear—even when he consistently, and remarkably, does the exact opposite.

G— D— / Detroit

According to this particular novel, we now seem to have learned that "American voters of all demographics consistently vote against their own interests." 

More precisely, we seem to have learned that "American voters of all demographics consistently vote against their own interests" as those interests are understood by people like the letter writer.  

Meanwhile, one thing is certain, this Michigan novelist says:

"Americans"—presumably, every American but him—"no longer vote based on policies or principles." If someone based his vote on years of unexplained chaos at the southern border, that American wasn't basing his vote on policy.  He simply voted for the candidate who said what he wanted to hear!

For the record, this last novel has been quite common here in Blue America. Experts say that we humans are fundamentally wired to see the world in such ways.

There's no cure for any of this, these experts all insist. But they also stress this important point:

When we humans create such novels, that doesn't mean we're bad people. It simply means that we're people people, these experts hotly insist.

Next week, we expect to review some sober assessments of why the Blue candidate lost—why she lost by a margin which may end up at something less than two points. With that, we reach a final point:

Regarding these novels, those experts say this:

Their production is very much an old normal. There's nothing new about this impulse. It dates back trillions of years!