Republican candidate Donald Trump swept the United States presidential election on November 5, winning about 76.4 million votes (2.7 million more than Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ 73.7 million).
It is the first time a Republican has won the popular vote since George W Bush in 2005.
Trump also won the undemocratic but decisive Electoral College, by 312 to 226. He lost the popular vote in 2016 but won the Electoral College.
The Republicans also won control of the Senate, with 53 seats out of 100. At the time of publication, the Republicans had 218 seats in the House, compared to 212 for the Democratic Party, and had won 27 gubernatorial contests compared with 23 for the Democrats, according to the Associated Press.
Trump won most white voters, including white workers and women. This is not surprising, since no Democratic presidential candidate has won among whites since the party supported the Voting Rights Act, which gave Blacks in the South the right to vote in the mid-1960s.
There was also no significantly greater gender gap by historical standards, despite predictions.
Cost of living
The main issue deciding the outcome was the economy. While times have been very good for the billionaires, millionaires and upper-middle class, the overwhelming majority have been worse off, due to high inflation not being matched by wage rises during the Biden-Harris administration.
Most working people have seen big price rises at the grocery store for housing and most essential goods and services. This is what they know and feel in their everyday lives, not the dry statistics of the gross domestic product.
Harris offered nothing different from the Biden administration on the economy, while Trump just said people were better off during his first administration.
Trump also appealed to workers by promising he would repeal taxes on social security payments.
Most voters considered the economy more important than Trump’s racism, sexism and right-wing rhetoric, whether they agreed with him or not.
This was probably a factor in the 45% of Latino voters who chose Trump.
Twenty-one percent of Black male voters supported Trump — a 9% jump from more than four years ago. Seven percent of Black women voters supported him.
Harris and the Democrats claimed that the key issue at stake in the election was “democracy”, making vague arguments about the threat of a Trump victory. However, there is no indication that most of the ruling capitalist class wants or needs a dictatorship that overthrows Congress.
Since the election, the Democrats have dropped this charge.
Trump would probably like to be a dictator. He presents himself as the strong man who will set the country right. He demands total loyalty from his ever-changing associates in government and in the state administration. He is an authoritarian, and during his election campaign made many threats to make a clean sweep of those who opposed him, whom he called “the enemies from within”.
Trump’s hardcore base is white racists of all classes. He is a racist and has been all his life — but that has been true for most US presidents, including Democrats. What makes Trump stand out is his open racism. He made his opposition to migrants from Central America known from the start when he first announced he would run for president in 2016. He once mused: “Why aren’t there immigrants from Norway?”.
In any case, with this new Congress, he will have great leeway in making policy.
Democrats
Another aspect of Harris’s defeat was that she turned her back on what was considered the Democrats’ base. For example, she lost support from many voters — a majority of the population — who oppose Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinians, when she gave full support to that war.
It was no surprise that she lost in Michigan, where a large Arab population resides.
Biden and Harris led the harsh crackdown on campus students who oppose Israel’s war.
Harris would have been the first woman, Black and Asian president, if she had won. However, she didn’t say much about related issues, except on abortion. She also adopted much of Trump’s anti-immigrant policy as her own, with only cosmetic differences.
In general, Harris moved to the right, hoping to appeal to Republicans opposed to Trump. She consciously appealed to conservative and right-wing Republicans like former congresswoman Liz Cheney and her father, the warmonger Dick Cheney. But this had little effect on winning Republican voters to her side.
According to the University of Florida Election Lab’s figures as at November 15, voter turnout this year was 64%, compared with the historic 66% turnout in the 2020 election, when mail-in and early voting were expanded due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nearly 89 million eligible voters stayed home this time, compared to about 81 million voters in 2020, when Biden won.
This reflects that many were against Harris and Trump, and while many voters don’t like Trump, they don’t see Harris as an alternative. This hurt Harris’ vote. Before the election, some pro-Democrat writers in the mainstream media sensed this and pleaded for people to vote for Harris as the “lesser evil”.
One issue that separated Trump from the Democrats is his opposition to the US’s “forever” wars. He is critical of the US-NATO war aims in Ukraine, which, according to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, are to “weaken Russia”. Trump wants the Ukraine war settled.
Most Americans are also opposed to these “forever wars”, including the disastrous US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq launched in 2001.
Abortion
On reproductive rights, Harris and the Democrats judged they had an edge for supporting abortion. Ten states held referenda on abortion rights during the election. Of these, seven succeeded.
In Arizona, the Abortion Access Act passed, which says every woman has a “fundamental right” to access abortion before “viability” (about 24 weeks). The vote was 62% for and 38% against.
In Colorado, the right to abortion was added to the state’s constitution, and public funding for abortion allowed, by a vote of 61% to 39%. In Maryland, a constitutional amendment in support of abortion was passed by 74% to 26%. In Montana, a pro-abortion constitutional amendment passed by 57% to 43%. In Missouri, a pro-abortion constitutional amendment passed by 52% to 48%.
In Nevada, a pro-abortion constitutional amendment passed by 63% to 37%, but there will be a new vote in 2026.
In New York, abortion is already legal but was codified in the state’s constitution by 63% to 37%.
In Florida, a law affirming the right to abortion was supported by 57% of voters, despite a vicious campaign against it using state funds by arch-reactionary governor Ron DeSantis. However, the referendum failed because it failed to reach the necessary 60% “super majority” threshold.
In Nebraska, a constitutional amendment for abortion rights also failed. Instead, an amendment against abortion rights — deliberately misleadingly named “Protect Women and Children” — passed.
In South Dakota, a pro-abortion rights referendum failed, 39% for and 61% against.
Trump won in all these states, except New York and Maryland, indicating many supporters of abortion rights also voted for Trump.
Challenges ahead
The capitalist ruling class faces a weakened working class. Unionisation is at less than 11% and as low as 6% for private sector industrial workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The independent Black, Brown, Asian and women’s movements are weak. There is no mass workers party, even a reformist one.
As Trump’s inauguration gets closer, his agenda is becoming more concrete on the environment (“drill baby, drill!”), immigration and affirmative action. He will use his presidential authority to rule by executive order. Anti-worker laws give him the right to intercede in any strike in the name of “national security”.
Trump says he will restructure the executive branch and abolish many positive regulations won by mass actions, and diminish or abolish agencies that are charged with carrying them out.
Responding to Trump’s attacks will require mass struggle, not looking to the Democrats for answers.
Mass action is the only road towards rebuilding the union movement and organisations of Black people, women and the oppressed that are independent of ruling class interests and the parties that serve them. A key challenge today is building a mass working-class party championing all the oppressed and exploited as part of the struggle for a socialist future.