Milk and eggs, meat and potatoes

Just like his win in 2016, Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election has taken many experts by surprise and spawned a flurry of post-election analyses. One of the more salient aspects of this election has to do with how the candidates fared among men and women—especially along the lines of different kinds of households. Trump’s detractors emphasized his characterization and treatment of women and, in some cases, sought to pit men and women against each other. Progressives even counseled married women whose husbands were Trump supporters to hide their affinities for Vice President Kamala Harris.

The actual turnout for Trump and Harris cut against such efforts and a narrative of a war between the sexes. There was a gender gap in Trump’s constituency. According to The Wall Street Journal, 54% of men favored Trump, while 46% of women supported him, a 3 percentage point improvement over his previous performance in 2020 in both cases. There was a 9 point gap in the support for Harris, with women at 53% and men at 44%, both of which were 2 points off of President Joe Biden’s 2020 levels. As the Financial Times reports, Trump saw gains among every demographic except for those 65 years old and older and among white college-educated women, groups where the movement was (minimally) negative.

As Brad Wilcox at the Institute for Family Studies has noted, the gender gap is mirrored by a marriage gap between supporters of the candidates. Among married couples (according to the WSJ data), Trump enjoyed a 10 point advantage (54% to 44%), while among never-married singles Harris was favored by 18 points (58% to 40%). But with married couples forming more than 52% of the share of families (compared with 28% for those who have never married), Trump’s double-digit gap was a significant factor in his win. According to some exit polls, Trump won among married women (NBC News has the difference at 51% to 48%) and was significantly favored by married men (60% to 38%).

Against much of the prevailing wisdom of the mainstream media and progressives, Trump did better among women than in his two previous elections and continued to hold a strong advantage over Democrats among married households, including married women.

But what explains the seeming dissonance between progressive attacks on Trump and his performance along sex and family structure demographics?

There are good reasons to think that some commonsense embrace of reality drove such support for Trump over Harris. A notable Trump media blitz focused on Harris’ support for government-funded gender reassignment surgery for prison inmates and concluded with the memorable tagline: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” This was always going to be a losing issue for Harris. But as much as the Harris campaign also tried to sexualize the campaign along the lines of abortion access and constant invocation of a “Trump abortion ban,” more mundane matters much closer to home undoubtedly drove increased levels of support and energy for Donald Trump.

As Annie Lowrey of The Atlantic summarizes, “In poll after poll, focus group after focus group, Americans said the economy was bad—and the economy was bad because prices were too high.” In addition to his relative sanity about gender identity, the basic calculus of the household budget helps explain Trump’s favorability among married households and families with children. This presidential election has ended up being more about the cost of milk and eggs and meat and potatoes than about the attractiveness of progressive identity politics. The “economy and jobs” was almost twice as important for voters than the next most pressing issue (immigration) and more than three to four times more significant than issues like abortion, healthcare, and climate change.

Vice President Harris’ short campaign tried to distance itself from the economic record of the Biden-Harris administration but failed to do so effectively, and this as much or more than anything else helps explain Donald Trump’s remarkable victory.

America has avoided the curse of “Kamalanomics,” thanks in large part to the wisdom of those responsible for balancing family budgets and paying household bills. It is now up to President-elect Trump and his incoming administration to successfully tackle the thorny challenges of the national debt, rising prices, and economic stagnation. The voters have chosen Donald Trump over Kamala Harris, and we can hope and pray that they have made the right call to restore economic responsibility to the White House.