Clinching a comeback

Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned on the theme of change, promising to “chart a new way forward” in American politics. On Tuesday, a majority of American voters said what they really wanted was to find their way back to how things were before the Biden administration.

Former President Donald Trump stood poised Wednesday to become the second U.S. president to win a nonconsecutive second term, clinching his presumptive victory with wins in swing states such as Georgia and Pennsylvania.

In a victory speech from West Palm Beach, Fla., in the early hours of Wednesday morning, former President Donald Trump, now the presumptive president-elect, thanked supporters for backing his comeback.

“I think this is, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time,” he said. “There’s never been anything like this in this country, And now it’s going to reach a new level of importance, because we’re going to help our country heal.”

Trump secured a path to 270 electoral votes not only with his political messaging but also by embracing early and mail-in voting, gleaning support from traditionally Democratic blocs, and stoking voter enthusiasm.

The former president performed well in key counties across battleground states. Pennsylvania’s 2020 results largely relied on Bucks County, just north of Philadelphia, where Trump lost by 4 percentage points. On Tuesday night, Trump became the first Republican to win it since 1988. In urban areas of Detroit and Atlanta, the GOP made inroads with young men, Hispanic, and black voters. Across the country, the Republican strategy of boosting early turnout appeared to challenge the narrative that early votes favor Democrats. Roughly 78 million ballots were cast before Tuesday, either in person or by mail. While the total number is lower than 2020 levels, the shares between Republicans and Democrats evened out this year. A study from Catalist, a data company that serves Democrats, found that across 27 states, registered Republicans cast 35% of early ballots compared to Democrats’ 37%. In North Carolina, Republicans accounted for 33% of early votes compared to 32% from Democrats. While the nation awaits official vote counts, Duke University professor John Aldrich says the strategy helped the GOP this year.

“They’ve had four years to reflect and adjust, and they’ve decided that it’s a really good thing to get as many votes as early as possible,” Aldrich told WORLD. “So it’s basically a matching strategy, a catch-up.”

Early indications point that Trump was more popular this year than in 2020 among working-class voters, Hispanic voters, suburban women, young adults, and even pro-abortion voters.

“Even starting in early voting, voter enthusiasm on the Republican side exceeded voter enthusiasm on the Democrat side largely because Republican voters could say why they liked Donald Trump,” Ohio-based political consultant Mark Weaver told WORLD. “But voters couldn’t give several reasons why they liked Kamala Harris. All they could do is give reasons why they hated Donald Trump. And that’s not enough to sustain the kind of enthusiasm you need to turn out your base.”

In Georgia, first-time voter Miles Chambers told WORLD that he worried about Trump’s return to power.

“It’s just a personal thing,” Chambers said. “He was a good president to me in the first election, but he went off the end there towards the end.”

When asked why he cast his vote for Harris, Chambers pointed to character, not policy: “Maybe just her personality. She tries a little too hard, but that’s about it. It’s not any actual political things in my opinion.”

The enthusiasm crossed racial lines, as well. In Georgia and North Carolina, early AP Votecast exit polls found roughly 20% of black men in both states voted for Trump. That’s up from only 11% in 2020.

Often in presidential elections, Americans shift their support from the party in power in the White House to the opposite. This year has been anything but typical. Trump is a former president, or “shadow incumbent.”

“I would like to see change,” Georgia voter Stephanie Burkhart told WORLD as she left the polls. “I don’t think you can do that with the incumbent. The economy is my main priority.”

Adding to the strangeness of this election year, Harris has fewer than six months to whip together a national campaign. But would more time have translated to more enthusiasm from voters? Aldrich from Duke University said maybe.

“I think she did pretty well under the circumstances to have an OK campaign,” Aldrich said. “We know who she is, and that’s what we got. … Had Harris had the four months in 2023 to plan how she was going to try to win the nomination, and then all this time to try to figure out how she would win the general election, she would have defined herself much differently.”

Weaver said Harris was too close to the Biden administration to persuade voters.

“In a fairly normal year, we expect presidents to be reelected, except when the economy is bad, the world is at war, and Americans say the country’s on the wrong track,” Weaver said. “All three of those things have been present in this cycle, and swapping out Biden for Harris was not enough to change the natural tide of a change election towards the change candidate.”