Yoopya with The Conversation
This is a rolling guide to articles and audio published by The Conversation in the aftermath of the US presidential election.
The United States has made its choice. At just before 8am GMT (3am Florida time) Donald Trump took to the stage at the West Palm Beach convention center and claimed victory for the Republican Party. His declaration came minutes after it was announced he was going to win in the key state of Pennsylvania with its 19 electoral college votes.
He thanked a large crowd of his adoring supporters, saying: “This was a movement like nobody’s ever seen before, and frankly, this was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time. There’s never been anything like this in this country, and maybe beyond.”
It’s been a turbulent four months since outgoing president Joe Biden announced he was terminating his bid for a second term and the battlelines between the two candidates, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris were drawn. Soon we will know who will lead the US for the next four years.
From here, with the help of some of the sharpest analysts of US politics, we’ll keep you updated and informed as the situation develops.
The US has moved to the right
Natasha Lindstaedt says that academics and pundits read the polls (which were broadly right) badly.
The polls were right – he had a lot more strength [than we all thought]. We thought the polls were seriously underestimating Kamala Harris and that she was doing far better than they were predicting, when they said it was a knife edge. But it turns out they were underestimating Trump.
The US has moved to the right. The abortion bill wasn’t overturned in Florida, Ted Cruz won by ten points in Texas, a state that we thought might be competitive. We thought with this Iowa poll that Harris might be more competitive with white voters. It’s been a great night for Trump and an absolute disaster for the Democrats.
She said that many people following the campaign thought that women were going to turn out and that would make the difference. But in fact it didn’t.
Trump gained a lot more than he had in 2020 – probably due to nostalgia of what his administration was like, looking at it through rose-coloured glasses, forgetting the chaos and all the upheaval he created himself. Now he’s going to inherit a great economy – and he’s going to take credit for it.
Trump’s ground game in Georgia
Donald Trump declared victory after a string of wins in the crucial swing states of North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania. Katie Pruszynski of the University of Sheffield believes that Trump was given the edge in this state by promoting early voting.
Georgia had a record 4 million early voters in the state, which has really outstripped all previous early voting records here. It’s likely because of the really increased ground game that the Republicans were operating in Georgia, really encouraging their voters to get out and vote early using mail-in ballots, which they previously said were not trustworthy.
But that doesn’t mean the polls were quiet, says Katie, who was on the ground in Georgia over the election.
Polling stations had lines forming from 7am when the polls opened. It was a really bustling polling day. In Atlanta, the big news was that several polling stations had to be evacuated throughout the course of the day because of bomb threats that also hit states like Arizona as well. Those bomb threats turned out to be not credible.
Turnout high and voting peaceful
Dafydd Townley, teaching fellow in international security at University of Portsmouth, has written an overview of how the election went down, with turnout looking high and no major incidents of violence, despite what look like numerous bomb hoaxes with possible Russian origins.
Turnout has been impressive and initial speculation is that Trump has surpassed his rural support from 2020 while Democrat Kamala Harris only matched the suburban numbers that Biden achieved four years ago. NBC exit polls also showed Trump had more support from voters under 30 than any Republican candidate since 2008.
…
The greatest threat to the smooth running of the election on polling day seemed not to come from domestic perpetrators but from foreign interference, particularly in the crucial swing state races.
Several polling stations in Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin were the victims of hoax bomb threats that caused temporary closures of the sites. The threats were believed to be sent by emails that were traced back to Russian email domains.
What it means for the rest of the world
Donald Trump is likely to put pressure on Nato members to support the end of the war in Ukraine, according to international security expert Stefan Wolff. He expects Trump to push Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky to sit down and negotiate a peace agreement based on the current frontlines, meanwhile throwing support behind Israel.
Trump’s election will embolden Netanyahu to act. And this in turn would also strengthen Trump’s position towards Putin, who has come to depend on Iranian support for his war in Ukraine. Trump could offer to restrain Netanyahu in the future as a bargaining chip with Putin in his gamble to secure a deal on Ukraine.
Wolff adds that Trump may double down on his approach to China but also leave himself wiggle room.
A Trump White House is likely to increase import tariffs, and he has talked a great deal about using them to target China. But Trump is also just as likely to be open to pragmatic, transactional deals with Chinese president Xi Jinping.
Questions for Europe
Amelia Hadfield, head of politics at the University of Surrey, sets out some of the other key issues for Europe following Trump’s victory.
European governments obviously are going to be tripping over themselves, either preparing for what the impact is going to be of a retribution-led Trump administration, or changing really quickly their approach to him to be able to try at least to get him on side.
One point, of course, is the previous tough talk in the first presidential administration on Nato. He threatened then, and I think he may very well threaten again to curtail American support and positioning for the military alliance because he has a completely different vision of what underpins European security as a whole, and a totally different vision of what encompasses allies and threats.
She also says that some countries, particularly big automotive export countries like Germany, are very vulnerable to Trump’s proposed economic policies.
He has, of course, proposed hitting China with 50% tariffs and then tariffs on all other imports of up to 20%, including for European countries. So they’re going to have to not only deal with that, but figure out whether they line up behind America on that, or whether they line up behind China on that as well.
I think there’s going to be desperate sadness across Europe. The heads of state, apart from maybe Orban, who seems to be gloating right now, are really going to have to get their ducks in a row.
How race has played into the campaign
Rhianna Garrett, PhD researcher and global coordinator of the critical mixed race studies executive board at Loughborough University, says that Trump’s campaign has been “littered with attempts to weaponise” the multiracial heritage of his Democrat opponent Kamala Harris.
Much of this has been a dog-whistle attempt to stir up his own base, partly with fairly blatant appeals to latent feelings of racism, but also as a tool to position Harris as deceiving and untrustworthy by apparently blurring and shifting her own background.
In August, not long after Harris took over the Democrat ticket from Biden, Trump appeared at the National Association of Black Journalists conference when he wrongfully claimed that Harris was changing her identity, stating: “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black, So I don’t know. Is she Indian or is she Black?”.
For her part, Harris’s campaign has also used her multiracial heritage to further their political agendas. On the White House website, she is described as “the first woman, the first Black American, and the first South Asian American” to hold a vice-presidential position, which has effectively attempted to position her as a winner. Harris herself has also foregrounded “race” on her campaign website. In attempt to attack Trump’s campaign, she strategically aims to promote Black and Latino men specifically, as well as women’s rights. These are key voter groups she has aimed to mobilise through identity politics.
Trump and winning male voters
Donald Trump widened his appeal to male voters in this election, with polling indicating that he was picking up more support from Black and Latino men, as well as more young men more widely.
One reason for this may be that in 2024 young men are more conservative than any other group in the US. Another reason why gender has become a divisive issue is the overturning of Roe v Wade, the legal case that gave American women abortion rights.
Read more on the gender divide in this article from Natasha Lindstaedt, a professor of government at Essex University.
A free speech campaign?
Julie Posetti, professor of journalism at City St George’s, University of London, and global director of research at the International Center for Journalists, recently conducted a survey of more than 1,000 Americans on their attitudes to the press.
Breaking down the results, they were able to build a picture of what people in the US think of targeting journalists for criticism and even abuse. You can read all about the study here.
Authors:
Jonathan Este | Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor
Rachael Jolley | International Affairs Editor
Sam Phelps | Commissioning Editor, International Affairs