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.
Campaign strategy
Trump pursued a strategy that did not seek to expand support significantly beyond his traditional base, says Todd Landman, professor of political science at the University of Nottingham. Instead he successfully energised and mobilised new voters within his core demographic – especially young male voters, who turned out in huge numbers.
Delivered in Trump’s characteristically strong and idiosyncratic language, his campaign ranged across social and economic issues, such as the cost of living and immigration, as well as pressing foreign policy issues, including the future of Nato, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and international trade – especially with China.
For their part, Democrats will need a serious postmortem, Todd believes.
The party leadership will need to engage in some serious soul-searching on how they failed to appeal to the electorate and how bread and butter issues ultimately propelled Trump back into power. Harris had 107 days to forge a campaign.
Read more: How Donald Trump won back the keys to the White House
Role of the youth vote
Young people in the US have been voting emphatically for Democratic candidates over the past 20 years, says Professor James Sloam of Royal Holloway University of London. But the election last night was a bit of a surprise when it came to this demographic.
Americans under the age of 30 were still the group most likely to support Harris – they did so by 8 points compared to Trump, so 52% to 44%. However, her lead among this group shrank massively from Biden’s lead of 25 points four years ago. In real terms, that’s an astonishing decline in the vote.
Harris actually scored lower among young women than Biden, down from 65% in 2020 to 58% this year, and much poorer among young men, from 56% to 43%, with Trump enjoying an 11-point lead in this group. The figures are even higher among young men who are white and non-college educated, which is exactly the group of young people that I have been identifying in my work.
James believes that, while there are long-term reasons for these trends, Harris simply did not do enough to court the youth vote.
The Harris campaign offered very little to young people in general on the economy and the cost of living – all it did offer was the issue of abortion. This is certainly an important issue for most people, but the focus on one issue may even have exacerbated the exodus of some young men, marking it out as a campaign that was being run by a woman for women.
Trump took advantage of this with his various appearances on talk shows and podcasts, talking about sport and appealing to this form of toxic masculinity that would be present in this group of young people. So, overall, Trump’s message and campaign to appeal to young male voters succeeded much better than most experts expected.
Trump’s second presidency and democracy
With Trump expected to try and concentrate more power into the presidency, what is the next step, asks Natasha Lindstaedt of Essex University.
The state will be hollowed out and increasingly more ineffective, unable or unwilling to deliver key services, like disaster aid. While this may seem harmless to some, Trump will undercut the expertise of executive agencies either by under-funding them or filling them with loyalists.
Plans are in the works to fire 50,000 career civil servants. Hundreds of important regulations that ensure that there is clean air and water, which protect citizens from corporate greed, are likely to be rolled back.
Read more: What Trump might do in his second presidency and what it could mean for democracy
Who voted for Donald Trump?
Trump’s political comeback is complete. But who, aside from young men, voted for him? Thomas Gift, an expert of US politics at University College London, says Trump was able to win the support of many voters outside of his core supporter base.
Well Trump, of course, was able to get his core base of MAGA supporters to back him and that is white, working-class Americans who have largely become disillusioned with the political status quo. At the same time, he was also able to make significant inroads with diverse constituencies, including Latinos and blacks.
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.
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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.
Read more: Trump regains US presidency – how the election played out
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.
Read more: What Trump's victory means for Ukraine, the Middle East, China and the rest of the world
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.
Economic consequences
Trump’s presidency could have economic ramifications beyond Europe, according to economist Conor O'Kane. He says prices for American consumers could be pushed up.
In very traditional Republican terms, he’s talking about tax breaks and reduced regulation. In terms of some of his specific pledges on the economy, he’s talking about getting rid of income taxation on tips and overtime. These things combined have the potential to be quite domestically inflationary, I would say.
If he was to carry through on his pledge to deport 15 million migrants, that’s also potentially an enormous cost – I saw some figures recently that said it will cost [the US economy] about US$65 billion for every 2 million people that are expelled out of the country.
He also said that Trump’s economic policies have the potential to be extremely disruptive for the world economy.
The other key thing, I think, is that Trump’s argument that the president should have a greater say on interest rate policy might spook capital markets. Many central banks around the world have independent control of monetary policy, and that has all been done to reassure capital markets and international investors. I would say that moving away from that is potentially quite risky.
However, senior economics lecturer Renaud Foucart argues that Trump’s threat to introduce more tariffs on goods coming into the US is in some ways a continuation of Biden’s approach, and the problems in the global economy go far beyond Trump’s protectionism.
China, after decades of mostly export-based growth, must now deal with massive problems of industrial overcapacity. The country is now trying to encourage more domestic consumption and to diversify its trading partners.
Europe, despite a very tight budget constraint, spends a lot of money in the subsidy race … All those subsidies are hurting the world economy and could have easily financed urgent needs such as the electrification of the entire African continent with solar panels and batteries.
Read more: How the Trump presidency might change the global economy
Gender and voting patterns
Meredith Ralston, professor of women’s studies and political studies, Mount Saint Vincent University, Canada, is concerned about further erosion of women’s rights in the US.
Even though exit polls suggested a majority of women cast their ballots for Harris. Women apparently preferred Harris, but not by the margins her campaign had hoped.
Trump’s appeal to young men increased as their apparent fears of being overtaken by women’s gains in equality were exploited.
Read more: Donald Trump wins election, renewing his efforts to remake America
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.
Read more: US election: why more men and fewer white women say they will vote for Trump
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.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
