The number of votes in favor of the Republicans, from one election to the next, has remained stable. On the other hand, the Democrats lost a good ten million voters. Contrary to what we hear, there was therefore no shift from Democrats to Republicans. Quite simply, a good number of Democratic voters did not vote.
Many tend to explain Donald Trump’s victory in the American presidential elections by a conservative, populist, libertarian tidal wave, having swept away the Hispanic and African-American electorate with it. It’s a little more complicated than that, because we also have to look, alongside the evolution of the percentages in favor of one or the other, on the evolution of the number of voters who really voted . And that brings very different comments.
Percentage-wise, Trump wins
In percentage terms, we saw a big swing towards the party of Donald Trump, which received roughly (the accounts have not yet been finalized) 52 to 53% of the votes, and Harris a little less than 47%. There is talk of a red tide which has swept away all the historically undecided states, and will more than likely allow the Republicans to win the “trifecta”, that is to say both the Senate, the House of Representatives and the presidency. .
But some explain this large victory by the shift of a whole section of American society towards the conservatives. This is not the case, even if, in fact, a higher percentage than in the past of voters of Hispanic origin, mainly men, turned to Donald Trump.
In name, Harris lost
However, if we want to have an image of the shift in the electorate, it was not Trump who won, it was Harris who lost. Because the big statistical difference which made the difference between the 2020 elections and that of 2024 is the strong demobilization of the Democratic camp, helped by a philistine electoral system increasingly designed to discourage voters, in the face of a Republican electorate which , in numbers, do not move. Obama saw it clearly , who, in recent days, has been encouraging people to vote on social networks. Four years ago, in fact, Joe Biden won thanks to the contribution of 81 million votes, while around 74 million went to Donald Trump. Four years later, the Republican can still count on approximately 74 million votes. But this time, Harris only raised 68 million.
We have therefore not witnessed an immense conservative wave, but more clearly a Democratic demobilization, which can be explained essentially by the fact that the Biden administration, which certainly had its hands tied by a Congress dominated for a moment by the Republicans , could do little to help the middle class fight inflation.
General demobilization
But more broadly, the demobilization with regard to politics is very clear: of the 262 million potential voters, only around 145 million (if we count the few votes attracted by the other candidates), or 55%, exercised their right to vote this November 5. Trump therefore won the White House with the support of less than 30% of voters. It’s not the only one. In France, Emmanuel Macron was also elected by a minority, but this puts into perspective the considerations of a major sociological evolution of the Americans.
Where the commentators are right, however, is when they explain that Donald Trump was able to win the vote thanks to the improbable alliance of three groups: that of evangelicals and anti-abortion fundamentalist Christians, who infiltrated the party Republican and brought a large number of their supporters to the Supreme Court and the Senate, thanks to an alliance with the hardest Republicans, led in the mid-90s by Newt Gingrich. Libertarians who in no way want a social state, and whose most brilliant representative is Elon Musk. And the large group of the “declassed” white rural class, who view with hostility the urban elites of the East and West coasts. The three groups want, for different reasons, to blow up the system. But they find themselves having chosen the most explosive bomb, Donald Trump.
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