4 of your biggest election questions, answered

Election night 2024 felt like the sequel to Election 2016: Many of the beats were the same, but the particulars were different. The early returns were ominous, and prospects did not improve from there. I was not as surprised, and yet it affected me as deeply if not more so. 

If you are anything like me, you have been trying to hold many different ideas in your head at once these past few days — and you still have a lot of questions. I won’t pretend to have all the answers, because nobody does. But we have collected your questions from the Vox Instagram page, our Explain It to Me inbox, and the Explain It to Me podcast phone line. 

Here are four common queries from Vox’s readers and listeners, with my best read on them (with an assist from one of Vox’s most astute young political minds) as we sift through the fog of Election Week.

Did Trump overperform or did Harris underperform? 

We all want to apportion blame or credit. Was Kamala Harris doomed by the political environment? Or did her campaign make missteps? Both can be true. Which one determined the outcome more?

The truth is, it’s hard to say what was determinative. Nate Silver can run 80,000 simulations of the election, but the rest of us only get to live through one reality. We can’t know the counterfactual and it will take time for the data that tells the story of this election to come into focus.

With that caveat out of the way, I am skeptical that Harris ever had a chance — and I’m more inclined to pin her loss on the conditions under which she was running, rather than the choices she made as she ran.

Something stuck out to me throughout election night: Whenever MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki would pull up some bellwether county in a swing state, he would compare the 2024 margins to 2020 and 2016. He would often point out Donald Trump was returning to his 2016 levels, while Harris trailed President Joe Biden’s 2020 performance, closer to (and yet usually above) Clinton in 2016.

Look at this map from the Washington Post that charts the shift from 2020 to 2024 in the presidential race by county. It’s red arrows all over. You should read exit polls with caution, but it would appear Trump made gains with voters across the board. That suggests to me there was a structural problem, as much as any strategic one, for Harris. 

Luckily, we don’t have to look far for structural explanations. Vox’s Zack Beauchamp wrote on the wave of anti-incumbency worldwide that seems to have carried Trump and sunk Harris. It’s damaged conservatives (in the UK) and liberals (in South Korea). 

The constant is people being fed up with those in power after Covid-19 and the global inflation that followed. The aggregated economic indicators might still be solid, but wage growth has only narrowly outpaced inflation. Consumers aren’t feeling flush with cash and slowing inflation does not mean no inflation. Interest rates have also stayed high, adding to the sense that things are expensive.

America might also be a little more conservative than Democrats thought, which is why Trump sought to portray Harris as an out-of-touch liberal. Maybe the Biden-Harris administration could have handled inflation better. But it’s vexed governments everywhere.

More than anything, people were simply frustrated: In an October Gallup poll, 72 percent of US adults said they were dissatisfied with how things were going in the country. It’s going to be hard for any incumbent national leader to win in that environment.

Let’s remember the state of the 2024 campaign after the Biden-Trump debate and the clear evidence of improvement in Democrats’ chances after Harris took over. She attempted to circumvent Americans’ anger with the status quo by running as the challenger even while she was the sitting vice president.

But it didn’t work, and maybe it never could. People were sick of the Biden-Harris administration. They wanted a change. That’s what Trump was selling.

What is Trump going to do? 

Here’s the big takeaway, beyond any specifics that could be subject to change: Trump is less likely to be constrained by other Republicans, by advisers who are more loyal to the office than him personally, and by democratic norms than he was during his first term.

Now for the specifics. The day after his victory, Trump’s campaign pledged to start “the largest mass deportation operation” in US history on his first day back in office, a signal that he may be even more aggressive on his signature issue. He could enact those tariffs as he pleases unless Congress stops him in the next two months. His team has telegraphed an immediate expansion of oil and gas exploration. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has brashly said that the Trump administration would advise the removal of fluoride from American water supplies on day one, a preview of the public health agenda likely to follow. We can also expect some kind of shake-up within the federal bureaucracy.

It is worth sounding a note of caution, however. Trump signed the so-called “Muslim ban” on January 27, 2017, but it was blocked by the courts, including the Supreme Court. It took him a year and a half to get an altered version okayed by the judiciary. Likewise, Trump’s attempt to approve Medicaid work requirements was later stopped by a federal judge. One of the biggest questions of a second Trump term is: How much will the judiciary restrain him, if his own people won’t?

In Congress, Trump and Republicans are already hankering to cut more taxes and slash the social safety net. But actually passing those plans is still going to be hard. Control of the House is still undecided and even if the GOP wins it, their margin will be extremely thin. The failure to repeal Obamacare in 2017 is a very recent example of a newly minted Republican majority’s top priority failing because of public backlash.

What does Trump’s election mean for the world? 

Before the election even occurred, one Vox reader asked us: Why do US elections matter so much for the rest of the world?

The US has the most powerful military in the world, it is one of the two most important diplomatic players in global affairs (though China has caught up), and its foreign aid programs are a vital lifeline for humanitarian efforts around the world. On foreign policy in particular, Trump has plenty of discretion to do as he pleases without much or any input from Congress. 

We know the consequences of this enormous power’s misuse. The US military has obviously been used for terrible ends, US diplomacy can be ineffectual, and US-funded humanitarianism has a mixed track record. 

That is why the fate of not only 330 million Americans but many millions more around the world was altered by Trump’s election. 

Israel’s war in Gaza, the effort to contain mpox in Africa, the famine in Sudan, the war in Ukraine, Taiwan’s future as an independent nation — these are some of the high-profile issues over which Donald Trump, rather than Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, will have significant leverage and influence. PEPFAR, the AIDS relief program that became the signature success of the bipartisan global health consensus that took shape under George W. Bush, will need to be reauthorized next year, and there are signs of Republican support wavering. Trump will hold the veto pen during that congressional debate.

What will actually happen? I don’t know. But I know Trump’s election has defined what will be possible.

What do Democrats do now? 

I want to briefly hand the newsletter over to Vox senior political reporter Christian Paz, who sat down with Explain It To Me podcast host Jonquilyn Hill to analyze this year’s election and has as good of a read on the state of the Democratic Party as anyone:

There’s still this assumption that a diversifying America would inevitably lead to progressive or liberal or Democratic dominance, regardless of other factors, which once again, keeps being proven wrong and wrong. 

In fact, this election will be one where racial polarization decreases, especially among Latino voters. They voted similarly or in the similar direction or similar swing as white voters. The Democrats got the turnout they wanted, but it turns out that the voters that were turning out just didn’t want to vote for a Democrat.

The Democrats bet a lot on educated and suburban voters, while expecting to maintain their previous margins with working-class voters of color and snagging enough white working-class voters to push them over the top. That bet didn’t pay off. 

It will take months for Democrats to figure out how to recalibrate going forward, in the 2026 midterms and beyond. Looking at the 2024 fallout so far, Christian said, “There’s a mixed bag [in terms] of just what it is that the electorate wants.”

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