Tag Archive for: popular vote

‘We Didn’t Pander’: How Donald Trump Blew Up The Obama Coalition To Win Popular Vote

Winning every single swing state in what was projected to be a tight election wasn’t the biggest surprise Tuesday. It wasn’t even how quickly the election was decided.

The biggest surprise was Trump appearing to win the popular vote, something a Republican has not done in two decades. GOP strategists explained to the Daily Caller that Trump did so by peeling away from the Democratic base that typically runs up the popular vote total in big cities, specifically by using surrogates to target black and Latino voters.

“When you look at a campaign and the whole idea is shaving away your opponent’s base, Donald Trump did that. If you look at youth vote, black vote, Hispanic vote, men and women, he had gains in all, and then if you look at demographics based off of urban, suburban and rural, Donald Trump gained in urban, suburban and rural,” Trump surrogate Harrison Fields told the Caller.

“There wasn’t an area where he regressed at all. And I think that’s the winning formula,” he added.

As of Friday morning, Trump was on track to win the popular vote, as he maintains about a four million vote (three percent) lead with final counts trickling in across the country. The most impactful state still counting a significant amount of votes is California, but most prognosticators expect Trump will maintain a lead even after the Democratic stronghold finishes counting.

Fields explained that was possible because Trump over-performed with key demographics that typically vote blue. In Texas, for example, Trump won seven more counties along the southern border than he did in 2016, indicating an increase in support from the Hispanic community, according to The New York Times. One of those counties was 97% Latino Starr County, which hadn’t been won by a Republican since the 19th century.

Trump flipped Dearborn, Michigan, the nation’s largest Arab-majority city, from blue to red. His victory over Harris was nearly six points in the city, with 18% of the vote going to third party candidate Dr. Jill Stein, according to the Detroit News.

While Trump diminished the Democratic base, Harris widely underperformed compared to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Ninety-two percent of black Americans voted for Biden in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center. In 2024, 86% of Black Americans backed Harris and 12% voted for Trump, according to exit polling conducted by Edison Research. Most of that increase came from men — Harris only won about 78% of black men, according to one CNN exit poll.

Her support among young voters, ages 18-29 also slipped. Biden won the age group by 24 points in 2020, but Harris only won the age group by 13% in 2024.

GOP strategist and CNN commentator Shermichael Singleton told the Caller that the Republican party is now the “multiracial, working class party.” He explained that when he began working in politics in the 2010s while Obama was in office, Republicans didn’t have success trying to peel off parts of the Latino and black American base like Trump did in 2024.

“They helped propel Donald Trump. When you look at North Carolina, his black numbers increased to 21%. You look at Pennsylvania, he increased his numbers of black men from 10% in 2016 to a 25% rate. Look at his black numbers with black men in Texas, went from 19% to 34%, that’s a 19 point increase,” Singleton told the Caller.

After weeks of speculation over when the election could be called or how long it would drag out, Trump’s victory was rather decisive, called not long after midnight on Nov. 6, first by Fox News. The former president went to his watch party to address his supporters in Florida, while in Washington, D.C., Harris fans trickled out of Howard University as her path to victory dwindled.

On Wednesday, the vice president called Trump to concede the race and addressed her supporters. Since, Democrats have begun the finger-pointing, trying to decide who to blame for losing key blocs of their base. Some Democratic officials are blaming Biden for his handling of inflation but also for staying in the race too long and giving Harris a short runway to work with in the final stretch of the 2024 election, numerous outlets reported.

Republicans aren’t pointing to a poorly run Harris campaign or Biden’s hesitancy to drop out as the reason Trump was able to win the 2024 election. Rather, they’re pointing to the work the Trump campaign did and the agenda the president-elect put forth as the reason for the historic race.

“He empowered surrogates like Byron [Donalds] and Janiyah Thomas on our team, and even me, to communicate a message that would speak directly to blacks, to kind of broaden the message, but also like bring it back to, ‘Hey, we’re here to fix your problems.’ We didn’t pander, that’s one thing we didn’t do. Black and Hispanic. We don’t want to be pandered to. We don’t want to be lied to,” Fields told the Caller.

“I think it was really a united message around success. And I think the American people just felt like he was stronger, going to be more successful and he was more credible,” he added.

AUTHOR

Reagan Reese

White House correspondent. Follow Reagan on Twitter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

ROOKE: Harris Campaign’s 11th Hour Looks Like A Nightmare

With just eight days left in the presidential election, there are clear signs that Vice President Kamala Harris is on unsteady ground.

Democrats started whispering to their friends in the corporate press about their election-day fears that Harris could lose to former President Donald Trump.

“A growing number of top Democrats tell us privately they feel Vice President Harris will lose — even though polls show a coin-toss finish 11 days from now,” Axios reported. “Democrats admit they tend to be hand-wringing, bed-wetting, doomsdayers. But what’s striking is how our private conversations with Democrats inside and outside her campaign reveal broad concern that little she does, says — or tries — seems to move the needle.”

It’s never a good sign when Democrats (even anonymously) tell the media their candidate is going to lose and that nothing she does “seems to move the needle.” The polling shows that while the election is still close and could go either way, Trump has a shot to win not only the Electoral College vote but also the popular vote.

The RealClear polling average has Trump up just 0.2% in the national poll, the first time he’s led since Harris first entered the race. EmersonNY Times/Sienna and CNN all have polls showing that Harris and Trump are tied for the popular vote. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal and Forbes polls both show that Trump wins the popular vote by two points.

A Republican presidential candidate hasn’t won the popular vote since former President George W. Bush in 2004. Trump’s support was on full display Sunday in Manhattan when voters turned out in droves, occupying block after block in dark blue New York City wearing MAGA hats and other Trump gear to hear him speak.

The media did their usual dog and pony show, attempting to connect Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally to the Nazi Party rally held there in 1930. Outside of Harris’ staunch supporters, regular voters see this rhetoric for what it is — Democrat propaganda. It’s hard to make people believe the lie that “Trump is a Nazi” when there are supporters from every race and religion in the crowd.

To make matters worse for Harris, CNN reported that executives from major Big Tech firms, like Apple, Meta, Google, and Amazon, have all recently knocked on Trump’s door.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked with Trump after he survived his first assassination attempt in July. Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly called Trump to discuss his company’s legal issues in Italy. Google CEO Sundar Pichai contacted Trump about his dominance in Google’s algorithm after his appearance at the Pennsylvania McDonald’s, the former president said. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy even called Trump to “check in,” the outlet reported.

“There are some that seem to be waking up to the fact that, like, ‘Holy sh*t, this guy might get elected again. I don’t want to have him, his administration, going after us,’” a person close to Trump told CNN. “What he’s saying out loud, I think they hear, and they’re taking it seriously.”

Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of Amazon and The Washington Post, blocked his outlet’s editorial team from endorsing Harris for president. Robert Kagan, a member of the opinions section who resigned in protest, told CNN Friday, “This is obviously an effort by Jeff Bezos to curry favor with Donald Trump in the anticipation of his possible victory.”

The New York Post reported this morning that Bezos attended a call with reporters upset over his decision to stay out of the race, giving them a “mandate to add more conservative voices to its opinion section.”

While it’s impossible to predict the outcome of the 2024 election, it has to terrify Democrats to see their national popularity slipping to a man they claim is a threat to (big D) democracy.

Harris is heading into Nov. 5 without the popular vote lead she needs to help push her over the line in critical swing states, without the explicit support from corporate media outlets and with the knowledge that even Big Tech CEOs are lining up outside Trump’s office to “check-in.”

AUTHOR

Mary Rooke

Commentary and analysis writer.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved,