Donald Trump, accompanied by his wife Melania, declares victory at his election night event in West Palm Beach. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

PoliticsNovember 7, 2024

Democrats left reeling as Trump claims decisive victory

Catherine McGregor

Contributing writer

Donald Trump, accompanied by his wife Melania, declares victory at his election night event in West Palm Beach. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Few could have predicted the size and scale of his success last night.

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A red wave

It was around 8.30pm NZT when Donald Trump came out to address his election watch party. He’d not yet been declared the winner, but with 267 electoral votes under his belt – and leading in the yet-to-be-called swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin – his victory was all but assured. Claiming a “magnificent victory”, he promised the cheering crowd “a golden age for America”, while his running mate, JD Vance, said that “we have just witnessed the greatest political comeback in the history of the United States of America”. Trump also spoke about his popular-vote victory. He’s the first Republican candidate to win a popular majority since 2004, a fact that pretty much sums up Trump’s incredible night. He didn’t just squeak out a narrow victory; he crushed the opposition. “Trump did better, with everyone, everywhere,” tweeted British journalist Lewis Goodall. “It’s a red wave.”

A graph showing the extent of the rightward (red) shift in counties across the United States. (Source: The Guardian)

So what happened?

The post-mortems are only just beginning, but already it seems clear that Trump’s victory hinged on two key issues: the economy and immigration. For all voters’ stated concerns about threats to democracy and the right to abortion, the Trump message won out. Despite the backlash following the Puerto Rico “garbage” insult, Trump won Republicans their biggest Latino turnout since 1976. And despite Harris’s favourability ratings consistently beating Joe Biden’s, she vastly underperformed his 2020 election results. As Harris’s loss looked increasingly certain, MSNBC columnist Michael A Cohen tweeted that he expected her to face recriminations, “but it’s hard to point to any glaring mistakes that she made. She ran an excellent campaign.” On the flip side, “Trump ran an awful campaign. He gave a terrible RNC speech, his VP was deeply unpopular, he lost the debate, he had no ground game to speak of, he offended key demographic groups … and none of it mattered.”

How the day unfolded

The earliest polls closed at 1pm NZT, with a spate of safely Democratic or Republican states called by the Associated Press almost immediately after. The first notable result came in Florida – not because Trump’s win was a surprise, but because he improved his already healthy 2020 margins in nearly every county. The biggest shift was in Miami-Dade, previously a rare Democratic stronghold which saw a staggering 18 percentage point movement to the right. At 3pm, New York state was called for Harris. She was never going to lose there, but the size of her margins – down across the board, including in liberal bastion Manhattan – were yet more ominous signs of Democrats’ impending rout.

At 4.40pm the AP called the solidly Republican state of Iowa for Trump. Again, not a surprise – unless you’d been pinning your hopes on revered pollster Ann Selzer, who on Sunday released a shock poll showing Harris leading in the state by three points. Around half an hour later, the AP called North Carolina for Trump. The state had been seen as a potential pick-up for the Democrats, who focused a lot of their campaign spending and canvassing there. They also tried to tie Trump to scandal-plagued Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, ultimately to no avail (Robinson, however, lost his own race).

The following hour, Georgia moved into Trump’s column, returning the state to the party which – other than in 2020 – had won every presidential election there since 1996. At 7.20pm, Fox News called Pennsylvania for Trump, his West Palm Beach watch party erupting in jubilation at the news. With 267 electoral votes, Trump was in an unassailable position. The presidency was his. Confirmation came at 11.34pm, when the AP called Wisconsin, pushing him across the 270-vote finish line.

Trump supporters celebrate as Fox News declares him the next president of the United States at an election night event in West Palm Beach. (Photo: Jim WATSON / AFP via Getty Images)

What Trump’s victory means for the world

A second Trump presidency promises to dramatically reshape international politics. He has made it clear that he plans to make massive changes to US foreign policy, including withdrawing from major treaties and embracing a highly protectionist trade policy that would spark a global trade war, according to Vox. Trump has promised to pull the US out of the Paris climate accords again, after the US reentered the agreement under Biden. The United States’ cooperation with the UN is also under threat, particularly regarding the World Health Organisation, a UN agency that Trump’s administration has criticised in the past. A devastating withdrawal of WHO funding by the US is even more likely if Trump gives vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr a key role in his next administration, as Trump says he will do.

A sliver of good news is that the US will find it extremely difficult to fully abandon NATO, thanks to a law recently introduced by Congress that requires congressional approval for withdrawal from the defence treaty. However Trump could achieve much the same ends by withdrawing forces, closing bases or refusing to invest in joint military infrastructure.

Ukraine on a knife-edge

As for Ukraine, Trump has repeatedly said he could settle the war between Russia and Ukraine in one day if he was elected president again, without giving any indication of how he plans to do it. While many observers expect a new Trump administration to immediately cancel all Ukraine defence funding – all but guaranteeing a Russian victory – Sky News’ security editor Deborah Haynes wasn’t so sure. “While US support for Ukraine would undoubtedly change under a Trump administration, that is not the same as facilitating a complete surrender,” she wrote, arguing that Trump “will not want to be held responsible for the total absorption of Ukraine into Mr Putin’s orbit”.

The Guardian’s Russia expert Luke Harding was a lot more pessimistic. “The Kremlin will be celebrating Trump’s victory, as another era of chaos and US weakness,” he tweeted. “Putin’s goals in Ukraine are as maximalist as ever: to seize as much territory as possible. And to wipe out the country’s statehood, identity, culture. A fascist project, with US connivance.”

The BulletinNovember 7, 2024

The morning after the night before: Trump returns to the White House

Stewart Sowman-Lund

The Bulletin editor

Donald Trump gestures after speaking at the West Palm Beach Convention on November 6 (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

newsletter

The 45th president will become the 47th, with Republicans winning the Senate and on track to control the House too, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in today’s edition of The Bulletin.

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A political comeback like no other

The race was predicted to be tight, but in the end it wasn’t really. Former president Donald Trump will return to the White House, comfortably, with the latest projections reporting Trump has secured over the required 270 Electoral College votes and is leading in several key states yet to be called. It puts him on track to pull in a result bigger than Joe Biden’s in 2020 and, in contrast to his 2016 win, he will also take the popular vote.

At the time of writing, the Republicans have also secured the Senate while the House of Representatives is still up for grabs. It’s a remarkable comeback story for Trump, who left the presidency in 2021 in a violent cloud as supporters stormed the Capitol, and has spent much of the past three years in and out of court. ABC’s live election coverage repeatedly emphasised that the election would be historic – the choice between the first female president or the first president that had been convicted of a crime. Here’s how Rolling Stone magazine summarised it in a tweet.

Donald Trump — the twice impeached former president, Jan. 6 coup leader, convicted felon, adjudicated sexual abuser, and man who mismanaged the 2020 economic implosion and coronavirus disaster that killed more than 1 million people in this country — has convinced American voters… pic.twitter.com/9cd0luvTFF

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) November 6, 2024

Writing for The Post, Luke Malpass said the past four years of Joe Biden now looked like a “Covid-era aberration”, with Trump improving his performance in virtually every state counted so far. “America has moved to the right,” said Malpass. “The result reveals two Americas, divided along cultural lines. The prosperous, mostly coastal cities, rich with economic opportunity and the beneficiaries of globalisation and the parts of the country left behind by that prosperity and the cultural change it has wrought.”

How Harris became linked to Biden’s failures

The mood at the Harris camp was understandably sober. The vice president did not address supporters gathered on election night, reported the Herald’s Thomas Coughlan, though it’s intended she will do so today. It’s now being reported that Harris will speak at 10am NZT, earlier than initially expected.

In analysis for ABC shared here by RNZ, Leigh Sales laid out six reasons why Harris was always on track to lose last night’s election. Among them, the state of the US economy. While Harris was not the president over the past four years, she has been inextricably linked to it as veep – and the Trump campaign did its best to blame her for the actions of the wider administration. Sales noted that while the economy has improved under the Biden administration, Americans “feel like they’re doing it tougher than they ever have”. That so-called “vibecession” has been felt around the world. New Zealand has, to some extent, experienced it too – while we have dipped in and out of recession, many feel we’ve been stuck in one for a lot longer.

The signs of this were apparent as soon as the early polls emerged yesterday, reported AP. While Harris voters were motivated by the fate of democracy, Trump backers were most worried about immigration and inflation. At the end of the day, that messaging won out.

The immediate ramifications

Former prime minister John Key, who publicly backed Trump, tempered his messaging slightly in an interview with Newstalk ZB’s Ryan Bridge this morning. On the prospect of Trump introducing heavy tariffs on foreign goods, Key acknowledged there would be “quite big repercussions” for New Zealand. “There is some downside for New Zealand and I’m not going to sugarcoat that, and they concern me.”

The New Zealand dollar took an immediate hit, the Herald’s Jamie Gray reported (paywalled), dipping by about US1c while local wholesale interest rates spiked. In an interview with RNZ’s Lisa Owen last night, Tim Groser, the former NZ ambassador to the US during the first Trump term, warned Americans that they may find their cost of living increases as a result of the incoming president’s proposed tariffs. “All of the responsible economists… are saying this is a disaster… The estimate is this will add between $2,000 and $4,000 to the average American household’s bill a year. They’re going to find this out the hard, bloody way.”

How the world reacted

World leaders, including prime minister Christopher Luxon, have congratulated Trump on his election victory. Many sent out statements before some of the major US news networks had called the election for the Republican candidate, but after Trump had claimed victory himself. The BBC reported that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who had a troubled relationship with outgoing president Joe Biden, was among the first to share his congratulations, along with UK leader Keir Starmer.

The United States is one of New Zealand’s most important partners.

Tonight, I congratulate President-elect @realDonaldTrump and look forward to building New Zealand’s relationship with his incoming Administration.

— Christopher Luxon (@chrisluxonmp) November 6, 2024

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky said he appreciated Trump’s commitment to the “peace through strength” approach in global affairs. “This is exactly the principle that can practically bring just peace in Ukraine closer.”

Matthew Hooton, in a column for the Herald (paywalled), noted that the world was entering its most dangerous period since World War II – but argued the US was entering its most dangerous time since the Civil War. “Trump [is] threatening to abandon Ukraine, withdraw the US’s security in Europe which will encourage Russia’s Vladimir Putin to expand his ambitions westward, launch a global trade war and collapse the World Trade Organisation.”

An election like no other

To finish, a brief reflection on what has been a long and exhausting election campaign. Until 100-ish days ago, it was meant to be Joe Biden facing up against Trump last night. We all remember the disastrous debate performance that ultimately triggered his decision to leave the race, paving the way, he believed, for a new generation of political leaders (and search data suggests a lot of people didn’t realise he had quit the race until this week, somehow). The Spinoff’s Toby Manhire noted the Jacinda Ardern-esque glimmers in the sudden ascension of Harris – an anti-Trump figure that could unify America.

The New Yorker has wrapped 25 “stunning moments” from this year’s election campaign that it claims “fell out of a coconut tree”. From the end of the Biden campaign, to a failed assassination attempt on Trump, to claims that the people of Springfield were “eating the pets” – it’s been a long ride. Now, the world prepares for whatever comes next.