The 47th president of the United States will be Donald Trump. After a tightly contested presidential race, the former president and Republican nominee has emerged victorious with an electoral vote of 312 to Harris’ 226. This was the largest victory by a Republican candidate since George H.W. Bush beat Democrat Candidate Michael S. Dukakis in 1988. “This will truly be the golden age of America,” President-elect Trump said. “This is a magnificent victory for the American people that will allow us to make America great again.”
A big talking point of the election was the importance of the swing states, in particular North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and the “Blue Wall”, consisting of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Polls from most major mainstream media sources initially indicated a Harris-Walz victory with her holding down the “Blue Wall” of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. The odds of a democratic victory in these states only increased after a Trump rally where guest speaker and comedian Tony Hinchcliffe referred to the island of Puerto Rico as a “pile of trash” despite Pennsylvania having over 600,000 Puerto Rican residents. In 2020, President Biden had also claimed decisive victories in each of these states over Trump. These factors made it all the more shocking for many political pundits when this “Blue Wall” turned red in the 2024 election. One of the big reasons for this Republican upset in Pennsylvania was the registration and voting of close to 200 thousand Amish residents in Pennsylvania as well as the simple fact that many latinx and black voters, whose votes the Harris-Walz campaign counted on, chose to vote for Trump as he promised solutions to more pressing matters such as the economy. “Here’s the reason why Donald Trump won by the largest margin of any President in modern history. He’s not an ideologue. He’s not a policy wonk. He’s an American badass. They tried to DQ him, jail him, kill him. None of it worked. Trump’s comeback is the American comeback. Our nation deserves a badass Commander-in-Chief right now and that’s exactly what we got,” former Republican nominee Vivek Ramaswamy said. Others have cited Kamala’s own weakness as well as the lackluster support from the Biden administration as the primary reason for Trump’s second ascension into power. “The reason she does so bad in these interviews is that her record is so bad for the American people. The critical test of leadership comes in a moment of crisis and at that moment of crisis, for the people of North Carolina, Kamala Harris wasn’t doing her job,” Vice President-Elect JD Vance said in one of his rallies.
The election was a shock to many and something that the Democratic party will certainly learn from. Most notably, U.S Representative and former house speaker Nancy Pelosi has come out blaming Joe Biden for his late resignation from the election. “Had the President gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race. The anticipation was that if the President were to step aside, there would be an open primary … And because the President endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been much different,” she said on a New York Times “Interview” podcast.
