Three global explanations for Donald Trump’s victory in the elections

At least in numbers, Democratic disenchantment was much greater than Republican appeal; the trends that had anticipated the other elections of the super electoral year

The Universal

Donald Trump’s victory was as overwhelming as it was ironic. The president-elect won the popular vote, the seven decisive states and the Electoral College with almost no votes compared to his last election.
Trump has so far obtained 74.3 million votes, just 110,000 more than in 2020, when he fell to Joe Biden. That handful of thousands of votes was enough for him to carry out one of the most incredible political comebacks in contemporary history last Tuesday, while in 2020 more than a dozen million votes were not enough for him to be re-elected.
That year, the then-president achieved something that few other Republican candidates had achieved before: he added 11.3 million new voters to his electoral base compared to 2016. That success was not enough to defeat Biden, who in turn registered 15.5 million more than Hillary Clinton four years earlier.
If Trump barely gained votes, Kamala Harris and her party suffered a hemorrhage of followers. Of the 81.3 votes Biden received, they collapsed this year to 70.4 million.
The explanation lies in the ability of Trump and his campaign to hammer relentlessly on the two issues that most burden Americans – the cost of living and immigration – and in the inability of the Democrats to listen to the workers’ discontent. But it is also in some phenomena that today define politics and the global economy and divide their societies.

1. “It’s the anti-government wave, stupid!”
   It already seems like a truism, but the world’s ruling parties are unable to resist the merciless wave of impatience, anger and inequality that is sweeping the decade and the planet. Wars, pandemics, climate change and technological acceleration have created a trail of inflation, delayed wages, low growth and job insecurity that overwhelms the present and discolors the future of the inhabitants of dozens of countries around the world.
   Dissatisfaction and economic fury drive official defeats regardless of the size, influence or institutional robustness of the nation. This November, almost as surprising as Trump’s solid victory was the little-anticipated victory of the opposition in Botswana, which dethroned an ruling party that had been in power since the country’s independence six decades ago.
   In the United States, it was inflation that, even though it has already been reduced, left a trail of high prices and suffering refrigerators. In Botswana, it was the broken economy and unemployment close to 30%.
   This year was received as a test for democracy and for the ruling parties due to its unusual number of elections, a “worldwide election” that brought billions of people to the polls and that will define global politics for the next decade.
   A detailed review of 35 presidential, legislative and regional elections indicates that the ruling parties and democracy almost do not pass the test.
   So far in the super electoral year, only two ruling parties have won in free, fair and shadowless elections; It was in Taiwan and the Dominican Republic. In Mexico and Indonesia, ruling parties also retained power, but under growing allegations of democratic erosion.
   Four other ruling parties, meanwhile, barely resisted the opposition offensive and their victory tasted like defeat. In France, for example, Emmanuel Macron lost real power despite having, once again, prevented the far right from reaching the government. The all-powerful Cyril Ramaphosa and Narendra Modi remained in the presidencies of South Africa and India, although with far fewer votes than they expected.
   The most successful ruling parties were those that use elections only as makeup for their autocratic essence; in total there were 10. Some have just begun this path of authoritarian drift – like El Salvador – others have already traveled several kilometers – like Venezuela. They all have leaders who, judging by a number of votes that are more fictitious than real, are very popular. Vladimir Putin won his re-election in March with 88% of the votes. Rwandan Paul Kagame extended his 24-year presidency with 99% of the votes… not even the Castros reached those electoral numbers in Cuba.
   Along with the authoritarian consolidation of several nations, the clearest of the trends in the “electoral world” was, indeed, the opposition wave. From the United States to Great Britain and Brazil and from Panama to South Korea and Germany, fourteen ruling parties fell to the opposition in presidential, legislative and regional elections.
2. The world to the right
   The anti-government wave not only alters the political path of the world but colors it. Of the fourteen elections won by the opposition, eight fell to the right or the extreme right.
   Europe ends the year in suspense with the triumph of the phil-Nazi Freedom Party in the general elections in Austria and with the consolidation of the Alternative for Germany in the regional elections that cornered the government of Olaf Scholz.
   The continent even trembled more with the advance of Marine Le Pen and her National Reunion in the first round of the French legislative elections, a movement contained in the second round by traditional parties with an increasingly worn “cordon sanitaire.” Immigration and cost of living were the issues that, as in the United States, resonated among the French, Germans, Austrians, and Portuguese to propel the most radicalized right to places in European politics that few would have imagined a decade ago.
   Latin America is no stranger to the advance of the right. Brazil and Chile had municipal and regional elections a few weeks ago that gave the right a privileged springboard to return to the presidency in 2026 and 2025, respectively.
   The right in its various versions not only gains strength in elections but runs across the entire political arc of democracies towards its corner.
   In the United States, forced to compete with Trump’s promises of mass deportation, Kamala Harris presented an immigration policy so restrictive that 20 years ago she would have passed for Republican.
   In the United Kingdom, Labor’s Keir Starmer starred this year in precisely a central chapter of the anti-government wave by defeating the then conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and giving the global left one of its few victories of the year.
   But, like so many in history, Starmer campaigns from the left and governs from the center, or rather from the right. The budget that the government presented about ten days ago is both Labor and Conservative, with its cuts in benefits for retirees or the imperceptible increase in some taxes.
3. The young cracks
   Starmer arrived at Downing Street last July with an electoral setback that left conservatives stunned and sent Trump a warning signal for the medium term. In the July elections, the then Tory ruling party lost 251 of its 344 seats in Parliament, a defeat with little precedent for the English right.
   Just five years ago, no one in Great Britain thought that such a fall was possible: in the 2019 elections, the then Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson advanced with such electoral power over Labor enclaves that the Tories became excited about a government of several decades. None of that happened and the Conservative Party failed to survive either British impatience or its own mistakes.
   Today, the euphoria and Trump’s broad victory lead Republicans to imagine several decades of electoral power compared to Democrats sunk in confusion. But Britain’s message is clear: the era of discontent spares no one.
   For now, Republicans are confident that they can rely on a group of their new voters to build the future and avoid a debacle like that of the Tories. An essential part of Trump’s campaign, epic and triumph was to attract young white, Latino and black men in a kind of counterrevolution or anti-feminist reaction. Feeding the differences between men and women, countryside and city, minorities and majorities was one of the keys to the magnate’s success.
   And the new commitment to podcasts and the “manosphere” – the digital ecosystem of networks that exalt masculinity and virility – helped the president-elect to advance that young vote, traditionally attached to Democrats. In 2020, Trump received 36% of the young vote; this year, he got 46%, according to an AP poll.
   The United States does not escape there from a global phenomenon that will mark the future of politics and anticipates more years of polarization. Since the middle of the last decade, coinciding with the #MeToo movement, young American women are gradually turning to the left, while young men are gradually leaning to the right or the center. The contrast is significant. Today 40% of young women say they are progressive compared to 25% of men, according to a Gallup poll from last September.
   The world is moving – or splitting – in a similar direction. The same young crack reproduces from South Korea to Germany, Great Britain or Argentina. The future promises more polarization.

PHOTO CAPTION:
The president-elect won the popular vote, the seven decisive states and the Electoral College with almost no votes compared to his last election.
Photo: El Universal

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