The media is full of analysis of why Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris in the recent election. I have mentioned on many occasions such factors as high inflation, illegal immigration, and voter dissatisfaction with excesses on college campuses.
But the more I think about the election, the less confident I become in any explanation. This is especially true in close elections. And while Trump won a comfortable majority in the Electoral College, if just 1% of voters were to swing uniformly from Trump to Harris, she would win both the popular vote and the Electoral College. would have been included.
Consider the following thought experiment. In 2020, President Trump lost by a margin of about 4.5 percentage points in the popular vote, but in 2024 he won by a margin of 1.5 percentage points. This can be thought of as 3% of voters switching from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. If just 2% had switched to Trump, he might have lost. This means that almost any factor that moved an additional 1 percent of voters could legitimately be considered decisive. So if five different issues each moved 1% of voters toward Trump (compared to 2020), and two single issues moved 1% of voters toward Harris, that’s the result this year. It may be possible to explain. In that case, any one of the five issues in Trump’s favor could be seen as decisive.
Here’s Bloomberg.
in the movement [Trump] He promised to extend the $4.6 trillion 2017 tax cuts that benefited big corporations and the wealthy (all of which is up to Congress, not him). Eliminate taxes on tipped wages for service workers ($250 billion). Increases the child tax credit from $2,000 to $5,000 ($3 trillion). and eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits ($1.8 trillion). But Republicans, despite their complete control of Washington, likely won’t be able to accomplish all or most of this.
It’s an impressive list, but it also includes reinstating the SALT deduction, an issue that is very important to many voters in states like New Jersey and New York (two states where Trump far outperformed expectations). It does not even include Trump’s promise to do so. Trump’s proposal to eliminate taxes on overtime pay is also not included. But I have rarely seen experts from either party discuss these tax proposals as a reason for President Trump’s victory. Most of the analysis focuses on other issues. There seems to be some stigma in talking about election results in broad economic terms.
Experts probably believe that most voters did not decide to vote for Trump based on these promises. But it doesn’t matter. The question isn’t how the “majority of voters” will vote, it’s about increasing the child tax credit to $5,000, reinstating the salt credit, repealing the tax on tips, and eliminating the tax on overtime pay. , whether the promise to abolish taxes on Social Security income has been fulfilled. That’s enough to sway 1% of voters. That doesn’t seem so far-fetched.
Another counterargument is that Democrats are also making big promises, and perhaps have a good balance of different promises. That’s a reasonable objection. For example, Democrats are trying to forgive student loans, but that initiative is tied up in the courts. Harris also promised to waive the tip, but only after Trump waived it. Therefore, her promise did not attract much attention.
But President Trump’s tax cut pledges were much larger than Harris’s, and were only partially offset by higher tariffs. Additionally, some voters mistakenly believe that tariffs are paid by foreigners. So I suspect Trump’s tax program was more popular than the one Harris proposed even among low-wage workers. This is a source of extreme frustration for progressives who see the Democratic Party as the party of the working class.
There are no clear conclusions here. Rather, I would encourage people to be open-minded when it comes to explaining the election in a close race. Therefore, the statement that 98% of voters would not reject a candidate because she is a black woman in no way negates the claim that Ms. Harris lost the election because: she is a black woman. (To be clear, I think the main reason the Democrats lost was related to other factors like those listed at the beginning of this article. But it was a very close race. (then almost any single factor can be decisive).
The above analysis applies even more strongly to complex historical events. So there could be a dozen factors that caused events like the Great Depression or World War II, and if any one factor had a different outcome, it would have produced a fundamentally different outcome. Possibly. This is, of course, related to the famous “butterfly effect” of chaos theory.
PS. In extremely close races like 2000, almost any single factor can be cited as the deciding factor, even if it moved just a hundred or so votes.
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