Who dunnit?

And why?

The cost in trees and pixels is already astronomical. An ongoing outpouring of analysis, commentary, podcasts and vox pops all try to explain why he got elected with yet another opinion-poll shattering victory.

You can listen to our most recent contribution to the genre here:

And here

First (minor) lesson: we should pay as little attention to opinion polls as possible. That industry is toast. Polls have got all the recent and not so recent Presidential elections very wrong. They got Brexit very wrong. They got Labour’s vote share in the recent UK general election very wrong. And they have got Trump’s popularity very wrong - every time. With upcoming general elections in Ireland and Germany this is something worth keeping at the front of our minds as we consider the possible outcome for those country’s populist parties.

All that analysis of why 70+ million Americans voted for Trump has yielding one-line soundbites and long-form articles that stretch to thousands of words. There will no doubt soon be books and PhD theses. Here is my summary of what has been said and written so far.

1. It was all about eggs.

This is the return of “It’s the economy, stupid”. J D Vance complained bitterly about the price of eggs in an attempt to pin high grocery prices on Biden/Harris. It worked, notwithstanding the fact that his claim about eggs costing $4 was a lie, as evidenced by the prices ($2.99) on the supermarket shelves in the shot of Vance in a supermarket.

Pointing out the lie is not the only - or perhaps most important - point here.

(a) The economy is really important

(b) Trump/Vance recognised early that prices 20% higher than when Biden took office is a big deal for a lot of people. They used that to hammer home the message that America was better off, financially, under Trump. People like me witter on endlessly about how that is objectively false across a wide range of metrics and data - but that didn’t matter.

I’m not sure what that means. Perhaps facts and data don’t matter. It’s all about feelings and the populist trick is to harness, exaggerate and exploit those feelings. Classic con artistry.

It must also be about inequality. All of that stuff about the price of eggs spoke to enough people who are still objectively suffering because of inflation. Enough people have yet to see improvements in their standard of living. There has been a boost to average real wages but growth in GDP is still not shared widely enough.

2. Immigration

Enough people, including plenty of immigrants don’t like it, or think there has been too much of it. Again, I can produce all the stats you like that show immigration is a good thing, but it doesn’t matter. Irish and every other politician: take note.

3. Globalisation & Trade.

Trump supporters want an end to the global free trade system. This is one of those many ‘watch what he does, rather than what he says’ moments, especially about tariffs. But this will be a very big deal if he implements 20% and 100% tariffs, as promised.

It’s an end to centuries of free-trade policies. And, not least, a darn shame for those free-trade buccaneers, the Brexiteers who will find a protectionist world a dusty, lonely place now outside the world’s largest remaining free-trading-bloc. Just how bad Trump’s trade policies, if implemented, will be for the UK cannot be exaggerated. It could kill the Reeves-Starmer project stone dead.

Trade wars won’t, of course, be of much help to a stagnating EU economy. Or, indeed, to the median US voter. But there I go again, sounding like a liberal, elite economist.

3. Wokeism

The Democrats have become the party of ‘prigs and pontificators’ says one New York Times writer in a brilliant column by a conservative journalist who nevertheless voted for Harris (because he thought Trump was an even worse candidate). Here we see a riff on a theme taken up in many forms by countless other commentators:

The broad inability of liberals to understand Trump’s political appeal except in terms flattering to their beliefs is itself part of the explanation for his historic, and entirely avoidable, comeback.

And

The dismissiveness with which liberals treated [voters] concerns was part of something else: dismissiveness toward the moral objections many Americans have to various progressive causes. Concerned about gender transitions for children or about biological males playing on girls’ sports teams? You’re a transphobe. Dismayed by tedious, mandatory and frequently counterproductive D.E.I. seminars that treat white skin as almost inherently problematic? You’re racist. Irritated by new terminology that is supposed to be more inclusive but feels as if it’s borrowing a page from “1984”? That’s doubleplusungood.

These points are variants on a theme: Liberals (and the Democrats) just misread the room. They ignored (or at best treated with contempt) any point of view that was not their own. The whole progressive agenda was taken too far.

I’ve read many a piece in, for example, the UK’s Guardian newspaper that are perfect examples of people who still exist in their own bubble and are saying that the only lesson to be drawn is that progressives must merely double down.

But there are more voices saying “This is who we are now, get used to it”.

Yes indeed. Get used to it. The world has changed. Look forward to the consequences.