An Alienated Working Class  

As of November 21, Trump has received roughly 77 million votes, surpassing his 2020 total. Harris, meanwhile, has received around 7 million votes, and by the time results are fully out, she will have fallen millions of votes short of Biden’s 81 million in 2020. Furthermore, exit polls point to a sharp decline in the percentage of the electorate that was Democratic; from 37% in 2020 to 31% in 2024. Meanwhile, the Republican share barely changed, going from 36% to 35%. Clearly, in this election, while Trump did make huge inroads into core Democratic constituencies, he ultimately won because was able to turn out his base, while Kamala Harris failed to turn out her base.

An Absent Base

Promising to make America “the most lethal fighting force,” unconditionally funding Israel despite this being an unpopular stance within her own party, and completely abandoning popular progressive policies like universal healthcare angered and disheartened many progressive Democrats, who then either didn’t vote or voted third-party. In some extreme cases, such as in Dearborn, these Democrats even voted for Trump. The Democrats completely abandoned the working class, hoping to make up for these votes through wins in left-shifting suburbs. This strategy has been the Democrats’ strategy since at least 2016, with Chuck Schumer himself saying in July 2016 “for every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” This strategy failed miserably in 2016 and it failed again in 2024. 

In 2020, Biden won every income bracket under $100k, with Trump winning those making $100-200k and a tie among those who make more than $200k. In 2024, the working and middle class swung right dramatically, with Trump flipping all income brackets between $30k-$100k and Harris winning those making under $30k by a much smaller margin than Biden. Voters making $100k+, however, actually swung left, with Harris winning both the $100-200k bracket, Trump’s only group in 2020, as well as the $200k+ bracket.

Donald Trump, Turnout Machine?

These results, practically the inverse of 2020, illustrate something major; while some voters are beholden to either party ideologically, most voters, particularly swing voters, vote with their wallets. These results also demonstrate a burgeoning realignment; the Democrats are gaining among wealthier high-propensity voters while losing among poorer low-propensity voters. These low-propensity voters’ absence from midterm and special elections explains the Democrats’ overperformances in these low-turnout races, and Donald Trump’s unique ability to turn out these voters who rarely vote but are dissatisfied with the Biden administration is what won him the election. While Democrats may benefit from this realignment in low-turnout races, there are simply too few of these wealthy left-trending voters; the Democratic Party must once more become the party of the working class, and this means acknowledging voters’ frustrations with the economy rather than telling people “on paper everything is great!” and adopting neoconservative policies at a time when these policies are unpopular among both parties.