Move over Grover Cleveland. Before Donald Trump’s victory on 5 November, Cleveland had a monopoly on one aspect of American electoral history: he was the only president elected twice on non-consecutive occasions, becoming the 22nd president in 1884 and then the 24th president in 1892 after losing the contest in between.
In Trump-like fashion, Cleveland even overcame a sex scandal involving allegations of him having fathered a child out of wedlock to win victory. His opponents taunted him with chants of “ma, ma, where’s pa?” to which his supporters offered a retort after the victory: “Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha.”
Americans like to interpret their presidential elections as representing epochal moments in the nation’s wider history. Occasionally, such interpretations might have relevance. Take the presidential victory of Richard Nixon in 1968, followed by his re-election in 1972 (he, too, like Trump, fought three national elections, although he lost his first one in 1960).
Southern Strategy
In an era of the Civil Rights movement and widespread discontent in the 1960s by Black Americans because of centuries of discrimination, Nixon and the Republicans embraced what became known as the “Southern Strategy.”
It involved using coded language, such as an emphasis on “law and order” and claiming to represent the “silent majority,” to win over White working-class voters, particularly in American southern states, who had traditionally voted for the Democratic Party. For many of these White voters, dislike of expanded rights for Black Americans and general racism trumped past loyalties to the Democratic Party.
Kevin Phillips, who worked on the Nixon campaign and helped develop the “Southern Strategy”, wrote about the shift in voting patterns in a book entitled The Emerging Republican Majority. It was a ruthlessly effective approach to American presidential politics that would see the Republicans, beginning in 1968, win five of the next six presidential elections. Indeed, at the presidential level, the Democrats have not won a majority of White voters since the victory of Lyndon Johnson back in 1964.
Declining White population
The composition of the American population began to change, however, with the number of Whites that Republicans relied on declining. Indeed, projections are that by 2045, White Americans will represent less than half of the country’s population.
This shift led in the 21st century to the idea of a Democratic Party enjoying a perpetual majority that would see the party dominate future elections, with the Republicans becoming a permanent minority party. The Emerging Democratic Majority, a book by a journalist and political scientist, promoted a version of this argument and appeared in 2002.
Apparent evidence in support of the book’s thesis appeared at the presidential level: from the 1992 election that brought Bill Clinton to the presidency for the first time to 2020 and Joe Biden’s victory, there have been eight presidential elections, and although the Republicans won three of them thanks to the vagaries of the American Electoral College system, they only captured more than 50% of the vote once, in 2004.
In the mind of some Democrats, demographics represented destiny. As a multicultural nation with a declining White population, Republican efforts to play upon the racism of White voters as in the past would inevitably alienate a majority of the increasingly diverse American population.
In turn, such an approach would entrench Republican support within the declining White minority, thus making Republicans even more dependent on fuelling bigotry and resentment to maintain dominance of this demographic. The victories of Barack Obama, America’s first non-White president, in 2008 and 2012 only seemed to reinforce that fundamental and potentially permanent electoral change was underway.
Enter Trump
The notion of the Democratic Party’s demographic destiny died with Trump. It did so first in 2016, although that loss could be written off as a fluke because of the Electoral College, given Trump’s failure to win the popular vote against Hillary Clinton. His nativist message and reliance on non-college-educated White voters, if anything, seemed to reinforce that his victory represented the last gasp of a dying version of the Southern Strategy.
It was the 2020 election, however, that most clearly previewed the result of 5 November 2024. Although Trump lost, despite his protestations to the contrary and efforts to overturn the result, it was a much closer outcome than expected. In particular, he gained boosted levels of support from non-traditional Republican voting groups, namely Black Americans and, especially, Latin Americans.
Overall, his vote rose in 2016 despite his unquestionable weaknesses as a candidate. Despite Republican increases, a solid majority of Black and Latino voters still went with the Democrats. Nevertheless, Trump’s gains demonstrated that his nativist brand and chaotic time in power were not as toxic as many in liberal America might have believed.
Southern Strategy with a twist
And now there is the political earthquake of the 5 November election result. On display was the Southern Strategy but with a twist. Trump played the nativist card as in the past, emphasising rampant criminality in the United States that his campaign connected with illegal immigration specifically but immigration more generally.
This explains his attack in the debate with Kamala Harris on legal Haitian immigrants in the state of Ohio, who he accused, to considerable ridicule, of eating family pets, a version of an anti-immigrant slur that has been around in the United States since at least the 19th century.
More significantly, his campaign raised the issue of inflation and its impact on the lives of working Americans, a message that found resonance with a wide swathe of voters, including those from groups that have not traditionally voted Republican.
Even with the economic emphasis, there was a nativist consistency in the messaging: immigrants represented convenient scapegoats for rising costs, particularly in relation to housing. The rise in Republican support in traditionally Democratic states, such as New York and New Jersey, speaks to the resonance of such messaging with a wide range of voters.
The combination of immigration and the economy allowed Trump, the businessman, to play to his perceived strengths: he had been warning about the southern border even before the 2016 election, and inflation had been significantly lower during his presidency than that of Biden. The reality that the high inflation was connected to the aftermath of the pandemic and not specific policies, given that several Western countries have been wracked by high prices, including Canada and the United Kingdom, did not matter when it came to the material conditions of voters.
The Trump campaign’s economic and immigration messaging allowed him to maintain the Republican’s traditional support with White voters. The real shift in the 2024 election was Trump’s success among Latino voters. There is a Republican history here, as George Bush, the last Republican to win a majority of votes at the presidential level, did so in 2004, and he also did well with Latino voters, although Trump bested that total.
Indeed, Trump set a Republican record by winning around 45% of their vote. The main reason was his economic message, but Trump’s warning about uncontrolled migration and its impact on resources also found favour with his new Latino voters. Polling demonstrated Latino concerns about the cost of living, the wider economy, and growing concerns about immigration.
Troubling message
Going forward, there is a profoundly troubling message from Trump’s victory for the Democratic Party. The assumption that various ethnic groups would automatically vote as a block for the Democrats in perpetuity has been fundamentally broken. Diversity exists in America demographically and politically.
Focusing on the 2024 election and the danger Trump posed to democracy and civil society, generally ignored a bedrock political truism ironically coined by a Democratic political strategist back in 1992. Explaining a core aspect of a winning presidential election strategy, James Carville quipped, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
