Election 2024: What Happened

Four elections and politics experts analyzed why Donald Trump prevailed over Kamala Harris in the presidential election during a November 12 panel discussion, What Just Happened: Voting is Over-What Did We Learn from Election 2024?

Hosted by the Sine Institute for Policy and Politics, the program was part of AU's the Civic Life initiative. It was moderated by Betsy Fischer Martin, SPA/BA '92, SOC/MA '96, executive director of AU's Women and Politics Institute and an Emmy-winning journalist.

Fischer Martin was joined by Molly O'Rourke, executive in residence in the School of Communication; pollster Kristen Soltys Anderson, cofounder of the research group Echelon Insights; Cheyanne Daniels, a race and politics reporter for the Hill; and, appearing remotely, Amanda Hunter, former executive director of the Barbara Lee Family Foundation and a regular speaker at AU's WeLead Campaign Training Program.

"I think we've all spent the last week wondering what the heck just happened," Fischer Martin said. She asked Soltis Anderson what is known about Trump voters.

"When you win a national election by a point or two, as it looks like Donald Trump will do and you improve amongst almost every demographic group, it really isn't easy to just pigeonhole the Trump voter into any one group," Soltis Anderson said. "You can't say he ran up the numbers among White non-college educated voters, which was kind of the narrative coming out of 2016. His coalition was much broader than that this time around. His coalition saw the biggest growth in places that are quite diverse, particularly in places where at least a quarter of the population is of Hispanic descent."

O'Rourke said public polling throughout the race remained consistent. "Big shifts were two or three points in one direction or another," O'Rourke said "So the structure of the stage was set really early. What did surprise me was Trump's growth across the board. Trump really did increase his support with Latino men and with men ages 18-29. That kind of outsize support was very notable."

Trump's victory didn't surprise her, Daniels said. Democratic strategists viewed Harris as the underdog, because she is a woman, because she is Black, and because she launched her campaign 100 days before the election, after President Joe Biden dropped out. But Daniels said she wasn't expecting him to do so well among Hispanic male voters. Trump won 47 percent of Latino male votes, according to AP VoteCast. "I was expecting a little bit of a stalemate between Trump and Harris when it came to that demographic."

Fischer Martin noted that the gender gap didn't materialize the way the Harris campaign anticipated, and that Trump peeled off a fair number of women voters.

Hunter said that interviews with voters showed many of them saw Trump as "rude" and "gross."

Still, many voters "don't need to like a man to vote for him," Hunter said. "Also, Trump is authentic, even though he may be offensive. We've seen in our work that authenticity is really important to voters."