While the votes are still being counted and no official results have been announced, it is all but certain that Donald Trump has won the US presidential election. This is not so much a victory for Trump as it is a debacle for the Democratic Party.
With well over half of the ballots counted, Trump leads Kamala Harris by a commanding six million votes and a 52-46 percent margin. Four years after Trump attempted a coup to overthrow the constitution, he appears to have won election for a second term.
Though only two battleground states have been called thus far (North Carolina and Georgia) for Trump, it is evident that the Democratic Party and Harris are headed for defeat. Trump is outperforming his vote totals in the 2020 elections in practically every state. As of midnight, he has 246 electoral votes, 24 short of the 270 required to win, and leads Harris in Michigan by 170,000, Wisconsin by 70,000 votes, Pennsylvania by 180,000 and Arizona by 18,000.
Exit polls indicate a collapse of the Democratic Party’s strategy of combining a ruthless, genocidal imperialist agenda with appeals to identity politics. Trump made substantial inroads among young people who voted, winning a majority of young men as well as first time voters nationwide. State exit polling data shows Trump won a majority of Latino voters in Pennsylvania, a majority of young voters in Michigan, a majority of Latino men in North Carolina, and that he doubled his support among African-American voters in Wisconsin.
Turnout appears to have been high overall, and exit polls show an electorate that was motivated by profound social anger over economic conditions.
Two thirds of voters said economic conditions in the country are bad, with only 35 percent saying they are good. Just under half of voters said their own economic situation was worse than four years ago, double the number who said their economic situation had improved under the Biden administration. Seventy-five percent said inflation had caused their family hardship in the last year. Over 70 percent of voters said they were angry or dissatisfied with the state of the country, with only 7 percent saying they were enthusiastic. In Pennsylvania, voters were asked “How much change is needed in the way the country is run” to which 81 percent said “total upheaval” or “substantial change.”
Harris is underperforming even in some traditional Democratic strongholds. With 95 percent of votes tallied in New York City, Harris leads Trump with only 68 percent of the vote—the lowest margin for any Democrat since 1988. Harris lost in the heavily Arab-American neighborhood of southern Dearborn, Michigan, where there is massive opposition to the Biden-Harris administration’s involvement in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Biden won south Dearborn by 88 percent in 2020.
Republicans have won control of the Senate, flipping at least West Virginia and Ohio from the Democrats, with Republicans presently leading in five additional potential pick-up states. It appears that Democrats have taken back control of the House of Representatives, though final results will not be known for several days, at least. State referenda protecting the right to abortion passed in New York, Colorado and Maryland.
Commenting on the initial results, Socialist Equality Party National Chairman David North wrote, “Following the attempted coup d’etat of January 6, 2021, Biden and Nancy Pelosi insisted on the need for a ‘strong Republican Party.’ Well, that’s the one major objective that the Democrats have achieved. If Trump wins this election, he owes his victory to the Democratic Party.”
SEP presidential candidate Joseph Kishore commented, “If Trump, a fascist and convicted felon, wins, the responsibility will be on the Democratic Party, a party of war and genocide. It is impossible to oppose the danger of the far-right through this rotten party of Wall Street and the privileged, complacent upper middle class.”
The results of the presidential election have produced a crisis. Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon sent a memo to staff late Tuesday stating: “This is what we’ve been built for, so let’s finish up what we have in front of us tonight, get some sleep, and get ready to close out strong tomorrow,” reminiscent of a similar memo sent by Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016, when Trump was elected present. Aides described a “funereal” mood permeating a Harris event at a hotel in Washington D.C.