(Columbia, MO) — Despite what many polls suggested, Republican Donald Trump easily secured enough votes on Tuesday to become president. Several polls expected a tighter race between Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris. So where did Harris and the Democrats go wrong?
University of Missouri assistant political science professor Charles Zug takes a stab at that question.
“I’m not sure if there’s anything the Harris campaign could have really done to change the race. In some ways it’s remarkable that she did as well as she did. The incumbent President Biden is very unpopular. He’s been very unpopular for quite a long time now. The economy is one of the major issues for most voters. That shows up all the time when you have an unpopular incumbent and the economy is the major issue. Just the economy being people’s perceptions of their own wealth, those are almost impossible circumstances for a party to try to claw its way back,” he told Missourinet.
According to Zug, it was an extremely difficult environment for Democrats.
“Notwithstanding, all of Trump’s problems, manifest problems, it really was the Republicans race to lose. And they ended up basically doing what past elections would have told us they were going to do.”
He said an argument could be made that there were stronger Democratic candidates, such as Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. In addition, Zug said that Harris has historically not been a great campaigner and has had minimal experience at the national level.
As for the polling, Zug does not put much stock in poll predictions.
“The Republicans won the popular vote for the first time in 20 years,” he said. “Last time this happened was when Bush was re-elected in 2004. I didn’t hear very many people predicting that. But at the level of fundamentals, just sort of looking at how presidential elections in the past, I could have told you that the wins were definitely going in the Republicans’ favor.”
Unlike the 2020 presidential election, Tuesday’s election results were swifter than some people might have expected. Zug said he did not expect Trump to win as many swing states.
“Assuming that it was going to be a little bit closer in the swing states, I thought we would have to wait longer and see. In some ways, that was a more stressful outcome, in the sense that the longer it takes to decide, the more opportunity there is for candidates to try to essentially call the race themselves,” he said.
Zug said declaring victory before there’s an official outcome empowers armed groups to try and influence the outcome.
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