How Donald Trump Flipped Key Swing States and Won the Election

HARI SREENIVASAN: Christiane, thanks. Astead Herndon, thanks so much for joining us. Donald Trump retook the presidency last night by going through several different battleground states and flipping them back. He took back Wisconsin, took back Georgia. Let’s talk a little bit about Pennsylvania. A place where Democrats and Republicans spent so much time and effort trying to win. Donald Trump won that.

ASTEAD HERNDON: Yeah, and I think that was really for the Trump campaign, kind of the crown in the jewel. They knew that they had a better opportunity in those kind of Sunbelt states, Rust Belt states, places that were prioritizing immigration and the data had told them that there was an o a real opportunity there where the Harris campaign thought that they had a kind of impenetrable wall was in those Midwestern states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and particularly in the last couple weeks where they were really pushing the idea that late breaking undecided folks were really going towards the Democrats. I think what we saw though is a kind of national story that includes Pennsylvania, but really is consistent everywhere else. It’s an unpopular administration, an unpopular democratic party, and they were paying for it up and down the board. Now, you had in Pennsylvania, Bob Casey run a point or two ahead of Kamala Harris, and I think that just speaks to how there was a kind of 2020 drop off. And a lot of that came from rural areas. You saw, you saw Donald Trump really run up the numbers outside of the cities, and Harris was frankly unable to make it up in the suburban and urban areas. They were looking for Philadelphia all throughout the day, and it just frankly, could not make up a gap that was larger than they expected.

SREENIVASAN: You know, you, you went out with people who were knocking on doors for some of your reporting. What were the conversations that you heard like?

HERNDON: Yeah, we were focused on Philadelphia, particularly with people who were low propensity voters, and we went out with the Working Families Party and intentionally chose an outside group because we wanted them to be a little more honest about some of the struggles that Democrats were having in these communities heading into the election. And frankly, I, I think that we saw some of this play out. It wasn’t actually a turnout problem among some of these cities. I’m thinking about places like Milwaukee County in, in Wisconsin. But you saw Donald Trump increase his vote share, which speaks to a kind of persuasion point that there is some group of people who frankly just found him more appealing this time. And I think that that actually tracked with some of the, some of the canvassing. We went out and saw, we ran into folks who were talking about Trump on the economy, but mostly there was a distaste with Democrats, a feeling as if the party had kind of left them behind and to become a symbol of the status quo. And I think that’s frankly, the mantle of change. Democrats left on the table in this election, and Donald Trump seized it. 

SREENIVASAN: Astead, you mentioned Milwaukee, and I know you did some reporting out in Madison, Wisconsin as well. What were the college students that you spoke with there, what were, what were their concerns?

HERNDON: Yeah. We went to Madison, Wisconsin for a recent football game to specifically look at the gender gap among young people. Data was telling us that young women were going more and more democratic as young men were going more interested in Donald Trump. And we look back at Dane County, the place where Madison is last night, and that, some of that we think will probably start to bear out. We don’t have gen gender kind of breakdown split Yes. Yet, but you saw Donald Trump do, do better in the county that had the college, which I think speaks to some of those younger men being pulled closer and closer to Trump. When we talked to them, they were really explicit that Trump was a kind of model of masculinity, not just the businessman, but even that kind of bullying style, even that insulting style. It was, frankly for some of them, the the point of Donald Trump that he offended so many others in their lives.

They were trying to thumb their nose at establishment or even some women in their lives. And they liked the fact that Donald Trump was a vehicle for that. And so I think that we had to be I think, I think that kind of the Trump strategy on this army of young men or an army of bros and podcasters as Elon Musk and Adin Ross were shouted out on stage last night, seemed a little implausible a couple years ago. But the same group that they shouted out on the stage, the Nelk Boys, a a podcasting group that has a bunch of followers. They were in Madison the day that we were there, and you could see the mass amount of people who showed up to this place to register to vote just to get a picture of them. And so I think that there is something different that has happened among this kind of YouTube TikTok generation of young men who feel as if a version of masculinity has been presented by them, by conservatives, and that the – what liberals are doing has been bashing that idea. Like the idea that tox masculinity was toxic, came up over and over. And I don’t think it’s universal. We met a lot of young men who said they were voting for Harris felt very comfortable with the idea of protecting abortion rights and things like that. But there has been a shift toward Republicans, among young men, and I think, you know, at least you can say the Trump campaign last night thinks that helped them win.

SREENIVASAN: Astead, reproductive rights were literally on the ballot in multiple states. This was supposed to be the issue that galvanized so many people on the left. Did that pan out?

HERNDON: Well, I think we can definitely say that reproductive rights was not prioritized above other issues. And I don’t think it’s really a question of the left. What what we see is that reproductive rights was meant to try to cut through, I think particularly in the suburbs, for particularly get people a permission structure to vote for Harris and, and then tried to cast Donald Trump and Republicans largely as extreme. But one of the things that was true throughout kind of our travels is that people understood that Donald Trump had a different position on abortion rights than the rest of the party. And they, he – they would cite that often as a reason why they could support some abortion rights. And they did not think Donald Trump was like an existential threat to that freedom and still support him at the top of the ticket. And I think we saw some of that yesterday.

I don’t think it’s, if that the special elections that we saw from Democrats over the past two years were, were false or some mirage or something. But that the composition of people who vote in a presidential election are just prioritizing that top of the ballot over everything else. And, and frankly, the democratic argument that abortion rights would outdo the economy, would overcome inflation, would, would overcome people’s concerns about immigration that clearly did not pan out to be true. And, and so I think it’s going to be interesting where both parties kind of go next tier too, because Donald Trump may have kind of flirted with a different abortion position the rest of the party, but his ecosystem is still very anti-abortion in the way that’s pretty outside of the way, outside of the median voter in the country. So I think both sides kind of an open question, what to do going forward, but Democrats thought it was a kind of secret electoral sauce that it didn’t turn out to be.

SREENIVASAN: Well, let’s talk a couple more states in particular Georgia in 2020, famously Donald Trump was asking then Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find 12,000 votes. Right. And here we are last night looks like he’s gonna have a margin of a hundred thousand. Yeah. How, how do you assess that?

HERNDON: Yeah, it, it, it’s a consistent story. I mean, the rural counties of those states across the country really did turn out, we know for certain there is a type of voter in this country who comes out for Donald Trump and basically no one else. And I think that we had had hints of that before, right? This was a big story in 2020, also. But I think there was a, a, a a, an idea, and I think I had this question about whether Trump was a candidate who can kind of summon that mass turnout again and what this version of Donald Trump do, that same level of motivation as previous ones. And they did frankly, and was able to grow margins in places where traditionally Republicans had done well. What Democrats had hoped was to model, you know, not only what Biden did in 2020, but what Raphael Warnock did in the Senate race, and be able to pick off some of those folks in the more affluent, more diverse Georgia suburbs as they kind of maintained a growth in cities.

And I just think, as you see in a lot of those battleground states, the numbers didn’t add up. They didn’t persuade enough people. And also even as they raised their turnout in some of the metro areas, some of those people were, seemed to be, have been persuaded by Donald Trump. He, he’s wearing a bigger share of folks even in democratic areas. And so that’s what I’m saying is that it, it’s not just the rural turnout, it’s not just suburban persuasion. It’s not just you know, his ability to pick off some black and Latino working class folks. It’s that he did each of ’em this time. And I think that’s a much different story than 2016. You could have kind of told yourself in 2016 that this was a story that was only about the other side’s weakness.I think you have to say this is also a story of Donald Trump’s electoral strength.

SREENIVASAN: You know, that strength is also on display in North Carolina. And I wonder, was Hurricane Helene an event that changed that political landscape?

HERNDON: Yeah, we were out in North Carolina, particularly Western North Carolina, where a lot of the storm damage was. And it was the early days of early voting, and there was some kind of rumored fears that Republicans weren’t gonna be able to turn out the same numbers because of that damage. But when we were there, they told us that they felt it had the opposite effect because the hurricane had struck some of these areas. And frankly, the misinformation, or, or I would say just the, the narrative was high, that the Democratic governor and the State House had abandoned them. A narrative that Donald Trump pushed when he came to those areas. They were trying to use it as a motivating piece for people to get involved. And even in the places where we were early vote totals were still where they wanted it to be as the storm recovery was still happening.

And so I think that there was sometimes a presumption that you know, it would stop folks from coming out because of the logistic concerns when the Republicans were there, were saying, no, it’s actually motivated more people to come out because it’s, it’s been such a talking point and conservative media and from Donald Trump. Now, again, we know those things were not based, in fact, he was calling, he was saying the FEMA workers were, the FEMA had no money, that they, Democrats weren’t actually coming to these areas, that they were letting these people kind of starve. That wasn’t the truth. But it did set in so much so that when we were going to early polling locations, folks were definitely repeating those messages back to us. And, and so I think in North Carolina you have basically the assumption was that Republicans might be struggling there uniquely as Democrats and Democrats could possibly seize. And, you know, that just didn’t, that didn’t come to fruition even as the state rejected the Republican governor, democratic attorney general candidate. Right. There was clearly still a lot of folks who split their ballot between Josh Stein for governor and Donald Trump for president.

SREENIVASAN: Let’s finally talk about Michigan. Right now as we’re having this conversation. Trump still leads by about a hundred thousand votes again, which a hundred thousand is up for interpretation. But, you know, is it the, the union vote? Is it the Arab Muslim vote? Which he thanked by the way, in kind of his, one of his, his acceptance speeches.

HERNDON: Yeah, I mean, you did see, I think I’m looking at Dearborn and a couple of other of the majority Arab areas. You did see you know Donald Trump grow a growth share of basically Democrats drop off. But it’s hard to know if that’s determined. To your point, it’s, we don’t know where that a hundred thousand exactly comes from. And if it was a story just about Michigan, then I think we could say that this was something that was specific to the administration’s policy in Palestine and Gaza. I, I, I guess I don’t, I don’t see that because it’s such a national story that seems like Michigan was swept in with it. But I will say that, you know, Elissa Slotkin and that Senate race, Tammy Baldwin over in Wisconsin, these were people who were flagging some warning signs, but we’re not, were still thought to be ahead.

And it really, I think just speaks to just the, the, the, the sense of ma– the sense of malaise.
Well, let me say something different. One thing that I think shows up in some of the models is that there is a lot of evidence for something we saw in polling that was kind of questioned to be true, which that Democrats did better in lower turnout, higher education elections. And that once you – more people voting might be better for Donald Trump. That’s something that kind of bore out in this election. It was not folks staying at home. That was a, a big issue. It’s that as more people came, the type of people that’s the different voter for this cycle and was different from midterms was in, was incredibly more likely to vote for care, to vote for Donald Trump than Kamala Harris. And, and so  I just think that that you know, there was a feeling that apathy was the only thing that could get Trump elected when in reality he was able to summon more folks. And I think there was a little of a failure imagination to believe that he could still kind of get that movement together.

SREENIVASAN: So when the Democrats go back to try to do the postmortem, what’s the laundry list of things that they’re gonna have to confront here? Is it just sort of structurally, like when you go, do you go back long enough to say Joe Biden deciding to run again for office kind of tied, right, this candidacy to the administration as you mentioned? Or are there, you know, a long list of things here, but what do they have to do to try to reconfigure themselves to have a better shot next time around?

HERNDON: I think we have to say that the, some of the, the, the core assumptions that Democrats rested the last four years on have been proven false. So they could not good policy their way to electoral success as some of, as they thought Donald Trump was not inherently unacceptable. Democracy was not a unique uniting voting issue. Abortion rights were not a unique uniting voting issue when it came to the presidential election. Some of these were things that they were telling themselves that have just not borne out.
I would say though, that all of that is downstream from their biggest problem, which was insulating themselves from the reality of the administration’s unpopularity and the feeling among the public that Joe Biden was not set to serve a second term. And in my opinion, for them to ignore that evidence and for two years to tie themselves more closely to Biden to block out the idea of the primary, all of that becomes the biggest factor.

Because take this, for example, you know, when Kamala Harris had the candidate switch and she was being asked to kind of clarify positions from 2019 to 2024, I think there was a sense that this, this rested on this individual candidate as a flip-flopper. You didn’t know what she believed that really can, that really set in some of the public. But a lot of Democrats have really recalibrated where they were from that 2019 primary until now. So much so a lot of ’em kind of see that primary as wildly out of touch where, where the rest of the electorate was. Now, if Democrats had had an open primary in the lead up to this, then it’s the whole party calibrate, recalibrating that message. And it doesn’t just fall on an individual Kamala Harris. That’s why it’s important that even if she would’ve won a primary, that Joe Biden would’ve stepped out of it allowed an opportunity for them to have a new message. (23:58): And for the candidate coming into the general election to be comfortable with some distance from Biden, their refusal to do that at every step years ago or even after the candidate switch, which she did not want to break on things like Gaza or inflation or, I think all of that now looks so much worse in retrospect. The deference to kind of Biden looks worse in retrospect. And, and so I, I guess, you know, to, to borrow the Harris phrase, this election exists in the context of all the things around it. Yeah. And so I think that, that that buildup to this moment mattered just as much, if not a lot more, in my opinion, than the last two to three months.

SREENIVASAN: Yeah. Let me ask similarly about the Republican party. At this point, you know, there have been there have been a steady drumbeat of Republicans for the last four, six years saying Donald Trump is an aberration at this point. Is this not completely Donald Trump’s party?

HERNDON: Oh, yeah. That, that question is passed. I think it’s Donald Trump’s politics. I think the Democratic Party will recalibrate in relationship to Donald Trump. I think that we,I just think that if there was anyone who thought that the party of yesteryear was returning, they should put that, that notion should I, in my opinion, was dead before, but it’s come now, certainly gone. There, he, they will take this as a lesson that you do not need the Nikki Haley’s on the trail, if you have the Elon Musks, you know. That you can kind of rally this army of ideology and traditional Republicans will come over to you. And that you don’t need to placate that wing of the party. And so if you are a kind of tra, more traditional conservative, if you are Mitch McConnell, I think you have to understand that that time – the, the ability to see this aberration is gone because he will reenter Congress. I mean, he will reenter the White House and he will do so with a Congress that has been reshaped in his image. And that is a pow – that is a kind of uniform party around him in a way that wasn’t even true back when he was president, back when he became president eight years ago.

SREENIVASAN: Astead Herndon, host of “The Runup” podcast for the New York Times and political reporter there, thanks so much for joining us.

HERNDON: Thank you for having me. Really appreciate it.