The world can no longer ignore the Trump realignment
We are now in a Trumpian era of American politics – or at least we can say that he has definitely closed one era (or “party system”) and ushered in another. We know that Donald Trump has done what only one president has done before him (Grover Cleveland) and regained the office after losing it.
That however does not capture the extent or depth of his victory or that of the party he has transformed. Trump won this election in the face of intense hostility from the mainstream media, several convictions in the courts, and a queue of people who had served in his first administration saying that he was unfit for office. To win despite these headwinds was remarkable.
Moreover, in this election the Republicans not only regained the presidency with some ease, they also regained control of the Senate with a truly remarkable performance, and increased their control of the House so giving them a “trifecta” as Americans call it. On top of that Trump is now only the second Republican candidate in 34 years to win the popular vote – the last was George W Bush in 2004.
If you dig down into the undergrowth, this election saw advance on Trump’s part across the board, in all parts of the United States. The general pattern was for him to do even better than last time in rural and small town America, this counterbalancing a small move to the Democrats in some suburban areas.
However he made major gains in several urban areas, notably New York City and especially in both Georgia and Pennsylvania. In the latter, every single county swung to Trump, including metro Philadelphia while in the former he showed strong gains in parts of the Atlanta Metro. Both of these were key states that he flipped from last time.
Even more impressive was the way the Republicans broadened their electoral coalition. They increased their already large lead among men, with particularly large gains among younger men, and gained even more ground among people without a college degree, particularly men. Trump lost ground among college educated women but not by enough to make a difference.
The most striking result was his performance among minority voters – he got 45 per cent, a plurality – among Hispanic voters, and had the best performance among African American voters for any Republican since the 1960s. For the Democrats this defeat is much more decisive and severe than 2016. Compared to 2020 they have lost ground across the country, in every region and in almost every county.
Every demographic moved to the Republicans apart from the over 65s (the young had the biggest move rightwards), college educated white women (and even then mainly the single), and the top of the income range (Trump gained support from the rest of the income range).
This confirms that there has been a realignment of politics. We can now say that 2016 was a realigning election, when the new pattern of politics became apparent, while 2020 was a decisive election, which consolidated that realignment with a clear victory for one side. What is this new alignment, and how does it manifest in votes, as distributed by class, age, education, and geography?
It is essentially a divide between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. One side favours national states based on a clearly defined sense of national identity as the basis of political order and looks to the national state to act in their interests as they see them, by checking migration and taking an active role in economic matters while sustaining a strong welfare system for citizens. The other side favours an individualist and transnational kind of living and governance that makes identities plural and matters of choice rather than something one is born into.
The second side are, sociologically speaking, graduates (increasingly female) who work in globally traded parts of the world economy that are based in metropolitan core areas with transnational connections. The first are people who are not graduates and work in more locally traded products and services and live in suburbs, small towns, rural areas, and old industrial regions. This is the pattern of politics we can see everywhere and this is a clear victory for the nationalist side.
There are clear lessons for the Left and Right outside the US, including here in the UK. For the Left, three things: firstly, cheer up – money is not essential to political success. The Democrats massively outspent the Republicans to no effect. The idea that the wealthy can buy and control politics should be binned.
Secondly, the centre of gravity in the electorate of developed countries has moved clearly Leftwards – the old Reagan era Republican orthodoxy is gone. There is ample room for a quite radical Left economic platform – as the 2017 UK election also showed.
Thirdly that to win an election on such a platform the radical cultural progressivism on things like gender identity and identity politics more generally has to be dialled back or abandoned. You can and should defend the rights of migrants and make the case for migration’s benefits while more generally defending pluralistic ideas of national identity, but that can’t be done by condemning anyone who disagrees with that as prejudiced. Make a positive casserole instead.
For the Right the celebration of success should come with two points which may alarm some. Firstly, the new coalition Trump has forged is anti-socialist but also opposed to what we may call neoliberalism, a globalised economy dominated by finance. Trying out a replay of the Thatcher or Reagan playbook will lose those voters very quickly.
Secondly, with Trump’s election we are seeing the end of an international order founded on the idea that the United States is a proposition nation with a mission to remake the world in its image. Instead, we are now in a genuinely multipolar world with major differences as to what the best kind of government or social order is. There is need for serious thinking about what that means.
After 2016 many thought both the US and the world had entered a new political era. We now know this is true. The political class everywhere has to come to terms with that.