Economy or Perception? The Real Reason That Took Trump To White House

Sandipan Talukdar

So Trump won and this belied all predictions about Kamala Harris’ strong chances to the White House. With this Harris has missed the historical chance of becoming the first woman president of the USA. Perhaps the strongest of all questions is how Trump clinched the victory and from the plethora of analyses on the matter, the issue regarding the state of economy of the country appears the most fervent one.

Do we still remember the phrase “It is the Economy, Stupid” that was promulgated by James Carville, the successful strategist for Bill Clinton’s election in 1992? The strategy of democrat Clinton reflected in the phrase perhaps has fueled Republican Trump in his march to victory. However, Trump manipulated it according to the changed scenario.

Was US economy doing really badly that drew voters to support Trump for his stance of making it great again? Trump’s simple question was whether the Americans were better off under the Democrats or under him. The response from most of the lower-income voters was overwhelmingly in support of Trump, precisely.

Harris’ campaign trial, on the other hand, had abortion and threat to democracy at the helm. Trump’s campaign was more focused on his opponent party than the candidate and the economic questions he raised left little scope for the democrats to recognize it.

However, the US economy, considering several matrices, was doing well— the GDP was on a boom and the economy was producing jobs. Ironically a substantial portion of Americans see it otherwise and a significant numbers of them blame the Biden regime and Trump’s opponent Kamala Harris for the inability to improve their financial conditions.

The pressing question that emerges is why people perceived Biden as failure on economic front despite the growing GDP and less joblessness? In exit polls, it came out that 32% of those interviewed across 10 key states chose economy as the primary concern about whom to vote. Interestingly, an overwhelming proportion of them (nearly 80%) voted for Trump. This gave him an edge over Harris who managed to secure 74% of the votes from those who focused on abortion. 46% of the voters opined that their families are worse off now than they used to be four years back (during Trump’s first tenure). Over 80% of them chose Trump to vote for.

24% of the voters said that the economy is better today and over 80% of them voted for Harris. Interestingly, amongst the 69% of voters who thought US economy is the same today as it was few years back also chose Trump with around 69% of them voted for him.

It is not merely the economy, but the inflation that voters of US have at their end and that impelled them to think that economy is not doing well. This portends that statistical data may not work all the time, it is what the people receive in their hands and US voters had really bad experiences in recent times. For them it did not matter what the data says about their country’s economy or the scenario at the job market.

Home prices were skyrocketing for at least more than a year, rent was even more grueling with over half of the renters had to spend more than 30% of their income. Inflation went back to normal but without helping prices to fall. In fact prices rose to an alarming level than they were a couple of years ago, it soared to 20% high in comparison to that when Biden took charge.

The reality is that despite boom in GDP, the income and wealth inequality in US reached a new peak post-COVID. The number of billionaires in US increased massively by 16% that is from 600 to 700 after the COVID. Federal Reserve’s massive liquidity injection ($4 trillion) after COVID made it happen according to experts.

It’s worth mentioning here that Elon Musk increased his wealth from $20 billion to a whopping $150 billion post-COVID. This may be a cause of his support to Trump during the election.

The combination of heightened inequality in income and never stopping inflation did contribute significantly in favour of Trump. In fact, this combination has drawn people to vote out incumbent governments in various democratic countries including UK, Germany, France and Japan. In Japan the Liberal Democratic Party that dominated for decades failed to gain majority in recent elections.

Kamala Harris did not shy away from promising to uplift the living conditions of US voters by reducing the cost but her conviction proved a frail as she belonged to the incumbent regime. Trump garnered the situation in his favour and channelled significant votes of the working class in his account.

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