How the deluded Democrats were trumped. It’s the democracy, stupid

Australian politics has formed an instant consensus on the “lessons learnt” from the US election result last week.

It’s that the cost of living was the decisive theme. So the Australian election due by May must be overwhelmingly centred on the cost of living. This is likely to be a misleadingly over-simplified conclusion. A deeper analysis yields different lessons.

Illustration by Dionne Gain

Perhaps the most surprising finding of the authoritative exit poll of the election is that the biggest noise in the campaign was not the biggest vote-decider. The Associated Press conducts the broadest exit poll of voters as they leave polling stations on election day after casting their ballots. It’s called AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of 120,000 voters. In the words of the Associated Press’ own report: “While inflation and immigration emerged as the dominant themes in this year’s presidential race, another issue was prominent in the minds of voters for both major candidates: the stakes for democracy.”

“Half of voters identified democracy as the single most important motivating factor for their vote.” The key phrase here is “motivating factor”. AP continues: “That was higher than the share of voters who answered the same way about inflation, the situation at the US-Mexico border, abortion policy or free speech.”

Concern for America’s democracy was the dominant force for two-thirds of the people who voted for Kamala Harris and one-third of those voting for Donald Trump, the survey found.

But hold on. If that’s right, surely Harris would have been the likely winner. Because “democracy” was a huge Democrat theme. They hammered the line that Trump was a “threat to democracy”. Harris even called him a “fascist”.

So what’s the catch? It turns out that Democrat voters’ definition of the threat to democracy was completely different to Republicans’ definition.

Donald Trump successfully convinced voters that illegal immigration posed a threat to America’s democracy.Credit: AP

A respected Democrat pollster, Celinda Lake, said that based on her work with focus groups during the campaign, she had found “the great irony is that Trump” – who was supposed to be the great threat to democracy – “won the threat-to-democracy vote”.

Because, she tells me, “there are multiple definitions of the threat to democracy, and a lot of people thought illegal immigration was the threat to democracy”.

Illegal immigration was an area where Trump was perceived to be the better candidate. He whipped up fear that unless it was halted “we won’t have a country any more”.

Lake’s finding is supported by a separate poll conducted before election day. September’s American Identity poll, conducted by Ipsos for Syracuse University, found that “a majority of Americans across the political spectrum” believed undocumented immigrants to be “a threat to democracy”.

In this way, Trump turned the Democrats’ attack back on Harris. Her more abstract talk of the threat to democracy was outdone by the more concrete threat perceived to come from an out-of-control border.

In Australia, the Albanese government has this in hand at the moment. But the first lesson from the US election is this: inflation is painful, but xenophobia unleashed is primal.

Second, while illegal immigration was dominant, there were other contributing and overlapping factors in the power of the democracy question. Harris was seen to be too extreme for democracy’s survival in her perceived support for identity politics.

She represented the left activist movement in which “progressive concern for the working class was replaced by targeted protections for a narrower set of marginalised groups: racial minorities, immigrants, sexual minorities and the like,” as Francis Fukuyama puts it in the London Financial Times. Young men resent being demeaned as inherently “toxic”; many voters resent the loss of traditional language and social customs.

The US news outlet Axios reports that both Harris and Trump supporters agreed that one of the most effective ads of the campaign ran: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

In Australia, Labor’s referendum on the Voice appears similarly to have alienated many voters by signalling boutique social issues as a priority over working people’s concerns.

And what about the economy? Inflation was felt across the spectrum in America but keenly so by anyone earning under $US100,000 a year. “The economy matters and the Democrats have a problem, especially with working people,” says Lake, who was one of the two main pollsters for the Biden campaign.

Many voters had an unrealistically rosy recollection of the economic circumstances under Trump’s presidency, says Lake, and partly that was anchored in a very specific memory: “In focus groups it came up time and time again that ‘Trump sent me a cheque for $US1800’” during COVID. Each cheque bore his signature.

But it’s not enough for the Democrats to change policies and campaign messaging, she says: “The policies are fine. The problem is: We don’t have an overall narrative and an overall brand. People often agree with our social policies, but they want to hear an economic plan, and we haven’t got one.”

This is the second lesson: If the centre-left party has no clear brand on the economy, it has no claim on power.

What happened to the Democrats’ great hope that abortion would prove a winning issue? Lake says that its power was blunted because many women thought it could be managed by states and, indeed, it was on the ballot last week in 10.

And what of Trump’s blatant racism and sexism? “Black men said they dealt with racism all the time and Trump wouldn’t make it any worse, but at least he’d get the economy going,” explains Lake. And sexism? “It’s very sad to say but racism and sexism are just a reality.”

Americans are disgruntled and voted for change, but not that kind of change; Lake, co-author of the book What Women Really Want, cites polling showing that only one American voter in five thinks that the country is ready for a woman president.

Overall, Americans believed Trump’s claimed advantages, says Lake. His promised “golden era”. Protecting democracy by defending the border, asserting the identity politics of the majority over that of minorities. Boosting the economy. But Americans weren’t convinced they should be afraid of his purported dangers and disadvantages. Lessons learnt?

Peter Hartcher is international editor.