Donald Trump’s populist appeal is a wake-up call for Democrats

Voters wait in line to vote at the Lowrey School in Dearborn, Michigan, on November 5. Trump won Dearborn, the nation’s largest Arab-majority city.

In an age of blurry political uncertainty, of endless unstable equipoise between two hostile tribes, Donald Trump’s sweeping return to power is a moment of sudden and unexpected clarity.

It is a potentially transformative political event, a breakthrough that should cement a fundamental realignment of US politics with implications far beyond America’s shores.

A man who loves superlatives can bask in them today.

With votes still being counted, it looks almost certain that Trump will sweep all the seven swing states that decide the outcome of the presidential election, giving him a margin of victory in the electoral college larger than any Republican since George H W Bush in 1988.

Again, pending final returns in the next few days, he is likely to have become the first Republican since George W Bush in 2004 to win the largest share — or indeed probably a majority — of the popular vote.

His momentum was so powerful that the Republicans took back control of the Senate, although continued control of a divided House of Representatives remained uncertain.

No one was expecting this. Polls - which yet again badly underestimated Trump’s support - had pointed to a deadlock with the vice-president, Kamala Harris, and a lengthy and perilous post-election standoff. Instead the Republican jumped into an early lead and declared victory not long after the last polls closed.

Yet much more important than the sheer breadth of Trump’s victory was its depth.

Trump’s share of the vote advanced in 90 per cent of America’s more than 3,000 counties compared with four years ago. According to exit polls he made deeper inroads into various demographic groups than any Republican has in decades.

He won the highest share of ethnic minority voters of any Republican candidate in the last 50 years; the highest share of Latino voters in more than 20 years; the highest share of black men for more than 40 years; and a sharp increase in support among young men.

His share of the vote jumped in urban districts such as the Bronx in New York, remote rural counties in Nebraska, in affluent suburbs in Florida and in struggling former industrial towns in Wisconsin.

Consider this for a moment: the man dubbed a “fascist” by his opponents is likely not only to have won an outright majority of more than 150 million voters but did so by attracting the votes, for the first time, of millions of black people, Latinos, Jews and young people.

While legitimate concerns about the man’s disdain for the niceties of law and order will be tested in a second Trump term, the sheer scope and scale of his appeal should force his critics to rethink so many of their worst assumptions.

Instead of constantly seeking to portray him as the next Hitler, Democrats and the media need to ask themselves why he manages to appeal to such a wide and diverse audience of regular Americans - many of whom used to vote Democrat.

Trump has managed to attract a multi-ethnic working-class constituency to the Republican Party as its populist economic message begins to resonate. The 2024 election offers emphatic evidence for that appeal.

To understand the realignment at work, take a look at the votes in the last few elections of Zapata County on the Mexican border with Texas.

The town is relatively economically disadvantaged and has a large Latino population. In 2012, when Barack Obama won against Mitt Romney, the Democrat won the county with 71 per cent of the vote. On Tuesday Trump won it with 61 per cent.

These are not racists or bigots voting for Trump to pursue vendettas against his enemies or minorities.

They are traditional voters, many of them former Democrats or who have become tired of being demonised and lectured to by political elites. This is Trump’s now vast and unexpectedly populist constituency, mobilised as one of the strongest political forces in recent American history.

The Times