Trump has prevailed and emphatically. How did this happen?

And so here we have it. President-elect Donald Trump has won a decisive victory over Vice-President Kamala Harris, in the 2024 US Presidential Election and made a comeback unlike any in modern US history.

Pundits are stunned at how well he has done, not just in swing states but across the US.

Of the seven crucial swing states, Trump won North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and was ahead in Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona, improving on his performance from 2020 – flipping Georgia and Pennsylvania, thus “narrowing the partisan chasms,” as CNN put it.

The US also served the rest of the world a masterclass in how election days are to be conducted.

Trump was sharp, focused and organised enough to run an “issues-based campaign”, at a time where economy was the most important concern, according to many voters.

The Harris campaign ran an attack campaign, where it was less policy-driven and more focused on bringing down Trump.

As it turns out, US voters (except for in overwhelmingly blue states and urban population centers like California and New York) don’t seem to care much for Beyoncé appearances, George Clooney editorials and Taylor Swift endorsements.

What they do instead care about are mortgage, gas and grocery bills. And Trump had an answer for them all.

He plans to raise tariffs, which critics say will give rise to inflation, but is also looking to cut corporate taxes to boost manufacturing and increase domestic energy production.

And Wall Street as well as global markets have rallied in response.

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Kamala Harris, for weeks, had no clear economic plan, except for tax credits for first-time homebuyers. She also spent more time attacking Trump than addressing voter concerns.

In the end, the economy won. Trump has been in the White House before, and despite his court appearances and inflammatory language, a lot of Americans felt that the economy was doing resoundingly better during his tenure than it is right now.

Yes, the entire world went through an inflationary correction following Covid – the effects of which are still being felt today. But despite the gains made by President Joe Biden, it just wasn’t enough.

About 31% of voters said the economy was their top issue according to national exit polling data from Edison Research.

And Trump was listening.

Those voters who identified the economy as their primary concern voted overwhelmingly for Trump over Harris - 79% to 20%. Somehow Harris’s campaign missed the mark on these key concerns.

Trump clinched 50% of the suburban vote and 63% of the rural vote, expanding on his margins and doing well across the nation.

He also also did resoundingly well among Hispanic and Black-American communities.

“It’s the economy, stupid” coined Bill Clinton’s strategist James Carville in 1992. It still counts today.

But it wasn’t even just that.

Closer to election day, many voters still felt like they did not know much about Harris, nor were clear on her policies on key issues. Perhaps she should have spent more of her truncated campaign time on addressing voter concerns.

Trump, on the other hand, spent more time on overturning non-Trump voters and bringing them into the fold, focusing on the LGBTQ, Hispanic and Black-American communities as well as young voters.

He also addressed global conflicts in a more resounding manner, claiming – rather confidently – that he would wrap up the wars in Ukraine and Gaza in short time.

Voters also remembered that in 2020, the US was not involved in this many skirmishes around the globe.

Trump had also initiated the drawdown of US troops in Afghanistan, in an effort to reduce the US footprint in conflicts around the world, which Biden inherited and carried out during his tenure.

That hasty exit was a resounding failure, resulting in the deaths of young US Marines and a Taliban takeover following almost immediately.

Trump has also previously advocated for NATO allies picking up their weight in aid to countries, in an effort to reducing the US war bill.

Harris’s missteps are well-documented and Biden’s failures gave the Trump campaign plenty openings.

As she replaced Biden as the presidential candidate, she failed to align herself with a different agenda.

She also failed miserably in addressing the concerns of about 200,000 Arab-American voters in the swing state of Michigan, who were already displeased with Biden’s unlimited flow of arms to Israel.

She also cancelled the Palestinian-American speaker scheduled to speak at the Democratic National Convention.

In fact, it wasn’t until last week, that she assured voters of securing a ceasefire in Gaza, weeks after launching her campaign and after refusing to meet with Arab-American community leaders.

Dearborn, a Detroit suburb, has a population of around 110,000, with 55 percent of residents claiming Middle Eastern or North African heritage.

Unlike Harris, Trump visited Dearborn, addressing a modest-sized audience last week.

His outreach to Michigan’s Muslim community secured endorsements from the Muslim mayors of Hamtramck and Dearborn Heights.

For these voters, any change was better than no change, it seems. For even if Trump doesn’t deliver peace in the Middle Eastern peace, Republicans may manage the economy better.

Student protestors at elite universities sounding their disapproval of the war in Gaza, were shockingly and aggressively shut down, some even arrested. Biden - a democratic president – failed to protect them and failed to address it.

A lot of these very students were also first-time voters.

At the end, those in battleground states, who eventually decided the outcome of the election, said overwhelmingly, that they just did not like the United States as it is today.

The economy, migration, crime won, as the nation experienced a voter backflip within the race, education, income and age brackets.

Harris was just unable to break through Trump’s hold on deeply red states and failed to convert undecided voters and under-represented communities.

As the Democratic party deals with an existential crisis and recalibrates, the US this morning, whether for better or worse, has woken up to change.

The article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Business Recorder or its owners