Analyzing the US Election Results

HERE'S MY TAKE

Raydio Pennings

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Election campaigns are a time to persuade. Election results are a time to listen.

Watching Tuesday’s American election results was frustrating. Most pundits seemed more interested in imposing their presuppositions than actually analyzing the results. The condescension towards voters was palpable. Andrew Coyne’s analysis that Americans said “yes please” to the complete litany of awful things Donald Trump personifies was typical. His prevalent tone – and he was not alone in this – was one of incredulity that voters didn’t see the same things he saw. “We should not count upon the majority of Americans coming to their senses,” he wrote before concluding, “All of my life I have been an admirer of the United States and its people. But I am frightened of it now, and I am even more frightened of them.”

But it wasn’t just the Trump critics who wanted to impose their conclusions on everyone. Celebrity evangelicals told NBC’s audience that Trump’s victory was the fulfillment of prophecy, “a key step in God’s plan to usher in a new era of Christian dominion around the world.” There was vitriol in response to the X post of Baptist pastor and theologian John Piper. Piper cited Deuteronomy 13:3 with the observation, “Having delivered us from one evil, God now tests us with another.” Prominent Christian author and pundit Eric Metaxas responded, “This is religious horsecrap” calling pastors like Piper “modern-day Pharisees and Sadducees, not knowing Truth from a lie.”

I suppose none of us is able to suspend our presuppositions fully (nor am I suggesting that doing so would be an unqualified good thing) but it seems more productive to reflect on the significance of the voting results that surprised so many.

America is Divided. As of Friday morning, the popular vote was 50.7% for the Republican ticket and 47.7% for the Democrats. This is the first time the Republicans have won the popular vote since 2004. What is striking is that going back to 1984, when the Republicans won by an 18-point margin, there has never been more than a nine-point gap. Typically the gap is actually less than five points. The U.S. system’s unique rules mean that popular vote doesn’t neatly translate into political power. However, there is little doubt that in political terms, the Republicans did better than most of the polls predicted. The claim for a convincing political mandate is legitimate in the circumstances but rhetoric that aligns your side with reason and the other side with idiocy is fundamentally problematic. A democracy that respects all of its citizens – and a Christian who respects all neighbours as fellow image-bearers of God – needs to take into account the divided voice with which the populace has spoken.

“An Indictment of the American Political Information Complex.” The best two minutes of analysis I saw came from CNN’s Scott Jennings. He provided his fellow panelists the litany of narratives with which the campaign had been interpreted and concluded, “We were just ignoring the fundamentals.” As someone who follows politics very closely, is keenly aware of media bias, and takes care to verify sources, I concur that during this election campaign, more than any other, I experienced more misinformation narratives than coverage. Three-hour-long Joe Rogan interviews and rallies that last close to two hours make it nearly impossible even for a devoted political junkie to review the primary sources for themselves. (Note, that if you want to rely on primary sources to get your information, it is probably prudent to listen to unedited presentations from both sides. Having done so, I can testify that respecting the ninth commandment and telling the truth about opponents was in short supply among both sides.) The downside of a media environment dominated by podcasts and substacks is that there is plenty of opinion, but scarcely any objective reporting on which to anchor those opinions.

“Living with Mistaken Stereotypes.” It is telling that there is no single group that tipped the electoral balance by moving from the Democrats in 2020 to the Republicans in 2024. It was all of them. When analyzing elections, I focus on the switchers. The majority of the population votes the same way every time. For them, the only issue is turnout. Assuming both sides manage similar voter motivations, elections are decided by the comparatively small number of vote-switchers. The results show Harris underperforming expectations (and the Biden results of 2020) among blacks, Latinos, rural and suburban folks, middle-income earners, and those with relatively low levels of education. While there was an expected gender gap (Trump with a 10-point advantage among men, Kamala Harris with a 7-point advantage among women), the result resembled the 2016 vote. Despite the Democrats’ focus on abortion, the issue doesn’t seem to have motivated women voters as strongly as the Harris camp had hoped.

There are 72 days to go until the presidential inauguration. Then we’ll have four years to try to figure out what all of this means. However, I have drawn a few early conclusions about a few trends that deserve particular attention.

My key question is this: what will happen to traditional checks and balances?

The American founders built a system where each branch of government can check the power of the other branches, leading to a balanced system. Come inauguration day, the U.S. will be in a relatively rare situation in which there is alignment among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. Add to that the unique trajectory of President-elect Trump’s politics, where he essentially took over the historic Republican party, remade it around his own persona, and effectively kicked out all of the so-called RINOS (Republicans in name only), and we have more concentration of power without checks and balances than I can ever recall.

In part we are here because American voters have concluded that their system of checks and balances is broken. So, they have put Donald Trump in charge of fixing it, unhindered by the checks and balances that would normally limit his actions. The institutional elites that have dominated American life for a generation are right to be concerned that many of them will be replaced. But nature abhors a vacuum. A new set of elites will take the place of the old ones. We can’t know yet whether this will actually be an improvement.

Accountability comes not just from the government, but also from the institutions that surround it. Media form a dominant accountability institution, although the process of media transformation is already well underway. This campaign was the first in which candidates used lengthy podcast episodes perhaps as much as, and maybe more than, traditional media coverage and ads to reach voters.

If the academy is the institution that seeds the ideas which hold governments accountable, it must listen to the message voters sent regarding militant “woke ideology” and “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” identity politics. Not only do voters seem irritated by these appeals, there is increasing evidence that employers are reducing their reliance on university credentials for the sort of workers they seek. It’s going to take some time for change to happen, but if I were a president of a mainline university, I would not interpret the election results as confirming business as usual.

Often overlooked as an institution of political accountability is the political party itself. It’s different in the U.S. than in Canada but in both cases, political parties are independent of government. They are the vehicles used to win power, but they remain private institutions. Parties also have long played a role in helping keep governments from going too far astray from their promises or their philosophical commitments.

While Donald Trump’s personal skills as a reader of culture and campaigner (which many, including me, underestimated) have helped him reshape American politics over the past decade, he is 78 years old, finite, and showing signs of decline. The next four years will be crucial in shaping what will come next. He got to where he is by remaking the Republican Party in his image and turning it into a vehicle to advance his agenda. How the party is structured to select and enable his successor is a crucial piece of its accountability mechanisms.

November 5^th marked the end of an election campaign, but the start of a new phase. We’d all do well to listen carefully to what Americans were saying through their votes. Progress to social flourishing in the time ahead will depend on how we respond to what we hear. That is something that all American institutions and their leaders should consider.

WHAT I’M READING

Nefarious Misinformation

The federal Liberals are getting ready to introduce a bill to force pregnancy care centres to declare that they don’t provide or refer for abortions (spelled out with specific, six-bullet clarity) in order to maintain their charitable status. Deina Warren has an excellent post noting that the government’s labelling of charities which hold positions it disagrees with as “nefarious predators” is a dishonest mischaracterization and an approach that “would wreak havoc on the charitable sector.”

Ending the War in Ukraine

There is uncertainty as to what Donald Trump’s election implies for the Russia-Ukraine conflict. There's lots of speculation in global capitals, including Kyiv and Moscow, regarding what exactly the promise to end the war within 24 hours of becoming president actually means. University of Toronto professor Aurel Braun’s essay, published before the American election results were known, helpfully unpacks how Russian President Putin has maintained his disruptive power. Braun then proposes a path forward that includes territorial concessions for Ukraine as well as granting it NATO membership.

Religion Catching Fire

I’ve linked stories about vandalism and arson on religious worship spaces before but Terry Newman’s National Post piece this week noting that 592 places of worship have been burned in Canada over the past 12 years is a stark reminder of an underreported story. A response to an official question from an MP revealed that the government has been collecting data on the burnings for some time and is aware of the problem, but has not taken any special steps to deal with it. Newman notes that in these 592 incidents, only 12 charges have been laid with only one conviction (as of January 2024).

German Political Turmoil

The coalition government leading Germany fell apart this week after the country’s chancellor fired the finance minister. The full implications are not clear, but it is certain that both Germany and Europe are facing further instability as a result. It would appear that Germany is headed for early elections next year, something that is a rarity in German politics. The finance minister belonged to the pro-business Free Democrats, who are sharing power in a government led by the Social Democrats and the Greens. Pundits seem to be suggesting that a growing polarization is putting increased pressure on all of the parties to reject compromise, making the preparation of a broadly accepted budget very difficult.

Shifting Political Landscapes

Jen Gerson, writing in the Toronto Star, dissects the results of the recent British Columbia election casting the results as a wake-up call for left-wing political activists. She notes that within the space of a year, B.C. Conservative leader John Rustad went from being “on the fringe of polite political society” to almost becoming provincial premier. “(A)fter several years of hectoring on contentious social matters, it’s simply no longer an effective electoral strategy to castigate conservative candidates as scary or crazy,” Gerson writes. Combining election data with policy adjustments on the part of progressive parties, Gerson concludes “that we are witnessing a substantive shift in public opinion on crucial issues that would have been considered third rails in Canadian politics only a few years ago."

MEANINGFUL METRICS

Ordinarily in this space, I link to a graph that I happen to find and which provides data that surprised me. I’ll confess that I looked this one up deliberately as I was doing some work on a trade issue and wanted to confirm some assumptions about the economic significance of Canada’s natural resources. I knew we were up there but being ranked fourth in the world with $33 trillion worth of resources is significant. Equally significant is how few of the top ten countries are Western democracies and what the implications might be both for access and demand in the context of challenging geo-political circumstances. I’ll admit to having underestimated the diversity of our resource assets, with oil, uranium, timber, natural gas, and phosphate all products of which we have in significant quantities.

TAKE IT TO-GO

The X Files

The letter X, apart from being the distinguished 24^th member of our alphabet, has a variety of uses. This came to mind watching election results, nostalgically recalling the old ways of doing things. Once upon a time, people simply marked their ballot with an X and then real people counted them while others watched. This all provided confidence in the integrity of the process. Even before I learned about the value of X as representing something unknown in my Grade 7 introduction to algebra, I would have been able to tell you the reason you mark a ballot with X is that it shows a deliberate attempt at making your mark. A single stroke, which might be accidental, would not accomplish the same thing.

I will not get used to calling Twitter X, no matter how much Elon Musk protests. In fact, I will appeal to the long distinguished pedigree of ‘X’ as the reason for resisting this trendy ‘X’ branding. No less an authority than Fast Company (a place for trendy takes if there ever was one) ran a feature on “how the letter ‘X’ became history’s most mysterious symbol.” Interestingly, its intrigue comes partly from the fact that it seems not to be in some of the most ancient alphabets. The first evidence of its appearance came from the Phoenicians around 1050 BC. It remains scarcely used as a letter; only 400 words start with X according to the Oxford Dictionary and just over 100 of them are common.

This is a wordplay take-away, not a Scrabble game, so I promise not to Xerox this approach for future farewells. (If this were a game, I’d be playing it on an Xbox anyway.) They tell me that xanthoma, in spite of being the X word that will get you 20 points, is actually a disease that uglies the skin so let’s just abandon the project. The Xs have been counted and predictions of the future are as varied as the sci-fi of the X-Files but that too is a series now completed. So with that we will exit, say farewell for another week, and look forward to being back in your inbox next Saturday morning.