The year may be drawing to a close, but the extraordinary political events of the US election season will cast a long shadow over 2025 and beyond.

There have been many historic moments: since the unprecedented impeachment of President-elect Donald Trump in New York Hush money trialPresident Joe Biden’s sudden – and much late – exit from the race, led to two assassination attempts against the president-elect soon.

And of course there was Trump’s victory In November’s presidential election – a return to the top for a man many thought was politically finished when he lost the 2020 election and refused to accept the result.

As the dust settles on Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, several trends have emerged about what motivates and what does not motivate voters in one of the most influential countries in the world.

Commander’s victory?

Trump swept the battleground states, leading to his victory Map of the electoral college On an election night that was strikingly red.

He received 312 electoral votes, compared to Harris’ 226, and for the first time in his political career, he won the national popular vote, improving his 2020 results with many key demographics as well as in northern urban areas long considered Democratic territory.

But as the final results of the vote were submitted on December 11, the “strong and unprecedented mandate” that Trump claimed on election night proved to be a more subdued turnaround.

In the final count, Trump failed to obtain the support of a majority of American voters, as he received 49.9 percent compared to 48.4 percent for Harris. This is one of the narrowest margins of victory since 1968, second only to the narrow margin achieved by George W. Bush against Al Gore in 2020.

Seth Maskett, director of the Center for American Politics at the University of Denver, noted that this is a far cry from the 8.5 percent margin of victory achieved by President Bill Clinton in 1996, and further from the 18.2 percent margin achieved by Ronald Reagan in 1984. .

“This is still an era of polarization,” said Musket, author of Learning from Loss: Democrats 2016-2020.

He predicted less of the widespread realignment in the coming years and more of the entrenched partisanship – and incremental shifts – that have characterized the United States.

Masket also pointed to attempts by both parties to highlight support from across the aisle, particularly Harris’ decision to campaign alongside Republican hawk Liz Cheney.

“I think there was a time when that kind of thing was important,” he said. “But I think that’s in the past.”

Pocket book on “democracy”?

Trump’s victory may not have been exactly resounding, but it was illustrative, revealing a high tolerance among voters for Trump’s criminal record and his record of seeking to undermine American democracy.

It was already known that Trump Four criminal indictments — and one conviction — helped galvanize his base. This was widely expected, given the resilience Trump has demonstrated within the Republican Party and built his brand over years as a victim of a political “witch hunt.”

Nor did Trump’s efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 election, an extraordinary campaign that struck at the core of American democracy, make him a political pariah. In the months and years since his supporters stormed the US legislature, the Republican Party has rallied around Trump’s baseless claims that the vote was marred by fraud.

So why hasn’t the Democrats’ message been delivered?

“One possibility is that arguments about the threat to democracy are too abstract or esoteric to make sense to people,” said Jennifer Victor, associate professor of political science at George Mason University’s Schar School of Politics and Government.

“Another way to read this is that there are a lot of Americans who are not interested in democracy anymore, or are very attracted to … at least rhetoric that is consistent with more anti-democratic forms of government.” He said.

Then there is voters’ perception of the economy, an issue on which exit polls have consistently shown superior concerns about immigration, abortion, and even democracy.

While voters are struggling with the rising cost of living in the United States, macro indicators such as job creation and overall income growth have shown a relatively strong post-Covid-19 recovery. Victor said the difference between individual experience and perception and those larger trends will shape the political years ahead.

“The difference between what the macro indicators are telling us and people’s perception of the economy is actually one of the big stories this year,” Victor said.

“The narrative that Trump was putting forward in particular about the United States being in such a bad place is one that a lot of people seemed to internalize, even if it didn’t fit with some of the regular indicators that we might use to assess that,” she added.

Do American voters care about abortion?

Yes, but not necessarily in the way the Harris campaign — and Democrats in general — had hoped.

Like protecting democracy, abortion rights have been a defining platform in Harris’ bid for the White House. Federal abortion protections were rolled back during Trump’s first term by a Supreme Court dominated by his appointees.

Harris has repeatedly warned that Trump, if elected, would work with Republicans to pass a federal ban on abortion. Trump had softened his previous support for such a ban in the final stretch of the election, saying the decision should instead be left to state governments, although his comments did little to allay concerns.

There was a gender gap in the presidential election: Harris won 53 percent of female voters compared to 46 percent for Trump. But she is still far from the increase in the number of female voters that her campaign had hoped to achieve.

Perhaps what is most disappointing for Democrats is that voters in three states – Arizona, Missouri, and Montana – supported enshrining abortion in their state constitutions, while at the same time voting for Trump.

“I think some of this is likely due to shot voting, that is, individuals who only voted in the presidential race, but not in other ballot issues/contests,” said Kelly Dittmar, research director at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. University – Camden.

“But there may also have been some voters who felt that preserving abortion access through the direct initiative was enough for them to feel good about casting their vote for Trump because of bias or expectations on other issues, such as the economy,” she added.

“It appears that the bet that at least some Democrats were making on abortion being a major factor in driving votes did not work, as evidenced by the decline in turnout data,” she said.

Did US policy toward Israel’s war in Gaza matter?

The Democratic Party has faced a reckoning over the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israel amid the war in Gaza. This became especially clear Hundreds of thousands of voters cast “disengaged” ballots in protest of Biden’s policy during the primary season.

To be sure, Arab and Muslim voters were among many demographics turning away from the Democratic presidential nominee this year compared to 2020. Most obviously, Harris won in Dearborn, Michigan, the largest Arab-majority city in the United States. Just 36% of the vote, down from the 69% that Biden won in 2020.

Polls have repeatedly shown that a majority of Democrats support conditioning aid to Israel, but Harris moved closer to Biden’s policy when she entered the race.

James Zogby, director of the Arab American Institute, cautioned against underestimating the impact of this decision. He said this was likely one factor that contributed to the lower-than-expected support Harris saw from young people, among other groups.

“There is no doubt that it had an impact. We see it at the polls, we saw it in the turnout,” Zogby told Al Jazeera. “What we have seen is that there are groups that have been affected by this war, and by the Biden administration’s failure to act in a decisive way to deal with the humanitarian crisis.” And the genocide that was unfolding.”

“The net effect of that was a loss of votes among several constituent groups: Arabs, of course, but also young people and black and Asian voters,” he said.

He said: “What this translated into is people staying at home, people just saying it doesn’t matter, and people voting for candidates who did not vote but they are not voting for the president.”

Racial reorganization?

Finally, the 2024 election saw Democrats continue to lose ground with working-class white voters — while support from college-educated whites increased.

But the shift in support for Trump among Latino and black voters, especially men under 45, has stirred most analysis.

About three in 10 Black men under 45 voted for Trump — about double the share he received in 2020. Latino men in the age group were evenly split in favor of Trump and Harris, reinforcing a years-long trend away from Democrats.

Some analysts pointed to the results as evidence that the racial coalition long seen as the backbone of the Democratic Party no longer exists. Others have male This shift could have implications for federal laws intended to protect the voting rights of minorities, as these laws are generally based on the idea that certain groups broadly vote in unison.

However, William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, cautioned against getting too excited about any predictions of a broader party realignment. Although these shifts are important, they are still relatively gradual and could be a temporary phenomenon related to global trends.

“This may be a ‘wrong’ electoral trend toward Republicans for black and Hispanic voters, who still overwhelmingly prefer Democrats,” Frey told Al Jazeera.

“It is up to Trump to make this minority shift more permanent.”