The return of Trump

KAMALA HARRIS	226	🗽	312	DONALD TRUMP
Dist. of Columbia DC (3)	Colorado CO (10)	Wisconsin WI (10)	Nebraska-01 NE-01 (1)	Mississippi MS (6)
Vermont VT (3)	Connecticut CT (7)	Georgia GA (16)	Texas TX (40)	Tennessee TN (11)
Hawaii HI (4)	New York NY (28)	Michigan MI (15)	Arkansas AK (3)	Alabama AL (9)
Massachusettes MA (11)	Maine ME (2)	North Carolina NC (16)	Kansas KS (6)	Arkansas AR (6)
Maine-01 ME-01 (1)	Illinois IL (19)	Pennsylvania PA (19)	Missouri MO (10)	Kentucky KY (8)
Maryland MD (10)	New Mexico NM (5)	Arizona AZ (11)	South Carolina SC (9)	South Dakota SD (3)
Washington WA (12)	New Jersey NJ (14)	Nevada NV (6)	Indiana IN (11)	Oklahoma OK (7)
California CA (54)	Virginia VA (13)	Maine-02 ME-02 (1)	Montana MT (10)	Idaho ID (4)
Delaware DE (3)	Minnesota (10)	Ohio OH (17)	Utah UT (6)	North Dakota ND (3)
Oregon OR (8)	Nebraska-02 NE-02 (1)	Florida FL (30)	Louisiana LA (8)	West Virgina (4)
Rhode Island RI (4)	New Hampshire (4)	Iowa (6)	Nebraska NE (2)	Wyoming (3)
		Flipped states in BOLD		Nebraska-03 NE-03 (1)

US ELECTIONS 2024

DONALD TRUMP will return to the White House in January after sweeping all seven key swing states to take an unexpectedly comfortable victory over Kamala Harris in the 2024 United States presidential election.

Mr Trump flipped the three Rust Belt states - Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - back into the Republican column while he also regained Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and held North Carolina to finish on 312 Electoral Votes.

In his victory speech, Mr Trump declared: "This was a movement like nobody’s ever seen before - and frankly, this was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time. 

"There’s never been anything like this in this country, and maybe beyond."

On a great night for the Grand Old Party, the Republicans also retook the Senate with gains in Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia - and then completed a powerful trifecta in Washington DC by retaining its narrow control of the House of Representatives. 

Undoubtedly then, all of this makes for extremely sobering viewing for the Democratic Party of incumbent President Joe Biden and its 2024 candidate Ms Harris.

But Mr Trump's victory this time did not register quite the same level of shock as his victorious emergence on the political scene in 2016 when he defeated Hillary Clinton. 

After all, the Democrats were defending a pretty weak position and made it even worse by sticking with the clearly ailing Mr Biden for far too long.

The final straw for Mr Biden came in the first presidential debate in Atlanta, Georgia on 27 June, in which the President was criticised, even by some of his own supporters, for providing rambling and incoherent responses. 

So it was to the great surprise of nobody that President Biden formally dropped out of the race on 21 July. 

Vice President Ms Harris was hastily left to pick up the pieces - although, by the time she officially accepted the Democratic nomination on 5 August, there were only 92 days until polling day.

Yet there was genuine initial hope - though it was perhaps also blind hope - that Ms Harris might be able to pull off victory.

After all, the much-speculated Republican red wave in the midterm elections in 2022 never really emerged - and much of the reasoning behind that was the surge in young female voters following the effective repeal by the Republican-leaning Supreme Court of abortion protection under Roe v Wade. 

However, abortion was ultimately rated as the most important issue in the general election by only 14% of all voters, well behind the economy which was cited by 32%. 

Now, Mr Trump actually inherits a growing economy in terms of Gross Domestic Product - but GDP will have meant very little to the average person in the critical Rust Belt states. 

Instead, high inflation early in Mr Biden's term meant voters had seen his or her basic food and gas prices increase significantly over the past four years.

"It's the economy stupid" was the mantra of the Bill Clinton campaign upon his election in 1992 following a similar period of high inflation - and there is no reason why such a fundamental element of politics will have changed. 

Border security was another issue with which the Democrats struggled to convince after official figures confirmed a record number of 2.2 million unauthorised southern border crossings into the United States in 2022.

There was little solace either to be found for the Democrats in terms of their foreign policy record with the start in the collapse of Mr Biden's approval ratings in August 2021 coinciding with the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan which resembled the Fall of Saigon at the conclusion of the Vietnam War in 1975.

Meanwhile, the conflict in Ukraine has largely ground to a bloody stalemate - and, to cap it all, the Middle East has exploded once again into a scene of death and destruction with the American-backed Israelis indulging in a collective punishment of the Palestinian people following the appalling Hamas terrorist attacks on 7 October 2023.

For his part, Mr Trump inevitably produced plenty of rabble-rousing while staying short on detail - and indeed the key moment during his campaign arrived unexpectedly at an open-air rally in Butler, Pennsylvania during which he was subject to an assassination attempt. 

It produced one of the most notable political photographs of recent times - and, having survived, it seemed only to add further to the resolve of Mr Trump and his supporters. 

Unsurprisingly, there has already been a ton of articles forewarning the devastating things which now will occur upon Mr Trump's return to the White House - but history suggests a far less dramatic turn of events. 

After all, Mr Trump will be 82 years old by the end of the term, and spent much of his first stint playing golf or involving himself in all-too-frequent and largely pointless personality clashes. 

There were also two federal government shutdowns, despite the Republicans also controlling Congress, as Mr Trump's agenda was far from merely waved through. 

It is not yet clear if an ageing Mr Trump will be more committed to the day-in, day-out business of running a government. 

Unquestionably, though, this was a truly devastating loss for the Democrats - worse than the 2016 defeat which came down to a narrow Electoral College loss based on a handful of votes in a few places. 

Instead, this time, Mr Trump - despite being outspent by $1.2 billion to $750 million - won pretty convincingly, and became only the second Republican (after George W Bush in 2004) to win the popular vote since George Bush Snr in 1988.

Mr Trump improved his standing across the board - with black voters, Latinos, and young voters - as the United States actually became somewhat less racially divided by party. 

By contrast, Ms Harris underperformed recent previous Democratic candidates in virtually every county including the Latino-heavy Miami Dade in Florida which Mr Trump won by 10%, having lost it to Mrs Clinton in 2016 by 30%.

The likes of Florida, Iowa and Ohio - all of which were considered to be in the toss-up category at the turn of the Millennium - are now firmly Red states, while Ms Harris was reduced to single-digit wins even in Democratic strongholds like Illinois, Minnesota, and New Jersey. 

To be honest then, the return of Mr Trump felt inevitable - and, having been ousted from office so convincingly, the greatest concern for the Democrats really now should be over who and what comes after him.