Harris didn’t lose the election so much as Trump won
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. As Republicans prepare to take control of the federal government, Democrats are assessing what went wrong in the 2024 election and what they need to change. If they want to win future elections, it’s essential for them to get the story right.
The predominant view of the election among Democrats goes like this: While Kamala Harris’s campaign managed to recover much of the ground that Joe Biden had lost, her record and a handful of strategic mistakes limited her appeal, opening the door for Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Two bodies of evidence complicate this narrative. First, pre-election surveys consistently showed that Ms.
Harris’s ceiling was substantially higher than Mr. Trump’s, meaning a higher percentage of voters said they’d consider voting for her than him. Ms.
Harris’s eventual share of the nationwide popular vote was much lower than the percentage of these persuadable voters. Postelection surveys show that late-deciding voters broke decisively for Mr. Trump.
Ms. Harris failed to win over a small but vital share of the electorate, which was disproportionately younger, male, Hispanic and non-college-educated. Second, the election involved two different contests: one in the seven swing states, the other in the rest of the country.
In the latter, where advertisements and voter mobilization were scarce, support for Ms. Harris receded from the high-water mark Mr. Biden had established in the 2020 election—especially in blue states.
In both Illinois and New Jersey, Ms. Harris received about 400,000 fewer votes than Mr. Biden did four years earlier.
In New York, Ms. Harris fell short of Mr. Biden by about 600,000.
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