Knapp: An obligatory explanation column about the election
Thomas L. Knapp is a director and senior news analyst at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism, where this was first published. He lives in north central Florida.
I hate election explanation columns. I had no intention of writing such a column for two reasons.
One is that the explanation for this election (and pretty much every other election) is too simple and concise to reach op-ed length.
The other — and the one justifying this column — is that no matter how many times people get told, they’re back next time with the same tired excuses (e.g., “It was rigged!”) and/or crowing (e.g., “America likes us — it really likes us!”) and/or fake, superficial soul searching (“We didn’t explain ourselves well enough”).
Let’s get the simple, concise explanation out of the way first:
Donald Trump won the election by getting, and because he got, 312 electoral votes, which is more than the 270 required to win a presidential election.
Kamala Harris lost the election by getting, and because she got, 226 electoral votes, which is less than the 270 required to win a presidential election.
Yes, it really is that simple.
Yes, it really is that concise.
And, aside from one factor — the ability of the two candidates to enthuse their voters and get them to the polls — the reasons for the vote differentials are a dog’s breakfast of confusing details, each of which could have gone in other directions and changed the outcome.
To explain, I’ll look at Pennsylvania, a key swing state and, in many ways, a bellwether. Trump beat Harris there by about 140,000 votes out of about 7 million votes cast.
Why? Who knows?
Republicans thought Harris screwed up by not choosing the state’s governor, Josh Shapiro, as her running mate. They called her antisemitic for passing him over because he’s an Israel-supportive Jew. That may indeed have cost her some votes.
Democrats thought Trump had blown Pennsylvania after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” at a Trump campaign event. Persons of Puerto Rican descent constitute about 8% of Pennsylvania’s population. That may indeed have cost him some votes.
Then, there’s the U.S. Steel situation. The Pennsylvania-based company wants to sell itself to Japanese buyers. Many Pennsylvanians, especially among the company’s 20,000-plus employees, don’t like that idea. Both Trump and Harris oppose the sale, but protectionist voters seem to find Trump more convincing/credible on that issue.
It’s not that Trump explained himself particularly well to people on opposite sides of the issues. Nor did Harris fail to explain herself well enough to those voters. Voters disagree with each other. Someone wins; someone loses ... and, other than the vote counts, the “why” isn’t usually all that clear.
All we can really know is that, among those who voted, more than 98% supported some version of militarism and authoritarianism, which, in turn, implies that we’re never going to vote our way to peace and freedom.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
