New American dream: Anatomy of a victory

Donald Trump's remarkable political win was based on a clever selection and aggregation of political issues, astute targeting of both the base and newer demographic groups, and a relatively focused and disciplined campaign machinery.

- Prashant Jha

Based on HT's reporting from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, its ground reporting from swing states in the past fortnight, and conversations with aides in Trump's ecosystem, it is clear that the Republican win in 2024 represents a much larger structural shift in American politics than Trump's 2016 win.

Indeed, Trump's win is akin to Narendra Modi's spectacular wins in 2014 and 2019 that legitimised BJP's ideological worldview, expanded the party's social coalition, and introduced a new way of campaigning. Let us examine each of these elements in the American PICE context separately.

The promise of a better life

Borrowing from another legendary Republican president Ronald Reagan, Trump's campaign rested on a simple question to American voters: was their life better off now, or was it better off under Trump? For many, the answer was that it was indeed better under Trump, despite the devastation caused by the pandemic under his watch, for which, like Indian voters, Americans forgave the government and attributed it factors outside anyone's control.

Quantifying how life was better boiled down to four factors.

The first was inflation. From the young and old, from Whites and Blacks and Hispanics, from men and women, on the campaign trail, HT repeatedly heard a common refrain; inflation in the past four years had been crushing. Gas, grocery, and housing prices cumulatively meant that Joe Biden's otherwise credible economic record didn't trickle down to what citizens felt in their everyday life. If there was a single driver of Trump's win, it was probably high prices. And the Republican campaign smartly focused on this question in most of its messaging, attributing blame to Biden and promising lower costs under Trump.