SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
More than 150 million Americans voted in the presidential elections. Donald Trump won a resounding victory - the popular vote, as well as the Electoral College. Republicans also won control of the U.S. Senate and possibly the House too. Numbers are still coming in on some races. Ron Elving joins us. Ron, thanks so much for being with us.
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: Donald Trump has been impeached twice but not convicted. He has been convicted by a New York court of paying hush money to a porn star, a felon 34 times over, denounced by several of those who worked with him most closely as president as dangerous. How did he win this election?
ELVING: He held onto his voters from 2020, voters who were not deterred by all the negatives. He also won over a lot of Joe Biden's voters from 2020. In state after state, people who voted for Biden in 2020 said they were disappointed in what they got. And it was mostly about the economy - inflation, groceries, and gas. But there was also fear about immigration and crime, which Trump's ads constantly linked together.
Harris was able to revive Democratic spirits late last summer, but not able to reassemble their winning coalition from 2020. A substantial fraction of the 2020 Biden voters seemed unimpressed with Harris as an alternative. Those defections were enough for Trump to reverse the tiny margins by which he had lost last time in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. He did still better in the other swing states we've been watching, and it only took a handful of percentage points to flip these closely divided states.
SIMON: And Latino and Black voters didn't vote the way Democrats expected them to, did they?
ELVING: Her numbers fell especially far among Latino men, who actually voted for Trump in the majority - slightly over 50% - even as more than 60% of Latina votes went for Harris. Inflation is especially cruel for working-class women and people of color, whose wages don't rise as fast to compensate for higher prices. We know Trump does well with males without college degrees, especially white males, but not only white males. And while he lost the under-30 voters, even the under-44 voters, overall, he did have an edge among first-time voters.
SIMON: And Democrats hoped issues other than the economy would be most important.
ELVING: They hoped their voters would show their devotion to abortion rights, as they have in referenda about abortion around the country. But Trump inoculated himself somewhat on this by insisting he would leave it up to the states. Democrats also counted on disqualifying Trump for his criminal convictions or his refusal to accept the 2020 election results. But Trump has managed to delay the day of judgment in court case after court case, cultivating a certain martyrdom and talking about political prosecution, even while he evaded the consequences. Also, Democrats had hoped to expand their advantage among women, but while women were slightly more likely to vote than men, their preference for Harris was just 8 points, while men preferred Trump by 13.
SIMON: And, Ron, what do you foresee in the first few weeks of a new Trump presidency?
ELVING: The tax cuts that were his big legislative achievement in 2017 have to be renewed next year. He'll move quickly on that package - good news for many of his major backers, as the cuts are heavily weighted to the upper-income tier. He may also move fast to begin his big tariff regime against China and others. In essence, these are taxes on imports that may well be passed on to consumers. But Trump thinks they will bring jobs back to the U.S.
Then he may start his promised program of deporting immigrants in the country illegally - millions of them, he says, although how this would happen and where they would go is unclear. And we can expect him to seek new funding from Congress to finish building his wall on the southern border.
SIMON: Donald Trump won almost 25% of the vote in Chicago, 30% of the vote in New York. At the same time, voters in New York City, voters in California approved a tough new crime bill and defeated progressive prosecutors in Los Angeles and Alameda County. What's going on in Democratic bastions?
ELVING: There's been a mood shift in many cities, Scott. This week, there was a clear evidence that the justice reform movement of four years ago had run its course. Concerns about crime were right up there, right after the economy and immigration positions, pulling even longtime Democratic voters away from their moorings.
SIMON: Have Democrats become the party of the elite?
ELVING: Democrats were once the party of the farm and then the factory floor. Now they're called the party of the faculty lounge. That's how associated they've become with higher education and how distracted from what was once their bread and butter.
SIMON: NPR's Ron Elving, thanks so much.
ELVING: Thank you, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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