By Zach Jensen,
Editor’s note Nov. 18, 2024: In the interest of clarity, the Decorah Leader has decided to modify a preposition within a quote from Aime Rovelo which was used as part of this article. Staff reviewed an audio recording of the presentation and found Rovelo was quoted accurately in the original publication. However, the phrase “coalescing around” now reads “coalescing (against)” in order to avoid potential confusion as to Rovelo’s meaning.
Two members of the college’s political science department, Orçun Selçuk and Aime Rovelo, said Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to former President Donald Trump during the Nov. 6 presidential election wasn’t a surprise in some ways. Selçuk and Rovelo, along with department head Carly Foster, presented “Making Sense of the Presidential and Congressional Elections” the night of Nov. 7 in the college’s Center for Faith and Life’s recital hall — each of them offering different perspectives on Trump’s victory.
“Donald Trump was the winner in 2016, and he almost won in 2020,” Selçuk said. “So, in that sense, I don’t find it very surprising. It happened because a significant majority — a significant portion of Americans — are not happy with the current administration, and they voted against the incumbent.”
Selçuk explained that one major contributing factor in Trump’s win was polarization — surrounding oneself only with others who agree with each others.
“If you are a college student (and a) Democrat, probably 80 or 90 percent of your friends are also Democrat — especially on a college campus like this,” Selçuk said. “If you’re a Trump supporter, you probably live in some zip code that predominantly also supports Trump.”
Selçuk went on to say Trump’s supporters believed the former president would win — and he won — whereas Harris supporters weren’t sure who was going to win, according to Selçuk, which also contributed to Trump’s victory.
“This includes Minnesota,” he said. “They nominated Tim Walz, but guess what? The Democrats in Minnesota actually went down. So, in that sense, polarization — the fact that we’re often surrounded by likeminded individuals who reinforce our existing views — instead of challenging them — is part of the problem.”
The second aspect that won Trump the election, according to Selçuk, was the President-elect’s ability to mobilize his followers.
“He does empower,” Selçuk said. “He does give a sense of belonging, and he is basically the voice of the people who feel marginalized — who feel left out. And, Trump is the anti-establishment candidate. More than 70 percent of the country was asking for change, and he represents the change candidate — whereas the Democrats represented the status quo. One of the things that probably hurt Kamala Harris was that she was asked multiple times ‘Is there anything you would change from the Biden administration?’ and she would say ‘Nope, not that I can think of right now.’”
Selçuk also believes Harris lost the election because of what he called a misunderstanding on the Democrats’ side on how to oppose populist leaders and because Democrats often feel justified in taking what they perceive to be the moral high ground. He said that, since the election, he’s seen many comments from Democrats on social media, saying the party may have been defeated but was “on the right side of history,” or were on morally solid ground while choosing a candidate they felt was honest and trustworthy — they’re the sort of comments Selçuk said only contribute to Trump’s message and his popularity.
“Democrats have a habit of assuming people voted for Trump, because they’re ignorant or because they only watch Fox News, and President Biden calling Trump supporters ‘garbage’ on Oct. 30 also didn’t help Harris,” Selçuk said.
Biden reportedly referred to Trump’s supporters as ‘garbage’ in response to a conservative comedian who called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage” during an Oct. 27 rally the Trump campaign held in Madison Square Garden.
Rovelo, a recent addition to Luther’s Political Science Department, shared specific stats showing several voter demographics during the election. Overall, Rovelo said, more voters from nearly all demographics, except women voters, voted Republican during the 2024 election.
“The voting behavior of small groups like this really matters, specifically because the electoral college is based on the unit rule, which often takes the position that electors are going to vote in favor of whatever the state popular vote prefers,” Rovelo said.
One phenomenon which Rovelo said worked against Harris was what she referred to as The Bradley Effect, which defines how polling between a minority candidate and a white candidate is distorted if voters don’t admit they won’t vote for a minority candidate.
“People are less willing to say they support a non-white candidate early on,” Rovelo said. “Obama overcame this is 2008 and 2012 — given the kind of campaign he ran on — which was a more interracial unity message, whereas Kamala ran on a similar message but emphasized fear and coalescing (against) something that could be very dangerous, which might not have had the same appeal to it that we saw with the 2008 and 2012 elections for Obama.”
Rovelo went on to say the concept of so-called issue owning — a specific political topic for which each candidate is known — also came into play during this year’s election. She said Trump owned the economy issue this cycle, which the Luther political science team agreed is the number-one issue a candidate can run on, while they said Harris’ issue wasn’t as specific.
“Democrats have traditionally claimed employment, unemployment, education and healthcare,” Rovelo said. “With this election, there was a big association — and similarly in 2016 — with the economy and Donald Trump, given his business background, but if that was something that had been emphasized more by the Harris campaign, that could have been something that would benefit her turnout.”
Foster, a Luther College professor of political science and head of its political science department, agreed with Rovelo. She said many of the election’s demographics contradicted what the polls predicted prior to Election Day.
“All of these patterns are things that were contrary to what a lot of the polling data was looking like going into this election,” Foster said, “which tells us that … there are systematic flaws in the way public opinion polls are conducted, and we know that.”
Additionally, the number of voters who cast ballots in this election was 1 percent lower than voter turnout during the 2020 election, which Foster said is a significant difference.
“Any predictions that were being made leading into this race — that there was going to be a big surge in voter turnout, that voters are being mobilized — that did not happen,” Foster said. “There are lots of other people who are going to investigate why that was, and there are lots of possible reasons: Populism, disaffection with the political process overall. It’s easier to persuade people to not vote than it is to persuade people to vote for someone.”
“Donald Trump was the winner in 2016, and he almost won in 2020. So, in that sense, I don’t find it very surprising. It happened because a significant majority — a significant portion of Americans — are not happy with the current administration, and they voted against the incumbent.”– Orçun Selçuk
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