On 5 November 2024, either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will be elected the forty-seventh President of the United States. On 6 November — or whenever the election results are finalised — plenty of commentators will tell us what these results tell us about the American people and their life as a nation.
If Harris wins, commentators will tell us that Americans have turned over a new leaf. They’ve rejected Trump’s bellicose, racially charged rhetoric. Americans, they will say, have endorsed sensible centre-left policies.
If Trump wins, commentators will tell us that Americans have leaned into the bellicosity. American working-class men are profoundly disaffected, they’ll say. The majority-white electorate is driven by racial animus, and ordinary Americans want to tear down their governing institutions.
The election results, commentators will soon tell us, reveal deep characteristics about the American electorate.
None of those things will be true. Ignore the commentators. The election results, whatever they are, won’t tell you anything new about American voters.
What we already know about the outcome of the election
I already know what will happen on 5 November — and you do, too. Roughly fifty per cent of American voters will vote for Kamala Harris, and roughly fifty per cent of American voters will vote for Donald Trump. The election will be decided by the votes of a few thousand people in places like Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia. If a few thousand residents of these states vote differently, then the election results will be different.
Given that, who wins won’t tell us much that is new about the vast majority of American voters.
Suppose Trump wins the election with 51 per cent of the popular vote. That means, in all probability, around 82 million Americans voted for Trump and 79 million Americans voted for Harris. Imagine, instead, that Harris wins the election with 51 per cent of the vote. She wins 82 million votes and Trump wins 79 million. How much does this tell us about the character of the American public? Not much. It means three million people decided to vote for Harris over Trump or vice versa.
There are about 244 million Americans who are eligible to vote. Whether 1 per cent of them decided to vote for Trump or Harris simply tells us very little new about the attitudes of the other 99 per cent. When elections are decided by razor-thin margins, who wins the most votes just doesn’t tell us much new about what most voters think about politics.
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In any case, who wins US presidential elections is not actually decided by who wins the most votes. It is decided by who wins the electoral college. Each state returns a number of electors to the electoral college, and the election winner is the candidate who wins the most electors. We already know who will win in certain states. Kamala Harris will win all the electors in New York and California. Donald Trump will win all the electors in Alabama and Wyoming. After the election, we’ll learn how people in swing states voted. Whoever wins would have lost had a few thousand people in swing states voted differently.
How a few thousand Pennsylvanians vote won’t tell us much about what the remaining 350 million Americans believe. Most Americans just don’t live in Pennsylvania, or in Georgia, or in Arizona. The concerns of voters in such swing states are not the concerns of most Americans. So the election result, driven as it will be by voters in such places, will tell us very little about what most Americans care about. Swing state voters are not representative of the broader American public.
It stands to reason that the election results might teach you what a small number of voters in certain states think about the candidates — but, if you’ve been paying any attention to US politics, they won’t teach you anything new about the attitudes of the vast majority.
What we already know about American voters
Be this as it may, the very fact that about half of American voters are willing to vote for each candidate tells us something about the American public. But what?
Does the fact that tens of millions of Americans will vote for Trump tell us that Americans are sexist and racist, or that Americans support high trade tariffs and the mass deportation of immigrants? I don’t think so.
What the election results will tell us is that the United States is profoundly polarised. Roughly half of American voters are fervent Republicans and roughly half are fervent Democrats. Most of these voters will vote for almost anyone their party nominates for the presidency. The particularities of that candidate — the rhetoric they use, their character and policy positions — is not a deciding factor for such voters. What matters, for most voters, is which candidate had an “R” or “D” after their name on the ballot paper. Which is to say, Americans vote on the basis of party identity.
Do Americans adopt their party identity because of the policies of those parties? For the most part, no. Party identity, in the United States, is something most people acquire in early adulthood — usually from their parents. It’s a group identity, like race or religion. Loyalty comes first, specific beliefs come later.
So when people vote for Harris, it is not an enthusiastic endorsement of banning price-gouging or raising wealth taxes. When people vote for Trump, it is not typically because they approve of his sexism or racist remarks. Tens of millions of Americans voting for each candidate simply tells us that partisanship has become a dominating force in American politics.
And you probably already knew that.
The upshot of all this is: the outcome of the US presidential election still matters enormously — but it matters because of its consequences. After all, who governs the United States is important. It doesn’t matter as social commentary. And it will tell us practically nothing about how ordinary Americans think about politics.
Adam Lovett is a Lecturer in the School of Philosophy at Australian Catholic University, and the author of Democratic Failures and the Ethics of Democracy.