It is an undeniable fact that this election has been quite long and difficult. However, the counting is done: American voters have once more chosen Republican Donald Trump as their 47th President of the United States. In order to win the White House, a candidate needs to get the electoral votes. “I want to thank you all very much, this is a movement like nobody has ever seen before,” said Trump during his speech after the victory at his headquarter in Palm Beach, Florida. “We are going to help our country heal, our county needs help badly, we overcame obstacles that nobody thought were possible.” The Republican candidate underlined that “I will fight for you and for your family, every single day I will fight for you, this will be the truly golden age of America. I will not let you down.”
It is a harsh loss for whoever was hoping for a Democratic victory. It was not an obvious triumph for former President Trump as it was a tight race since its beginning. Obviously, it reflects a divided country. According to NBC News, Trump overperformed (even winning the popular vote) while Harris underperformed losing ground compared to what Joe Biden gained during the 2020 election.
In every election, there are seven swing states that are crucial to win, and Trump did well in all of them. He won North Carolina, Georgia, ad Pennsylvania, while Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan are still under projections, but are already leaning in his favor. “We are bleeding votes in historical numbers,” said Jim Messina, who was the White House deputy chief of staff for operations under President Barack Obama. “What is true is that Trump has always been underestimated by Democrats.”
Vice President Harris left the headquarters at the Howard University, in Washington DC, way before the race was called off, without addressing her supporters that were waiting for the campaign victory party. “We still have votes to count, we still have states that have not been called off yet,” said Cedric Richmond, Harris campaign co-chair. “We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken, so you won’t hear from the vice president tonight, but you will hear from her tomorrow.”
The state of Democracy (35%) and the economy (31%) were the crucial issues for voters this year, as data from Edison Research and NEP via Reuters show. Abortion (14%) was the third most important problem, followed by immigration (11%), and foreign policy (4%). About six out of 10 people, among Harris’s supporters, said the state of democracy was their deciding topic, while, among Trump’s supporters, only one in 10. Data also show that among Trump’s voters three quarters said they were worse off today than back in 2020 and fewer than one in 10 said they were better off. Among Harris’s voters, four in 10 said they were much better.
But, the question now is: how can the new president heal a divided and polarized country from coast to coast? What needs to be done to get everyone back together as a whole? The problem of the national unity is not something really new in the United States, but it has actually never been so deep as it is today, and not only at the political level. A recent poll from Gallup shows that a record high of 80% of Americans believe that they are divided, while only 18% think that the nation is united.