Donald Trump defied the odds by surviving two assassination attempts in his quest for the presidency. The first was from a bullet that came within millimetres of ending his life. The second was a concerted campaign to assassinate his character from his Democrat opponents that.
“Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable,” Kamala Harris told a carefully choreographed town hall meeting two weeks before the election. “Donald Trump is a danger to the well-being and security of America.”
Yet these slurs and worse failed to convince voters. Which begs the question: Will Labor’s attacks on Peter Dutton’s personality and intentions be any more successful in next year’s federal election?
After a week in Washington in conversation with senior Republicans and conservative observers, it is clear to me that Trump’s energetic and focussed campaign is a foretaste of his second presidential term.
Research into who voted for Trump and why shows that politics is not just a popularity contest. Trump may have many die-hard fans, but he could not have won the election with those people alone.
The difference between winning and losing was winning over the nose-holders, a significant cohort of voters who didn’t actually like him but viewed him as a more substantial candidate than his opponent.
Research by Lord Ashcroft Polls delivered in a presentation in Washington last week showed that 15 per cent of Americans who believed Trump lacks moral character were prepared to vote for him anyway.
Trump won the votes of 18 per cent of those who doubted his honesty and trustworthiness. He was supported by 20 per cent of people who judged his views too extreme.
Kamal Harris's attempts to campaign on abortion failed to gain traction, with 30 per cent of those who thought abortion should be legal in all or most cases voting for Trump. He also collected the votes of 31 per cent of Americans concerned about the effects of climate change.
If the political and media elite struggled to understand Trump's appeal, it is because he had framed his campaign to appeal to a very different and much larger constituency. The New York Times' take on his lengthy campaign speeches was that Trump was losing it with age. "He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought," the NYT said. Some of his sentences were “hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical.”
Yet, a very different picture emerged in private conversations with campaign aides in Washington this week. Although apparently delivered off the cuff, Trump's speeches were disciplined and rehearsed. The repetition was deliberate. Trump was focused on getting his key points across on the issues that troubled most voters. They were not abortion or climate change but inflation, wages, taxes and immigration.
Trump surprised the Democrats by polling strongly among women, blacks and Latinos. In their minds, these groups were victims who should be grateful for the Democrat's support for downtrodden minorities.
Instead, their concerns were no different from any other group of voters. They, too, were suffering from high taxes and the rising cost of living. Immigrants who had entered the US legally harboured an extreme resentment towards those who had not.
Trump's firmest supporters were the American middle class, the people trying against the odds to chase the American dream for themselves and their families. Voters on six-figure salaries voted for Harris (52 per cent) over Trump (46 per cent). Voters at the other end of the income scale earning under $25,000 narrowly preferred Harris (52 per cent) over Trump (48 per cent).
Trump, however, won the support of middle-income voters. Americans with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 voted 53% to 46% per cent in Trump’s favour.
Harris was the preferred candidate for college graduates (52 per cent to 46 per cent) and postgraduates (61 per cent to 38 per cent). However, those whose education had not continued after high school overwhelmingly favoured Trump (53 per cent) over Harris (39 per cent).
The conclusion is unmistakable: the Democrats were unable to break their way out of the bubble. They either didn’t understand or didn’t care about the sentiments of most Americans who lived in the more unfashionable suburbs, cities and towns in middle America.
Trump’s election, properly assessed, should set alarm bells ringing in Labor HQ. Their strategy for winning the next election is not so different to that of Harris: a high-minded moral crusade on climate change and a concerted effort to destroy the credibility of the alternative prime minister Peter Dutton.
To put it bluntly, such a strategy isn’t going to work in a federal election anymore than it worked in Voice referendum campaign when voters stood up to moral blackmail and cast their votes.
Labor’s confidence that Dutton is unelectable is misplaced. Voters are looking for conservative leaders prepared to resist the Zeitgeist and challenge the progressive narrative. He understands the importance of consistency and conviction. They may not always like what he has to say, but they know what he stands for.
Like Trump, Dutton has been disciplined in sticking to issues close to voters' hearts. On the other hand, Anthony Albanese has frequently become tangled up in distractions and has managed policies for no other reason but to win votes.
Love or loath Trump, Labor ignores the lessons from his historic victory in their peril.
Share this post