Former President Donald Trump has once again been elected president of the United States. He now holds the dubious distinction of being the first convicted felon elected to the office.
Early Wednesday morning the Associated Press called the election for Trump when it was clear that he had won 277 electoral votes. Trump scored wins in both Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, two states that Vice President Kamala Harris had to win in order to get her to 270 votes.
Harris was expected to concede sometime later Wednesday.
Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at University of Houston, explained that despite Harris having run an intelligent campaign with few if any missteps, the political environment in the country was likely too much to overcome.
“It’s because people are mad about how the economy is not great for everybody,” he said. “They’re also mad that there are cultural shifts that are the world, their world, in key ways for certain voters. You can’t say that she lost because she didn’t visit certain places enough or didn’t distance herself from Biden enough. These are the underlying tensions and she had to play the cards she was dealt.”
Here in Harris County, election officials report that more than 1.5 million people voted in this election. The county went blue, as expected, and then the state went red, also as expected, awarding its 40 electoral votes to Trump.
Despite all the polling predicting a tossup, there was always a chance that things would break for Trump, Rottinghaus noted.
“The Democrats have done everything correctly here,” he said. “They have focused on raising money. They have chosen an issue that worked for them. They built a solid coalition, and they had a candidate who was disciplined and who appeared moderate. They did the best they could. Now the question is, since this didn’t work, what will?”
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
