Everybody has an opinion on what happened in the 2024 election and how Donald Trump pulled out a win over media darling Vice President Kamala Harris.
But Cygnal poll founder Brent Buchanan has done extensive research to nail what he believes happened a year ago and has boiled it down to a couple of basic points:
— Trump spoke for voters fed up with former President Joe Biden’s bumbling liberalism and represented a path to “getting back what was lost.”
— Harris, well, was an incompetent spendthrift.
In America’s Emotional Divide: Navigating the Powerful Decision-Making Forces Impacting Politics, Policies & Personal Choices, Buchanan uncorks new polling and analysis of the election and how it is likely to influence future contests.
The bottom line, he wrote, “was a perfect storm of unique factors that built up over time. Trump’s personality. Joe Biden’s obvious mental decline. Kamala Harris’ laugh. The undeniable — but ignored by the media — corruption and sleaziness of the Biden family. How they manipulated things to shove Kamala Harris into the candidate role. Her breathtaking incompetence. The bizarre show of a campaign that swung from assassination attempts and serious issues to Democrats abandoning their traditional base to the craziness of the final weeks.”
Buchanan tapped into Cygnal’s pre-election, Election Day, and post-election surveys, as well as others, to conclude that voter emotions, especially on cultural issues, have become the driver more than the economy. And on that, Trump won hands down.
“Emotions rule,” he wrote. “Emotion fuels which issues surface, which frames stick, which messages carry, and which loyalties persist — or diverge — across households and years. They affect how and why voters embrace parties, candidates, and issues. It is the energy under the strategy and the reason a voter chooses whether to show up…or not,” he added.
Read the rest of Bedard’s writing on the Washington Examiner website.