Reflecting on the 2024 Election

On the evening of the election, I went to bed only an hour or two later than usual, safe in the knowledge that the outcome of the presidential race would not be clear for days yet. After all, it was going to be a close election and mail ballots would take weeks to process.

I was wrong.

As I was rolling out of bed on Wednesday, AP called Wisconsin, sealing the election for Donald Trump. The outcome had apparently been inevitable for some hours, as family and friends in Australia (where it was daytime) had sent messages reflecting on the outcome hours earlier.

The speed with which AP and the networks called the presidential election was not so much a result of a decisive victory but because, under intense and sustained scrutiny, state and local election administrators put a lot of effort into improving how they process early ballots. With the notable exception of California, states did an exceptional job at delivering speedy results.

As a result of the outcome—a trifecta nationally for the Republicans in the presidency, Senate, and U.S. House of Representatives—the U.S. has, at least for now, avoided a protracted fight over certification of the results and administration of another election. Some Trump supporters appeared likely to not only challenge or delegitimize the results if Harris won, but also resort to violence. By contrast, the Democratic Party and its supporters have largely kept mum on the administration of the election, such as voter suppression, the Electoral College, and other complaints.

This silence is a far cry from the past, even as recently as 2016, when Democrats were the partisans who tended to challenge and delegitimize election results, such as by decrying the Electoral College, challenging certification, and characterizing election integrity measures as voter suppression. It may be that, in positioning itself as the party of democracy, the Democrats have become the defenders of the status quo, including electoral institutions and practices that they once rallied against.

The tendency, toward preserving and, perhaps ironically, conserving existing institutions, might be further advanced by two emerging factors: changing Electoral College dynamics and changing racial coalitions.

For a long time, Democrats have treated the Electoral College as though Republicans engineered it to steal victory from more numerous Democrats. It was commonplace to mock Trump for never having won the “popular vote,” even though the popular vote (the aggregate number of votes cast across the United States and its territories) is not something officially calculated. (If you are not convinced, google “official popular vote 2020” and check the varying totals calculated by a range of reputable sources.) In 2024, that refrain is not available. While there have been some tempered musings about Trump not winning a majority or 50 percent of the vote, Democrats have largely abandoned their emphasis on the popular vote, for now.

Changing racial coalitions may also dissuade Democrats from attacking electoral institutions and administration as unfair. Perhaps overhyped in the short term, men of color, particularly those who were not alive during the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s, are increasingly voting Republican. In the longer term, this trend is likely to have significant consequences for Democratic messaging, including for the politics of redistricting and practices that Democrats have tended to characterize as suppression of Black – and therefore presumed-to-be-overwhelmingly Democrat – votes (like voter identification laws, polling locations and hours, and rules about electioneering/approaching voters in lines). How Democrats will tackle electoral practices they once viewed as unfair when principle and self-interest no longer align is an open question.

A third observation relates to the blog series I wrote in the lead up to the election on ranked choice voting (RCV) ballot measures. Far from being the “Year of RCV,” the 2024 election is better characterized as the “Year of the defeat of RCV.” RCV did not fare well, even in Oregon where voters in Portland, Corvallis, and Benton County used it to elect local offices. Open primary measures with RCV were defeated in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada. In Alaska, open primaries with RCV only narrowly avoided repeal by 0.2% (664 votes). RCV on its own passed in Washington, D.C., and a few small cities, but it was a disappointing year for RCV supporters. Reformers will no doubt regroup to determine a path forwards after their defeats. It will be interesting to see, though, whether 2024 spells the end of the movement for top-four/top-five primaries with RCV, given the extent to which voters so clearly revealed their lack of enthusiasm for them.