This week on 60 Minutes, correspondent Scott Pelley examined the 2024 election, a contest that saw former President Donald Trump sweep all seven battleground states and become the first Republican president in 20 years to win the popular vote. County by county, state by state, voters shifted to the right, even in demographic and geographic strongholds thought to be Democratic.
To understand the reasons behind the widespread red shift, 60 Minutes spoke with Anthony Salvanto, CBS News’ executive director of elections and surveys. According to Salvanto, there are three main factors behind voters’ support of President-elect Donald Trump this election.
The role of the economy
One of the most important factors in this year’s election is the economy, specifically inflation. All throughout the pre-election polling, Salvanto said, voters marked it as the top issue, and Trump had always had an advantage with people who said the economy was their top concern.
Salvanto said that, when he highlighted features pointing to the economy’s strength, including steady GDP growth and a low unemployment rate, voters told him their personal experience made them feel otherwise.
“They were seeing that playing out in inflation, in higher prices at the grocery store and, for a long stretch, at the gas pump,” Salvanto said.
For Roz Werkheiser, inflation has been as contagious as the pandemic that set it off. A diner manager in eastern Pennsylvania’s Northampton County, Werkeiser said the rising cost of food has directly impacted her customers. She said she voted for Trump in hopes the fever of high prices will break under his administration.
“The past four years were terrible. They were terrible,” Werkheiser said. “Interest rates on credit cards went up, electric bill went up, gas went up. TV/Cable went up. I know all my bills went up.”
Werkheiser said she hopes Trump will lower credit card interest rates and get rid of tax on credit card tips.
“Maybe that would help out a little bit,” she said. “Those things maybe he can possibly do. I’m hoping he does.”
A steady MAGA base
That hope led many people to look past Trump’s history — including two impeachments, the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and legal challenges, among them 34 felony convictions. Because those elements would likely have demolished almost any other politician’s support, Salvanto said the second factor to consider in Trump’s victory is the MAGA base that has always lifted him up.
According to Salvanto, just under half of self-identified Republicans consider themselves members of the MAGA movement.
“This was a core part of the base that absorbed and repeated and believed his narrative that these were political prosecutions in nature,” Salvanto said.
An even higher number — almost two-thirds of Republicans — have consistently said they think the 2020 election was fraudulent, even though these claims have been exhaustively investigated and litigated and found to be without merit.
“And so that completed a narrative all across where [Trump] never saw any erosion from that base,” Salvanto said.
Out-of-touch Democrats
For Rep. Susan Wild, Democrats have a lot of lessons to learn from this year’s election.
Wild, a Democrat herself, represents Pennsylvania’s Northampton County in Congress. At least, she will until January; she lost her bid for re-election last Tuesday.
She told 60 Minutes she thinks her party is still the better option for the working class — but Democrats are not communicating that effectively.
“We are getting way too caught up in lofty social issues,” Wild said. “And I’m sure somebody watching this is thinking, ‘Lofty social issues? Women’s reproductive rights are not just a lofty social issue.’ By that I mean, if you are struggling to pay your rent or feed your kids, you don’t have the privilege of thinking about things like LGBTQ rights. Unless you’ve got somebody in your own family that’s personally affected, you don’t have the luxury of thinking about reproductive rights.”
Wild’s story paints a picture of the third factor Salvanto says contributed to Trump’s win: the impression that Democrats are out-of-touch and unable to move voters onto the issues the party cares about.
He noted that Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign tried to make abortion rights a priority and coalesce women’s support around it. But while abortion was a strong factor for Democrats, Salvanto said, the level of support never increased over time.
Instead, in the 10 states where voters could voice their opinion on abortion rights this year, Harris often got fewer votes than the ballot measure.
“There were a lot of Republicans who voted for Donald Trump and the reproductive rights side of those amendments,” Salvanto explained.
The other aspect of the Democratic disconnect was on cultural and societal issues. Salvanto said polling found a split in the electorate, with some voters feeling that efforts at promoting gender and racial equality in the U.S. were going too far. Those who feel that way voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, Salvanto said.
No matter why voters decided to support President-elect Trump, over the next four years, it will be his choices that reveal the impact of this year’s red shift. For diner manager Roz Werkheiser, it is very important that Trump makes good on the promises that propelled voters to return him to the White House.
“I think he’s going to try to keep most of them, yes. I really do,” she said. “I really do.”
The video above was produced by Brit McCandless Farmer and edited by Scott Rosann.
