Donald Trump Poised To Win Election

Summary

The NPR Politics Podcast: Donald Trump Poised To Win Election

Overview

In this pivotal episode of The NPR Politics Podcast, hosts Sarah McCammon, Domenico Montanaro, and Mara Liasson delve into the unfolding results of the November 6 election, where Donald Trump appears on the verge of reclaiming the White House. The discussion provides an in-depth analysis of the electoral landscape, key swing states, voter demographics, and the broader implications of a potential Trump victory. This summary captures the essential points, insights, and conclusions drawn by the hosts, enriched with notable quotes and timestamps for reference.

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1. Trump's Sweep of Swing States

Timestamp: [00:33 – 03:00]

Sarah McCammon opens the discussion by highlighting the critical moment as Trump stands on the brink of winning the presidency. Domenico Montanaro provides a detailed breakdown of the electoral map, emphasizing Trump's decisive victories in pivotal swing states:

• Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina: Montanaro asserts, “Donald Trump is going to be the next president of the United States... If she [Kamala Harris] didn't win one of those three states, Trump has won and is going to be the next president now because of it.” (01:13)

• Additional States: Trump is also leading in traditionally Democratic strongholds like Wisconsin and Michigan, as well as Arizona and Nevada. This could potentially result in a seven-state sweep, further solidifying his position.

Mara Liasson notes the unusual nature of the current election cycle, where traditional battleground states are tipping heavily in one direction, a trend that historically aids the leading candidate. She remarks, “You know, the battleground states tend to go in one direction... this historical rule kept on working.” (02:18)

2. Analysis of Voter Sentiment and Economic Concerns

Timestamp: [03:00 – 04:52]

Montanaro discusses the underlying factors contributing to Trump's surge, particularly voter dissatisfaction:

• Economic Perceptions: Many voters perceive the economy as stagnating, with rising costs leading to “sticker shock” at grocery stores and other essentials. Montanaro explains, “The fundamentals... Were totally on Donald Trump's side. The economy... People are feeling... the prices at grocery stores.” (03:01)

• Character and Leadership: Exit polls indicate that for Trump supporters, character issues are less significant compared to leadership qualities. Montanaro emphasizes, “...something like being able to be a good leader, the ability to lead. And, you know, the economy, obviously, huge portion of that.” (03:59)

Mara Liasson reflects on Trump's campaign promises, highlighting his bold assertions about economic revival: “Basically, Donald Trump said, I can wave a magic wand and make prices go down to where they were when I was president before.” (04:01) She draws parallels to Joe Biden’s perceived mandate and the historical context of presidential mandates impacting public perception.

3. Trump's Mandate and Future Governance

Timestamp: [04:52 – 06:05]

Trump’s recent speech in Florida underscores his sense of a strong mandate. At [04:59], he declares, “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate. We have taken back control of the Senate.” This statement sets the stage for discussions about his potential governance.

Mara Liasson outlines Trump’s ambitious agenda for a second term, including:

• Judiciary and Department of Justice: “He wants to weaponize the Department of Justice to go against his enemies” and “use the military against his political opponents.” (05:18)

• Civil Service Changes: Introduction of “Schedule F,” allowing the firing of federal workers to replace them with loyalists.

• Economic Policies: Implementation of steep tariffs, despite potential pushback from the business community.

Liasason notes, “He would certainly have the power to do. And that's what I'm focused on. Things that he can do on his own legislation is secondary.” (05:58) This points to the significant executive power Trump could wield beyond legislative measures.

4. Senate and House Control Implications

Timestamp: [07:09 – 09:41]

With Republicans poised to control the Senate, Montanaro discusses the potential for an expansive majority:

• Senate Majority: Trump could secure up to 55-56 seats, significantly higher than the anticipated 52-48 split. This robust majority would limit the Democrats' ability to regain control, setting a challenging path for future elections. (07:32)

• House of Representatives: The battle remains uncertain with approximately 70 close races. Montanaro highlights districts like Maryland’s 6th, decided by a mere 300 votes, indicating intense competition. He concludes, “So it's going to take some time before we know.” (08:00)

Mara Liasson adds that a Republican-controlled House alongside the Senate and presidency would create a powerful trifecta, enabling Trump to push his agenda with minimal resistance.

5. Voter Demographics and Political Realignment

Timestamp: [09:44 – 12:01]

A significant portion of the conversation centers around shifts in voter demographics and the broader realignment of political affiliations:

• White Voter Turnout: Montanaro is astonished by the increased turnout and support among white voters, rising to 71% of the electorate—an increase from 67% in 2020. This surge is pivotal, especially as the white voter population is shrinking overall. (10:10)

• Latino Voters: Trump made notable inroads with Latino voters, achieving a 47% support rate compared to Biden’s 53%. This marks the lowest Democratic performance among Latinos since 2004 when George W. Bush narrowly captured this demographic. (11:01)

• Organic Enthusiasm vs. Ground Game: Liasson highlights that Trump’s victory is less about a sophisticated campaign infrastructure and more about sheer organic enthusiasm among his base. “I think Trump is a one-man turnout machine for the people who want to vote for him.” (09:44)

Mara Liasson emphasizes the unpredictable nature of this realignment, noting, “you know, we're going to learn from this election... it's going in the opposite direction.” (10:48) Additionally, the influence of social media, particularly Elon Musk's ownership of a major platform, introduces new dynamics in political communication and misinformation.

6. Final Thoughts and Future Implications

Timestamp: [12:01 – End]

As the episode concludes, the hosts reflect on the broader ramifications of Trump’s potential presidency:

• Executive Power: Liasson warns about the extensive executive powers Trump could wield, considering recent Supreme Court decisions that may have augmented presidential authority. (09:41)

• Democratic Strategy: Montanaro predicts intense debates within the Democratic Party on how to regain strength, critiquing the centrist approach and the effectiveness of outreach strategies employed during the campaign. He mentions, “there are also gonna be a lot of progressives who feel like Kamala Harris really reached out to disaffected Republicans who wound up voting for Donald Trump.” (12:01)

• Future Realignments: Both hosts acknowledge that the full impact of the current realignment may not be evident until the 2028 elections, suggesting a transformative period for American politics. (11:40)

Conclusion

This episode of The NPR Politics Podcast offers a comprehensive examination of Donald Trump’s imminent electoral victory, dissecting the strategic wins, voter dynamics, and potential policy shifts that could reshape the United States. Through expert analysis and insightful commentary, the hosts present a nuanced picture of the current political climate and the uncertain road ahead.

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Notable Quotes

• Domenico Montanaro: “Donald Trump is going to be the next president of the United States... If she didn't win one of those three states, Trump has won and is going to be the next president now because of it.” (01:13)

• Mara Liasson: “Basically, Donald Trump said, I can wave a magic wand and make prices go down to where they were when I was president before.” (04:01)

• Trump’s Statement: “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate. We have taken back control of the Senate.” (04:59)

• Mara Liasson: “I think Trump is a one-man turnout machine for the people who want to vote for him.” (09:44)

• Domenico Montanaro: “There is going to be heavy debate about what the correct approach is for Democrats and how they can win in the future...” (12:01)

---

This structured summary encapsulates the key discussions and insights from the episode, providing listeners and readers with a clear understanding of the current political developments surrounding Donald Trump's potential election victory.

Transcript

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[Sarah McCammon]

Hey there. It's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign.

[Domenico Montanaro]

I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

[Mara Liasson]

And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national politics political correspondent.

[Sarah McCammon]

It is 3:52am Eastern Time on Wednesday, November 6, and Donald Trump is on the cusp of a return to the White House.

[Donald Trump]

I said that many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason. And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness. And now we are going to fulfill that mission together. We're going to fulfill that mission.

[Sarah McCammon]

Domenico, as we record, Trump has swept three of the swing states pretty decisively. Talk us through where we stand.

[Domenico Montanaro]

Yeah, I mean, where we are right now is that Donald Trump is going to be the next president of the United States. You know, him being able to win Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, as we said coming into this election night, there was no path for Kamala Harris. The math just didn't work. If she didn't win one of those three states, Trump has won and is going to be the next president now because of it. You know, it's quite remarkable that he was able to win by the margins that he won by in some of these places and the fact that he's leading at this hour in the other blue wall states of Wisconsin and Michigan by fairly sizable margins. He's also leading in Arizona and Nevada, which could mean a seven state sweep for Trump in all of those toss up states. And, you know, that's pretty notable. But it's also not that surprising given the fact that we're in a where American politics seems so national now, not just so localized that, you know, one little tip in one direction could kind of make the whole, you know, house of cards fall down. And it seems like that's what's happened tonight.

[Mara Liasson]

But traditionally they do all break in one direction.

[Domenico Montanaro]

That's what I mean.

[Mara Liasson]

It's not unusual. You know, I always say historical rules only work till they stop working. Well, this historical rule kept on working.

[Domenico Montanaro]

Yeah.

[Mara Liasson]

You know, the battleground states tend to go in one direction. And the other thing that was typical about this race, of course, when Donald Trump is in a race, it never seems typical at all. But in a environment where incumbents have been toppled all over the world in Western democracies and otherwise, and people feel the cost of living is too high and immigration is a problem, even though all these countries are also facing a labor shortage. You know, this was a race that the challenger was supposed to win according to historical rules, and he did.

[Domenico Montanaro]

Yeah. People have been in a bad mood. I mean, they've been in a bad mood for a very long time.

[Sarah McCammon]

For a long time.

[Domenico Montanaro]

Right. I mean, people have been saying that the direction of the country is going the wrong way for every single month for the past 15 years, which is kind of crazy. But the fundamentals. Mara's right. Were totally on Donald Trump's side. The economy, people saying that their perceptions are that they don't feel as good as they did maybe five years ago. They say four, but I think they really mean five when they think of the Trump economy, considering we were right in the middle of the COVID pandemic four years ago. But, you know, people are feeling, you know, sticker shock. The prices at grocery stores. They've told us over and over again on the campaign trail. It's a thing that we've heard about all throughout all of this. And, you know, for the people who voted for Donald Trump, the exit polls tell us that these character issues, judgment and all of that were much further down the list for them than, you know, something like being able to be a good leader, the ability to lead. And, you know, the economy, obviously, huge portion of that.

[Sarah McCammon]

It's hard to see how prices go down.

[Mara Liasson]

Right.

[Sarah McCammon]

I mean, inflation has leveled off, but going back to, you know, 2020 prices, that seems pretty far fetched.

[Mara Liasson]

Basically, Donald Trump said, I can wave a magic wand and make prices go down to where they were when I was president before. And a lot of people believed him. And we're going to see what happens. He says he has a mandate. The last guy who won the popular vote and the Electoral College thought he had a mandate. His name was Joe Biden, and he presided over what became one of the most unpopular administrations in American history. But what's really interesting to me is when you remember about the first Trump term, once he was in office, he was treated like a normal president. People rendered a judgment on him at the end of his term. They didn't like it. They didn't like the way he handled Covid. And it'll be really interesting to see if he can change the rules of the game so profoundly that he won't be judged as a normal president or not.

[Sarah McCammon]

Yeah. On that note, Mara, I want to, I want to hear just Trump spoke this morning, about 2:30 this morning to his supporters in Florida. I want to hear just a little bit of that.

[Donald Trump]

America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate. We have taken back control of the Senate.

[Sarah McCammon]

Wow.

[Donald Trump]

That's true.

[Sarah McCammon]

So there's that word mandate you mentioned, Mara. What can we expect from Trump in a second term?

[Mara Liasson]

Well, we certainly know what he said he wants to do. And I believe that politicians are transparent. They tell you what they want to do and when they get into office, they try to do it, even though a lot of Trump supporters thought that he was joking or sarcastic or didn't really mean it when he said things like, I want to let Putin do whatever he wants. And he said he, he wants to weaponize the Department of Justice to go against his enemies. He said he wants to use the military against his political opponents, de professionalize the civil service, something called Schedule F, where he can fire tens of thousands of federal workers and replace them with his loyalists. He also says he wants to put on steep tariffs, which I think the business community doesn't like, but which he.

[Sarah McCammon]

Would have the power to do.

[Mara Liasson]

He would certainly have the power to do. And that's what I'm focused on. Things that he can do on his own legislation is secondary.

[Sarah McCammon]

All right. We'll take a quick break and we'll be back in just a moment.

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[Domenico Montanaro]

I wanted to vote for Trump, but I voted for her. Gays for Trump.

[Mara Liasson]

I cried this morning. I've been crying on and off. I'm terrified.

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[Sarah McCammon]

And we're back. So Republicans will also have control of the Senate. We know that so far. That will have huge repercussions for Trump's ability to govern. Domenico, what do we know right now?

[Domenico Montanaro]

Well, what's really surprising is just how big the Senate majority may be for Republicans because if Trump does wind up pulling off, you know, winning, you know, Wisconsin and Michigan, Nevada, he very well could wind up with 55, 56 Senate seats, which would be, you know, very, very high for Republicans and not what was expected. It was expected that they might have a 5,248 majority. Democrats would still be in striking distance to be able to try to come back in 2026. But that doesn't seem to be the case now. It'd be a much higher hill for Democrats to climb to be able to try to get back into the majority in the Senate. A couple election cycles away from now. We'll see what happens. The House is another story, really. The ballgame seems to be there where Democr to have a shot here at winning the House, they need a net gain of four seats. Overall, they are holding up fairly well. But Republicans in California and Arizona, as the vote is starting to sort of close there, they're gaining a little bit more momentum and may be able to hold off Democrats. We are not going to know for some time because many of these races are really, really close. We're talking about like, you know, some 70 races that I've been tracking over the last day. You know, in fact, you think about a seat like the Maryland 6th congressional district, there's 300 votes that are separating the Democrat from the Republican. So it's going to take some time before we know.

[Sarah McCammon]

And of course, if Republicans hold the House and having taken the Senate and the presidency, as things stand right now, that opens up a whole other conversation about what Trump could do beyond simply.

[Mara Liasson]

Executive power, of which he has a tremendous amount and the Supreme Court has given him much more. Just to establish that. I mean, legislation is important, but we're living in a new era of almost unfettered executive power.

[Sarah McCammon]

Before we go, any final thoughts? I'm going to start with you, Mara.

[Mara Liasson]

Well, I think there's so many things we're going to learn from this election and both parties are going to spend a lot of time looking over the entrails. But one of them that really strikes me is that a highly professional, well funded, sophisticated ground game is no match for just plain old organic enthusiasm. I don't think Trump's win was because he had a good ground game. I think it's because he had more organic enthusiasm.

[Domenico Montanaro]

Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, Trump is a one man turnout machine for the people who want to vote for him. That's it, full stop when it comes to that. What was stunning here is that white voters actually went up to 71% as a share of the electorate, which is higher than they were in 2020, which was 67% of the electorate. And that's really stunning because we know that white voters are going down as an eligible share of the voting population overall. So the fact that Trump was able to turn them out really helped him win. Despite the fact that Kamala Harris was able to win 43% of white voters, which is actually pretty good for a Democrat.

[Mara Liasson]

This is political realignment in the face of Democratic change. In other words, it's going in the opposite direction. It's not hitching a ride on the growing sections of the electorate. It's the opposite.

[Sarah McCammon]

Not to mention the movement with other demographics.

[Domenico Montanaro]

I was just gonna say Trump, you know, really pulled off a coup in how many Latino voters he was able to win over because Harris only got 53% of Latinos, according to the exit polls. That is from 65% where Joe Biden was. That is the lowest any Democrat has gotten since 2004, when George W. Bush nearly pulled off even race with Latinos. So there is a big realignment that's happening in this country. And when you're in the middle of a realignment, it's really hard to see what the country is going to be like, what that realignment is going to mean. And, you know, I don't think we're going to really know any of that until maybe even 2028.

[Mara Liasson]

Yeah, no. And now that we're. Since we're talking about final thoughts, there are so many of them. We're also in this whole new world where one of Trump's biggest backers, Elon Musk, owns a massive social media company that became a megaphone for Donald Trump. Not to mention conspiracy theories, disinformation, and misinformation. That's going to have profound effects on American politics, too.

[Domenico Montanaro]

I think there is going to be heavy debate about what the correct approach is for Democrats and how they can win in the future, because they clearly moved to the center, in fact, to the center. Right. I would argue, in the Biden administration and they lost. Right now you can say that it's because of Kamala Harris words from 2019 and the fact that even our polling showed that people didn't believe necessarily that she was sincere about her intentions for the proposals that she's putting forward. At least many men didn't feel that way. But there's also gonna be a lot of progressives who feel like Kamala Harris really reached out to disaffected Republicans who wound up voting for Donald Trump anyway, for the most part. And that might not have been the best approach because she wasn't able to turn out, you know, 18 to 29 year olds, for example, only 55% of them went for Harris. Democrats win when they're at 60%. So I think that's going to get fought out. And you know where that usually gets fought out in a primary like one that didn't happen this time.

[Sarah McCammon]

We will be back in your feed this afternoon, so be sure to hit the follow button wherever you get your podcasts so you get notified every time we have a new episode. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign.

[Domenico Montanaro]

I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

[Mara Liasson]

And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.

[Sarah McCammon]

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics podcast.

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