Well, it’s official. The pollsters were wrong for a third election cycle in a row. They all massively failed to predict Trump’s support across the country. They predicted a close race that would basically be a toss-up. They couldn’t have been more wrong.
As I write this, the Associated Press and other news outlets have declared Donald Trump President-Elect. Trump not only won the electoral college decisively but is also winning the popular vote. Republicans haven’t won a majority of the popular vote in 36 years and haven’t won the popular vote in 20 years. The New York Times estimates that after the dust settles, Trump will have won 312 electors to Harris’ 226. Donald Trump may not have won by a landslide, but there’s a good case that he won by a landfill.
What’s really surprising is the coalition of voters that Trump put together to bring about this victory. In particular, the exit polls show that about 45% of Latinos voted for Trump. That is a 25-point improvement over his share of the Latino vote four years ago. That is a massive shift to the GOP that Democrats didn’t see coming. They are stunned by this.
Some Democrats are also misdiagnosing the reason why so many men of color voted for Trump. As I type this, I am listening to the Morning Joe crew say that men of color voted for Trump because of misogyny. Joe Scarborough and Al Sharpton claim that men just didn’t want to have a woman as president. Once again, everything devolves into identity politics for the Left. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that maybe the problem wasn’t that the Democratic candidate was a woman but that she was this woman, Kamala Harris. In other words, perhaps her loss has less to do with the fact that she’s a woman and everything to do with the fact that she is as progressive and woke as they come and that a lot of men across the country don’t like that.
My post-election prediction for the Left is that no lessons will be learned. The Left will double-down on progressivism and wokeness. They will blame the messenger and not the message. They will try to figure out new ways to sell leftism to the American people while waiting for the political pendulum to swing back their way. They will not back away from their positions but will try to repackage them and sell them under another guise. I hope I’m wrong about that.
In any case, the election of Trump is a massive repudiation of the Left and of identity politics. In spite of the elite institutions of American life being arrayed against him—e.g., the media, college campuses, the justice department—Trump still won. In spite of unprecedented lawfare against him, he still won. The Left and a compliant media accused him of being a fascist who would end democracy in America, but a majority of American voters didn’t believe them. That is an enormous stain on the credibility of these elite institutions. At least half of America doesn’t trust them anymore.
While it was a good night for Republicans, the results are at best a mixed bag for prolife voters. On the positive side of the ledger, ballot measures aimed at expanding abortion rights in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota failed. On the negative side of the ledger, similar efforts passed in seven other states. Many of the states that voted for Trump as president also voted overwhelmingly to expand abortion rights. This is bad news for prolifers. It means that Trump’s attempt to separate his campaign and the GOP from the prolife cause worked. Voters by and large embraced the idea that a vote for the GOP and Trump isn’t necessarily a vote against abortion rights.
The sad reality is that the prolife cause is not popular in the United States right now. Republican politicians are figuring that out and will continue to distance themselves from the issue going forward. When the Trump campaign excised prolife conviction from the GOP platform last summer, that was a political calculation that turned out to be right electorally if not morally. Republicans have learned that they can win and win big without being prolife. Trump’s victory last night puts the nail in the coffin of any hope of the GOP taking up the prolife cause ever again. It’s over.
To be sure, a Harris administration would have been far worse on the life issue than a Trump administration, and there are still many committed prolifers in the GOP coalition. That is all to the good. But it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the prolife cause is not faring well in terms of electoral majorities. All of that underscores the fact that we prolifers have a lot of work to do to persuade our countrymen about the sanctity of all human life, especially that of the unborn.
For Christians, we owe it to our president—no matter who it is—to pray for him and his administration. We need to pray that he would govern wisely and in a way that will allow the gospel to flourish in our country. We also need to pray for his conversion. These are our marching orders from Scripture, and we do well to heed them (1 Tim. 2:1-4).
