How Kamala Harris lost the 2024 US election to Donald Trump

Despite ample enthusiasm and record fundraising, Vice President Harris failed to close the deal

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US opinion polls had for months shown Kamala Harris and Donald Trump locked in a tight race that was nearly impossible to predict. When the votes were counted, however, the results were not even close: Mr Trump and the Republicans won by a landslide.

The political postmortem examination has already begun into why Ms Harris fared so badly against a convicted felon whom she had painted as an existential threat to American democracy.

Ultimately, she appears to have been undone by the high cost of living in America and by her own boss, President Joe Biden.

More than two thirds of voters did not like the job he was doing and the economy over which he was presiding. Timothy Kneeland, a political science and history professor at Nazareth College in upstate New York, said the “abysmal” approval rating was simply too much of a burden for Ms Harris.

“Almost no incumbent can survive that, let alone a successor to that incumbent,” Prof Kneeland, who held a watch party for his students for what many anticipated would be a historic Harris victory, told The National. “The country spoke and spoke loudly.”

Even though the US economy has created millions of new jobs under the Biden-Harris administration and inflation is cooling, voters still think prices on everything from health care to housing are far too high.

Prof Kneeland believes Ms Harris was dealt a bad hand. “I don't blame Kamala Harris,” he said, noting she was a victim of circumstance more than any ill-fated strategy.

The Harris campaign pulled in a record-breaking haul of more than $1 billion during her 16-week trail for the White House but it didn't move the needle for her.

“This is actually proof that despite what many repeat over and over again, money doesn't buy elections,” Prof Kneeland said. “The same thing happened with Hillary Clinton, she broke fund-raising records as well, but look what happened.”

Mr Biden only stepped aside for Ms Harris in July, leaving her scant time to differentiate herself from the President on economic issues, as conflicts raged in the Middle East and Ukraine.

Even though he left the race, Mr Biden continued to make gaffes that undermined his deputy, including last week when he suggested Trump supporters were “garbage”. The White House said he was referring to only one supporter in particular, but it was a devastating and unforced error akin to Ms Clinton calling many Republicans “deplorable” in 2016.

Ms Harris also struggled to compete with the Trump campaigning juggernaut. The 78-year-old president-elect worked tirelessly across the US and seldom shied away from media engagements, unlike Ms Harris who preferred to keep to scripted and tightly stage-managed appearances.

At one point last month, Mr Trump appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast for a freewheeling conversation lasting three hours that helped boost his standing among male voters.

Prof Kneeland said the economic angst experienced by many Americans played a role in Mr Trump's triumphant return but added the media played a significant part, too.

“Any time he did or said anything outrageous, it was covered again, just like in 2016,” he said. “The Trump campaign, I think, realised that worked in their favour and they didn't care so much what he said, because they knew it was better to keep him in the media spotlight free of charge.”

This year's result in many ways mirrors the 1968 election, when Lyndon B Johnson decided not to run and Hubert Humphrey stepped in at the last minute, paving the way for Republican Richard Nixon to win.

When Mr Biden decided to not pursue re-election in July, many political analysts and democratic activists wondered if he had waited too long.

“Joe Biden's decision not to step aside in a more timely manner is more to blame than anything Kamala Harris did or didn't do,” Prof Kneeland said.

Also during the analysis of the Harris campaign, some are wondering if third-party candidates such as Jill Stein acted as a spoiler akin to Ralph Nader in 2000, leading to the siphoning of voters for Democrats.

But Mr Trump's margins were big enough that such candidates made little difference to Ms Harris's dismal night.