A skeleton key that explains the 2024 result

America’s trust divide.

Good morning! It’s Thursday, November 7, 2024. Inauguration Day is 74 days away.

I’ll be writing a lot over the next few days about the different factors that explain the 2024 election — and where the political system will go from here. If you have questions you’re curious about, send them my way by replying to the email or leaving a comment.

Trust.

In the months leading up to an election, pollsters ask all kinds of questions. Questions about health care policy. Abortion policy. Immigration policy. Tax policy.

But the question that explains the 2024 election wasn’t about policy at all. Actually, it was three questions, asked by the Pew Research Center:

• Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or most people can’t be trusted?

• Do you think most people would try to take advantage of you if they got the chance or would try to be fair no matter what?

• Would you say that most of the time people try to help others or just look out for themselves?

From Americans’ answers to those three questions, asked in 2019, Pew organized them onto a spectrum of personal trust: high, medium, and low.

Where different demographic groups fall on this spectrum almost perfectly predicts whether they swung towards Democrats and Republicans in 2024.

On age, for example, just 11% of 18- to 29-year-olds are high on the trust spectrum. The group voted for Joe Biden by 24 percentage points in 2020, then for Kamala Harris by 13 points in 2024 — an 11-point swing to the GOP. (These numbers come from the Edison Research exit polls. They should not be taken as gospel, but they offer a helpful look at the changes that took place in 2024, at least directionally.)

37% of Americans 65 years and older, on the other hand, score as “high trusters.” That’s more than any other demographic group — and they were also one of the few groups that Democrats lost in 2020 (by five percentage points) but won in 2024 (by a single point).

Another rare group that Democrats gained among were those who make more than $100,000 a year, who went from R+12 in 2020 to D+8 in 2024, a 20-point Democratic swing. 46% of that population are high trusters. Conversely, those who make less than $30,000 a year went from voting for Biden by 11 points to voting for Trump by one point, a 12-point swing to the GOP. Pew’s data doesn’t match up perfectly here, but of those who make less than $50,000 a year, far fewer — 26% — are high trusters.

The same story repeats itself along several demographic lines. By education, the most favorable group for Republicans are the lowest on the trust spectrum (those who never attended college, 15% high trusters); the most favorable group for Democrats are highest (those with advanced degrees, 33% high trusters). Just 12% of Hispanic voters, who swung towards Republicans by 25 percentage points, score as high trusters; by comparison, white voters — who swung towards Democrats by five points — score as 27% high trusters.

The pattern doesn’t hold up within every demographic group: There isn’t much of a gender gap in trust. Black Americans are low on trust, but — despite Trumpworld’s best efforts — barely swung towards the GOP in 2024 (a D+75 group became D+74). Married Americans, a GOP-friendly demographic, are also more trusting than unmarried Americans, who vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.

But on some of the most crucial dimensions of American politics — age, race, income, education — the larger trend holds true: within each category, the highest-trusting group swung towards Democrats. The lowest-trusting group swung towards the GOP.

Why? The answer can be found lower in the same 2019 Pew report: “People’s views on personal trust are strongly associated with their views on issues related to institutional trust. On virtually every survey question about institutions…high trusters have significantly more confidence in institutions than low trusters, whether it is the military, police officers, business executives or religious leaders.”

Since 2019, Democrats have increasingly become the Party of Institutions. As such, they gained ground among those who score highly on personal and institutional trust. Older voters, who are often ingrained in institutions and might have more respect for norms. Higher-income voters, for whom the institutions are working. Meanwhile, Republicans — remade as the Anti-Institutions Party — ate into Democrats’ historic advantages among several groups who not only distrust institutions, but are often highly resentful towards them: young voters (by far the most disillusioned demographic), lower-income voters, Hispanic voters.

These changes have been afoot for several cycles, but both parties sprinted in their respective directions in 2024. Kamala Harris cloaked herself in the language, and paragons, of American institutions. She delivered her closing message at the spot where Trump spoke on January 6th, casting him as a violator of norms and wrapping herself in the imagery of stability. She campaigned with Liz Cheney and quoted John Kelly. She boasted about support from the economic establishment, the military establishment, the political establishment.

The problem? These groups have been steadily losing popularity for years. According to Gallup, 60% of Americans have confidence in the military — which seems high, until you consider that it was at 82% in 2009. Just 22% trust the government. Just 14% trust “big business.”

The Atlantic’s Franklin Foer reports that Bidenworld believes the Harris campaign lost, in part, because it “elevated Mark Cuban as one of its chief surrogates,” campaigning alongside Big Business in a way (they claim) Biden never would have.

But I believe this misses the point slightly. Trump, after all, campaigned with business mogul Elon Musk, who is the world’s richest man. The problem wasn’t campaigning with a businessman; it was campaigning with a businessman who spoke warmly about the economy, as opposed to one who espoused aspirations, as Trump and Musk do, of tearing the whole thing down.

Not everyone wants to tear things down — but many of the groups who drifted in Trump’s direction do. As I wrote in June, Gallup’s Jon Clifton has found that the metric that best predicts whether incumbent governments are re-elected is not GDP, or inflation, or unemployment — it’s national happiness. Right now, populations around the globe are unhappy, and incumbents are suffering as a result.

The most unhappy groups — young people, low-income people, minorities — are also the least trusting groups, and they are the groups that swung the most towards Trump.

This was not on accident. Trump targeted his messaging towards these segments, running against the political and economic establishments, and tying Democrats to elites like the media and academic establishments, also widely disliked. Unlike his first campaign, when he showered attention on the mainstream media, he largely skipped out on that this time, instead appearing on podcasts listened to by swarms of disaffected young men. Democrats became the party of the People Doing Well, the trusters — but large swaths of people don’t feel like they’re doing well, and Trump targeted his appeals to them, using the information environments they frequent, and promised to shake up the status quo.

In the exit polls, 76% of Americans said their family’s financial situation was worse or the same as it was four years ago. 75% said inflation has caused their family “severe” or “moderate” hardship. 73% were “angry” or “dissatisfied” with how things are going in the U.S.

Once again, Pew’s questions echo: Would you say that most of the time people try to help others or just look out for themselves? Do you think most people would try to take advantage of you if they got the chance or would try to be fair no matter what? Many Americans feel taken advantage of — and by the very institutions the Democrats have bolstered.

These numbers have been apparent all year: while Trump shared those grievances on the campaign trail, Harris often responded with vague sentiments or lukewarm policy proposals — and certainly no signs of anger or frustration with the status quo. In one of her worst moments on the campaign trail, Harris told the hosts of “The View” that she couldn’t think of one way her administration would veer away from the unpopular Biden agenda. 72% of the “angry” vote went to Trump.

Another unpopular class of institutions worth mentioning here are political parties themselves. Even as Donald Trump has taken over the Republican Party, he continues to run against it — raging against the Bushes, the Cheneys, Mitch McConnell, and other faces of the GOP. When was the last time you heard Kamala Harris say a negative word about the Democratic Party or its leading lights?

In fact, in three elections against Donald Trump, it is somewhat remarkable that they have never tried fielding a truly anti-party candidate, even though the three Democratic presidents before him (Carter, Clinton, Obama) all tried to claim that mantle. Hillary Clinton (first lady, senator, secretary of state), Joe Biden (senator, vice president), and Kamala Harris (state attorney general, senator, vice president) were all creatures of the Democratic Party — despite the fact that Americans, especially younger and less-well-off Americans, harbor a deep dislike of parties.

Going forward, some Democrats will undoubtedly turn their heads to someone like the highly credentialed Pete Buttigieg (McKinsey, Harvard, Oxford). Four years is a long way away, but right now — in the wake of the 2024 results — that seems like a misreading of the national mood, or at least of the mood of those they lost.

On the exact opposite end of that spectrum sits someone like Dan Osborn, the former union leader who came up short in his Nebraska Senate bid — but ran seven percentage points ahead of Harris. There is no one more anti-party than Osborn, who ran as an Independent and embraced a heterodox bundle of positions: pro-raising the minimum wage, pro-abortion access, pro-gun rights, pro-border control. Perhaps it will require someone along these lines — someone whose roots are outside of professional politics — for Democrats to recapture the groups they lost in 2024.

Polling suggests that many of the groups Trump won are fickle. (After all, the U.S. has now seen three two-term presidencies give way to three one-term presidencies, even if two of them have been led by the same man.) After raging against the incumbent, Trump will now become one. If there is any certainty in modern American politics, it is that many of the low-trust voters who poured their grievances into Trump will likely remain aggrieved, barring a stunning turnaround in the national mood or economic condition. After 9/11, the Wars on Terror, the Great Recession, and the Covid pandemic, another crisis could well emerge that will further depress faith in institutions and Americans’ trust in others.

Time will tell whether Republicans have unlocked a generational realignment, or more of a flexible alliance — the perfect match between a disaffected public, a candidate who promised to topple the establishment, and an opponent (well, three opponents) who represented it. The underlying anger will, in all likelihood, remain; the question will be whether both parties will learn to channel it.