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Why Donald Trump Almost Won Explained in One Simple Graphic
It Also Explains Why Down-Ticket Democrats Did So Poorly
As I write this column, both the Republican and Democratic National Committees are conducting detailed “postmortems” of the 2020 elections. These postmortems will dissect voluminous amounts of detailed data sets, including:
- Turnout by district,
- Demographic voting trends, and
- The issues on which voters made up their minds.
These data sets, along with many others, will help the RNC and DNC uncover why their candidates at all levels of government either under- or over-performed their pre-election expectations.
But I’m fairly certain I already know a major reason why the 2020 elections (especially the Presidential race) unfolded as they did. And it’s not very complicated. In fact, it’s succinctly summarized in the above graphic from FiveThirtyEight.com.
As the graphic clearly shows, Americans are worried about the COVID-19 pandemic. However, they are much more concerned with its economic impacts than its potential health risks. President Trump and other Republican candidates built their campaigns around those economic concerns, while now President-elect Joe Biden and Democratic candidates focused on the health aspect of the pandemic. That…
