Did Donald Trump win through the ‘bro vote’ or a financial fairy tale?

Donald Trump has won the election and become the first person to serve as president non-consecutively since Grover Cleveland in 1892. This has come as a shock to some people, despite being a clear possibility as the election progressed What has taken many by surprise is the scale of the victory, particularly with Trump winning the popular vote for the first time.

We have all heard how Trump won in states such as Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania because young men and people of Hispanic heritage switched from the Democrats or became first time voters. Targeting young men, and men from Black and Latino backgrounds, appears to have paid off.

The narrative that has emerged so far is that Trump’s victory is down to his ability to expand his base rather than relying on high turnout from supporters, as the Democrats attempted. Trump did this by engaging with young men on their own terms, appearing on videos and podcasts with content creators including Joe Rogan, Theo Von, and Logan Paul. This strategy has been described as harnessing the power of the ‘bro voter’.

There is definitely some truth to this narrative. Trump appears to have added votes in swing states exactly where he needed to, and this has corresponded with a rise in turnout among male voters. There has also been a backlash amongst young men against what is perceived as the ‘woke agenda’.

Unsurprisingly, these sentiments tend to overlap with underlying misogyny and hatred of women and all things ‘woke’. While the roots of Trump’s present strategy might lie in the incel and alt right movements these in 2024 the ideas they promote have become mainstream amongst many young men. It is also no coincidence that this apparent upsurge in young men disillusioned with ‘woke’ politics has occurred alongside the possibility of the election of the first Black woman president.

This narrative might be convincing, and is part of the picture, I believe that the role of the ‘bro vote’ has been overstated and that there is a broader and simpler explanation for why he was able to win the popular vote.

Kamala and the Democratic party were in a seemingly very good position, defending a promising economic record. Inflation was on the way down, unemployment had fallen since the pandemic, and the stock markets were looking healthy. However, this was not reflected in the lives of most Americans. For example, average food prices have risen by around 20% since the beginning of the Biden administration.

While the Democratic campaign tackled these economic issues by proposing specific and targeted policies such as restoring tax credits for lower earners, the Trump campaign was able to be far vaguer and more ambitious. Not only did Trump not have to defend an economy that didn’t feel like it was working for most Americans, he also now stands for a better time economically before the pandemic and high inflation. Trump’s headline policy was simply to lower prices and continue to lower taxes for all, with characteristically little detail on how this would be achieved.

The USA is a country in which the richest 10% of people own two thirds of the wealth and almost 50 million people face food insecurity. With so many people having experienced such personal crisis and insecurity over the past four years, it almost comes as no surprise that a majority of voting Americans would choose the candidate offering some kind of hope, no matter how flimsy and baseless it may turn out to be.