America Is A Purple Country

The 2024 elections are over, Donald Trump is naming his new cabinet, Elon Musk wants to eliminate $2 trillion from the Federal budget, and the world is “on tilt” because it’s clear a new era has arrived.

Only time will tell if this new era leads America into fascism, accelerates our decline as a global superpower, or whether a 2nd Trump presidency can truly make America great again.

Its taken me almost two weeks to write this article, because so much about the 2024 elections surprised me, and I needed to take time to truly step back and consider what it all means.

At this point, it’s almost ancient history that Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris for the presidency, but the shape of his victory just recently came into focus.

With just a few million ballots left to count, Donald Trump’s 49.9%-48.3% national popular vote victory would normally qualify as a “narrow win”, among the closest elections in American history, but because Trump won all seven battleground states where the election was being fought (and the electoral college 312-226) and the Republican party will soon have majorities in the House, Senate, and Supreme Court, Trump's victory feels decisive and he's preparing to govern as a strongman.

For the past two weeks its been hard to discern the primary reason why Trump won and Kamala lost. But now 98% of votes are tabulated, and multiple exit polls released, so we can finally see what happened. At most, Kamala Harris earned 75 million votes, which is 6 million shy of the 81.3 million Joe Biden won in 2020, which means the primary reason Kamala lost was because of a nationwide turnout/enthusiasm decline among Democrats . The decline in key cities, including Detroit and Philadelphia, made it exceptionally difficult for Kamala to win the battlegrounds of Michigan and Pennsylvania. (Donald Trump is likely to exceed 78 million votes, which is 4 million more than the 74.2 million he received in 2020, indicating a turnout/enthusiasm boost among Republicans).

When one looks deeper at individual senate races, though, some Democratic senate candidates significantly overperformed Kamala and some underperformed:?

Longshot Independent candidate Dan Osborn (who I supported) unfortunately lost his senate race in Nebraska 53-46 , but he overperformed against Kamala’s 60-39 loss in that state by 7.6% percentage points. Many other “purple” Democrat senate candidates over-performed, including Ruben Gallego (AZ) , Elissa Slotkin (MI) , Jacky Rosen (NV) , and Tammy Baldwin (WI) , all of whom won battleground races in states that Kamala lost.

We saw similar results with the eighteen young candidates TOGETHER! supported in House elections. Seven of our young “purple” candidates won, 6 Republicans and 1 Democrat, but unfortunately most of our Democratic candidates outperformed Kamala in their swing districts, but still lost because the entire country swung redder than everyone expected:

TOGETHER! Wins (average age 41 years old)

1. Maxwell Frost (D): 62.4% - youngest member of Congress, 27 years old
2. Tony Gonzalez (TX-23, R): 62.3% - won after defeating a Trump-endorsed primary opponent
3. Andrew Garbarino (NY-2, R): 60.2% - Problem Solvers caucus member
4. Celeste Maloy (UT-2, R): 58.2% - New member of Problem Solvers caucus
5. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-1, R): 56.5% - Leader of the bipartisan Problem Solvers caucus
6. David Valadao (CA-22, R): 53.3% - 1 of 2 remaining Republicans who voted to impeach Trump
7. Mike Lawler (NY-17, R): 52.2% - 4th most bipartisan member Problem Solvers caucus

TOGETHER! Close Losses

1. Rebecca Cooke (WI-3, D): 48.6% (outperformed Kamala by ~3%)
2. Missy Cotter Smasal (VA-2, D): 46.8% (outperformed Kamala)
3. Adam Frisch (CO-3, D): 46.3% (outperformed Kamala by ~5%)
4. Whitney Fox (FL-13, D): 45.2% (outperformed Kamala by ~4%)
5. Michelle Vallejo (TX-15, D): 42.9% (outperformed Kamala)

Overall, America is a purple country, albeit one that has shifted red (by about 6.5% nationwide, and by 3.0% in the battleground states, which can serve a rough estimate of how much Kamala Harris' campaign and $1 billion of advertising was able to swing those seven states):

The red shift of the entire country (and almost all demographic groups) in the Presidential race has been written about by many analysts in the past two weeks, and this chart from The New York Times summarizes it best:

Even young voters aged 18-39 whom TOGETHER! and our allies Vote.org , Voters of Tomorrow , New Voters , and The Civics Center targeted for increased voter registration and turnout ended up voting more for Trump and Republicans than polls (and we) predicted.

Multiple articles have been written about how young women chose Kamala Harris by 24%, which sounds like a big victory, but this was much less than the 35% margin Biden achieved among GenZ women four years ago when he defeated Trump.

Even more articles, YouTubes, and podcasts have documented how Donald Trump won GenZ men by 2% over Kamala Harris . This was a dramatic swing from Biden's 11% victory among GenZ four years ago, which shows that Trump was smart to join the All-In Podcast (one of my favorites), Joe Rogan, the Nelk Boys, Adin Ross, Bussin’ With The Boys, and Theo Von during the late stages of the campaign.

Since our TOGETHER! movement was founded to help amplify young Americans' voices and opinions, we will be digging even deeper into GenZ exit polls and focus groups in the months ahead, and listening especially closely to one of our newer GenZ allies, Young Americans For Liberty (YAL) who correctly predicted young men would break for Trump. I am also re-reading Richard V. Reeves great 2022 book "Of Boys And Men" which does an excellent job of analyzing the unique difficulties of being a young man in the 21st century.

What comes next? Trump has unified government under his control and his cabinet picks indicate he's going to try and govern "full MAGA". But the country is very purple and wants common sense government that works for them, their families, and their future. The people don't want chaos, but they don't want bloated, establishment bureaucratic government either. Millions of Americans want change, 21st century change, and its likely we are transitioning to a New Political Order . I highly recommend Ezra Klein's latest podcast on exactly this topic .

As an organization, TOGETHER! is committed to working with the Problem Solvers Caucus and President Trump on common sense, overdue reforms to simplify and modernize government – which was one of the pillars of my Presidential campaign .

America does need an upgrade! For example, our technology infrastructure is two decades old and we need to significantly reduce Federal spending to get our budget into balance, our national debt is dangerously too large (more than $100K per citizen). My friend Dave Walker, the former Comptroller of the Currency, has some great ideas about how to get our fiscal house in order , which I hope Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy listen to.

But TOGETHER! will also stand as principled resistors when Trump and radicals in Congress want to pursue un-American and un-Constitutional policies, like the current plan to round up 15 million undocumented immigrants and possibly force them into detention camps. America has always been a nation of immigrants and we need a talent-based immigration system that works for our economy as much as we need more border patrol agents and border judges. We don't need to sacrifice our core American values to fix immigration.

You may see me on TV these next few months – I keep getting invited to comment on politics on CNN , Fox News , BBC News , GB , and C-SPAN – but I'm also looking towards 2025 as an economic rebuilding year. This past year's foray into politics has honestly been an expensive one for me, and I intend to keep a toe in the water with TOGETHER! and our allies like The Lincoln Project but I am also looking to write my next chapter in either entrepreneurship, impact investing, public policy, and/or academia. If you've read this far, and you have ideas for how I might add the most value in 2025, I would love to catch up with you during this holiday season! Please reach out to me at [email protected] or drop a comment below.

More to come in two weeks...

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