Why Harris Lost to Trump: The “Secret” Missing Link

On the day of the historic 2024 US presidential election, Newsweek magazine published an article—featured near the top of Google News—citing six major polls showing Kamala Harris ahead of Donald Trump. These polls had been conducted by the BBC, The New York Times, 538, Nate Silver, John Zogby Strategies and Ipsos-Reuters. Two days after the election, the same magazine published another article, this time acknowledging that “Harris had been (incorrectly) predicted to win by almost every forecaster.” That included the so-called polling Nostradamus, American University political historian Allan Lichtman, whose “13 keys” model had correctly predicted nine of the previous ten US presidential elections (with a strong reason for failing to have correctly predicted the outcome of the 2000 Bush v. Gore election: it was decided by the Supreme Court).

Now the dust has settled, at least somewhat, and the reality of course is that it is Trump who has won. He has won not only the Electoral College vote—by the healthy margin of 312 to 226—but is also on track to win the popular vote by several million, which will be the first time in 20 years that a Republican candidate for president has accomplished this.

What makes this outcome so exceptional is its counter-intuitive nature. This goes far beyond the scenario of a Republican defeating a Democrat or a conservative beating a progressive. This is the case of a candidate whose former and longest-serving chief of staff, retired four-star Marine Corps General John F. Kelly, has publicly identified him as consistent with the dictionary definition of a fascist, a right-wing anti-democratic authoritarian demagogue, who fomented violence in an attempt to overturn the results of the previous election. This, in the land of what has heretofore been known as the bastion of democracy and the rule of law. Trump’s brand has been built on racism, misogyny and xenophobic, anti-immigrant rhetoric of the most virulent kind. And yet, his victory came by winning over what for a Republican candidate are record numbers of minority voters and women. How was this possible—and what are the implications for the future?

The discussion so far has ignored one simple key factor that helps us comprehend what intuitively may seem to be the incomprehensible. That factor may be expressed in a single word: authenticity.

Some, like Jimmy Kimmel on his show the night after, have proclaimed “no reasonable explanation whatsoever.” Many explanations have been offered, however, including by those whose predictions proved incorrect. Nate Silver, for example, offered a loose “laundry list” (his own words) of 24 reasons, “in no particular order.” The consensus seems to be that voter perceptions relating in particular to the economy and immigration were critical to Trump’s success. Certainly numerous considerations are involved but in my opinion, the discussion so far has ignored one simple key factor that helps us comprehend what intuitively may seem to be the incomprehensible. That factor may be expressed in a single word: authenticity.

In August 2019, on this platform, I published an article, “Authenticity: The ‘Secret Sauce’ for Both Trump and Sanders.” In that piece, I asserted that authenticity is a critical quality that defines both of these otherwise very different men. Authenticity is the quality of being genuine or real—or, in politics at least, the appearance of such. I suggested that this quality or lack thereof is a huge motivator in voter behavior. As crass, vulgar and offensive as Trump may be, he gives people the definite sense that this is who he really is. The more offensive and vulgar his expressions, in fact, the more he comes across as genuine: the real Donald Trump, so to speak. In this sense, at least, he is not hiding anything. This makes him come across as authentic.

Harris, on the other hand, through no fault of her own, was put in a position in which she was obliged to bob and weave and dodge. As a loyal member of the Biden Administration, how could she represent the “change” she promised? As someone who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, in Oakland, no less—the city where the Black Panthers, the most militant black power organization of the era, originated—the biracial daughter of parents who met while attending UC Berkeley during the civil rights era, how could she separate herself from the “radical left” that is so intimately associated with her early environment, even though she tried hard to present herself as a moderate and centrist? How could she at the same time support the rights of both Israelis and Palestinians, two opposing groups at war with each other (attracting the votes of both Arab and Jewish Americans)? While Trump was gleefully on the offensive, Harris was on the defensive in so many ways. In the process—bobbing, weaving and dodging—she projected a lack of authenticity, as if she had something to hide. In politics, perception typically eclipses reality. And so, in contrast with Trump, she appeared to many as inauthentic.

Shifting pronouncements about Trump and his running mate from the Democratic ticket reinforced the perception. Initially, they described their Republican opponents as “weird” (read small and insignificant). Harris subsequently leaned into the idea that Trump was a fascist whom one of his advisors had compared to Hitler (a larger-than-life existential threat to American democracy, if not the entire world). You can’t have it both ways, obviously, so this waffling came across as yet another manifestation of lacking authenticity.

Speaking on The Daily podcast on November 9, senior New York Times political correspondent Maggie Haberman described Trump during the final days of his campaign as indulging in the kind of “intense self-harm” that represented “the purest version of himself.” But what Haberman described as self-harm actually was not, precisely because by presenting that purest version of himself, Trump was in effect radiating authenticity. This, I would argue, was likely a critical factor in his victory over Harris. To many voters at least, he came across as authentic, while Harris did not.

People vote largely on the basis of which candidate most appeals to them at the time—and perceptions of authenticity or lack thereof figure heavily into voting behavior.

Many commentators seem to be ignoring this, in favor of the idea, as articulated on CNN, that “Trump’s 2024 victory revealed voter shifts that could reshape America’s political landscape,” through some type of long-term “realignment.” Let us remember, however, that many of the same people who voted for George W. Bush later voted for Barack Obama and then for Donald Trump. People vote largely on the basis of which candidate most appeals to them at the time—and perceptions of authenticity or lack thereof figure heavily into voting behavior.

By the same token, does Harris’s defeat in 2024, following that of Hillary Clinton in 2016, mean that the country is “not ready” to elect a female as president? Admittedly, one major common characteristic that these two candidates shared was their gender. I would argue that another common thread, however, was their weakness in terms of authenticity. Clinton in reality may have not been any less authentic than Harris was but the perception, for a variety of reasons, was that she too was lacking in this regard. I would give female voters of this country more credit: It is not that they are somehow “not ready” to elect a woman as leader, as many other countries have done for decades. Rather, to win enough female votes, the candidate—regardless of gender identification—must impress them as authentic (or at least more so than the alternative).

If Harris’s defeat was indeed part of a deliberate “realignment” among the country’s electorate, how is it that ballot measures for abortion rights—an issue closely associated for decades with Democrats—won in seven out of ten states, which chose to confirm abortion-related constitutional amendment measures?? If Harris’s defeat was indeed part of such a deliberate “realignment” among the country’s electorate, how is it that various staunchly pro-Trump Republican candidates for federal and executive-level offices were defeated in their bids by their Democratic opponents? Prime examples of such defeated hard-right Republican candidates are Kari Lake (who campaigned for Nevada’s open Senate seat), Joe Kent (who ran unsuccessfully for Washington States 3rd congressional district) and self-described “Black Nazi” Mark Robinson (who campaigned for governor in North Carolina).

If Democrats want to do better in future presidential elections—if indeed there are any in the future—they may do well to eschew coronations, allowing for genuinely open primaries.

A third characteristic that Kamala Harris has in common with Hillary Clinton, apart from gender and a perceived authenticity deficit, is that both were in effect anointed—in distinctly top-down fashion—as their party’s standard bearer by party elites, who manipulated events to lock in their chosen candidate as the nominee. Clinton’s supporters used dirty tricks to shut Bernie Sanders out of the running for the 2016 election. In Kamala Harris’s case, Joe Biden’s late withdrawal from the race in 2024 and his endorsement of Harris effectively ruled out any real primary contest, the type of contest from which a candidate perceived as truly authentic, with greater appeal, might presumably have emerged. If Democrats want to do better in future presidential elections—if indeed there are any in the future—they may do well to eschew coronations, allowing for genuinely open primaries.

Daniel K. Berman is a Silicon Valley-based consultant who holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.