Trump's Support Base: 2016 vs 2024

Exactly eight years ago, I was here in Washington, D.C., witnessing something nobody thought possible: Donald Trump winning against Hillary Clinton—a race that almost every analyst saw as a "walk in the park" for Hillary. Only, it wasn’t.

Beyond confirmation bias, flawed data, and misguided strategies, there was something else at play: a silent, almost undetectable support base for Donald Trump that showed up on Election Day.

The writing was already on the wall, if any pollster or analyst had been willing to read it. In my conversations with Uber drivers, shop owners, friends on U Street, and members of minority communities, I noticed a quiet and almost cautious inclination toward Trump, none of which was reflected in the polls but ultimately won him the 2016 election.

But here is a major difference between 2016 and 2024: Trump’s support base is no longer quiet or isolated. They are loud and quantifiable, which is why the polls in 2024, unlike in 2016 and 2020, show Trump either leading or tied. The good news is that Trump’s electoral weight is now measurable; the bad news is, it may still not reflect his true electoral position, given still the rigid methodologies and traditional polling techniques that are not sensitive enough to detect micro-shifts and outliers—both of which are likely to be defining factors in the upcoming election.

This newfound comfort in being a Trump supporter, openly and publicly—especially among Gen Z, women, and diverse communities—has made supporting Trump not only acceptable but also “common sense”—something that Trump’s campaign has successfully cultivated and the Harris campaign seems unable or unwilling to address. Much of this is sheer disconnect of Harris campaign from the public mood, but a lot of it has to do with an ongoing arrogance in refusing Trump "respect" and "agency" as a legitimate opponent. Such arrogance is actually self-defeating, building a confirmation bias that then translates into poor data and strategy.

My concern for the Harris campaign is that it has relied too much on the "learnings" from the Biden and Clinton campaigns and continues to use previously failed frameworks to understand, strategise, and build narratives against Trump that simply don’t work. The issue is, Trump 2024 is an entirely different specie than Trump 2020 and Trump 2016. However, the Harris campaign is too entrenched in confirmation bias, playing the old script of Trump being “nasty,” and “loathsome,” in attempts to make supporting Trump “unfashionable” at a time when he is presenting himself as a “common-sense” candidate for America. You could forgive Hillary Clinton for this neglect, but Harris has no excuse to not know any better.

Essentially, Harris 2024 is running against Trump 2016, refusing to even acknowledge Trump 2024 and adjusting her campaign accordingly. Unless there is some wisdom to it that will reveal itself on November 5th, the public momentum and what the electoral map may look like in the days ahead is no rocket science to predict.