Donald Trump Poised To Win Election
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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. It is 3.52 a.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, November 6th, and Donald Trump is on the cusp of a return to the White House. When I said that, many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason. Yeah!

And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness. And now we are going to fulfill that mission together. We're going to fulfill that mission. Domenico, as we record, Trump has swept three of the swing states pretty decisively. Talk us through where we stand.

Yeah. I mean, where we are right now is that Donald Trump is going to be the next president of the United States. You know, him being able to win Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina. As we said, coming into this election night, there was no path for Kamala Harris. The math just didn't work if she didn't win one of those three states.

Trump has won them and is going to be the next president now because of it. You know, it's quite remarkable that he was able to win by the margins that he won by in some of these places and the fact that he's leading at this hour in the other blue wall states of Wisconsin and Michigan by fairly sizable margins. He's also leading in Arizona as well.

And Nevada, which could mean a seven-state sweep for Trump in all of those toss-up states. And, you know, that's pretty notable. But it's also not that surprising given the fact that we're in a place where American politics seems so national now, not just so localized, that, you know, one little tip in one direction can kind of make the whole, you know, house of cards fall down. And it seems like that's what's happened tonight. But traditionally they do –

break in one direction. It's not unusual. You know, I always say historical rules only work till they stop working. Well, this historical rule kept on working. You know, the battleground states tend to go in one direction. And the other thing that was typical about this race, of course, when Donald Trump is in a race, it never seems typical at all. But in an environment where incumbents have been toppled all over the world in Western democracies and otherwise,

And people feel the cost of living is too high and immigration is a problem, even though all these countries are also facing a labor shortage. You know, this was a race that the challenger was supposed to win, according to historical rules. And he did.

Yeah, people have been in a bad mood. I mean, they've been in a bad mood for a very long time, right? I mean, people have been saying that the direction of the country is going the wrong way for every single month for the past 15 years, which is kind of crazy. But the fundamentals, Mara's right, we're totally on Donald Trump's side. The economy, people saying that their perceptions are that they don't feel as good as they did maybe five years ago. They say four, but...

I think they really mean five when they think of the Trump economy, considering we were right in the middle of the COVID pandemic four years ago. But, you know, people are feeling, you know, sticker shock. The prices at grocery stores, they've told us over and over again on the campaign trail. It's a thing that we've heard about all throughout all of this. And, you know, for the people who voted for Donald Trump, the exit process,

polls tell us that these character issues, judgment and all of that, were much further down the list for them than something like being able to be a good leader, the ability to lead. And the economy, obviously, huge portion of that. It's hard to see how prices go down, right? I mean, inflation has leveled off, but going back to 2020 prices, that seems pretty far-fetched.

Basically, Donald Trump said, I can wave a magic wand and make prices go down to where they were when I was president before. And a lot of people believed him. And we're going to see what happens. He says he has a mandate. The last guy who won the popular vote and the Electoral College thought he had a mandate. His name was Joe Biden. And he presided over what became one of the most unpopular administrations in American history. But what's really interesting to me is when you remember about the first Trump term,

Once he was in office, he was treated like a normal president. People rendered a judgment on him at the end of his term. They didn't like it. They didn't like the way he handled COVID. And it'll be really interesting to see if he can change the rules of the game so profoundly that he won't be judged as a normal president or not. Yeah, on that note, Mara, I want to hear just Trump spoke this morning about 2.30 this morning to his supporters in Florida. I want to hear just a little bit of that. America has...

given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate. We have taken back control of the Senate. Wow, that's great.

So there's that word mandate you mentioned, Amara. What can we expect from Trump in a second term? Well, we certainly know what he said he wants to do. And I believe that politicians are transparent. They tell you what they want to do. And when they get into office, they try to do it. Even though a lot of Trump supporters thought that he was joking or sarcastic or didn't really mean it when he said things like, I want to let Putin do whatever he wants. And he said he wants to weaponize the Department of Justice to go against his enemies. He said he wants to use the military against his political opponents.

De-professionalize the civil service, something called Schedule F, where he can fire tens of thousands of federal workers and replace them with his loyalists. He also says he wants to put on steep tariffs, which I think the business community doesn't like. But which he would have the power to do. He would certainly have the power to do. And that's what I'm focused on, things that he can do on his own. Legislation is secondary. All right. We'll take a quick break and we'll be back in just a moment.

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This message comes from Wondery. Kill List is a true story of how one journalist ended up in a race against time to warn those on the list whose lives were in danger. Follow Kill List wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So Republicans will also have control of the Senate. We know that so far. That will have huge repercussions for Trump's ability to govern. Domenico, what do we know right now?

Well, what's really surprising is just how big the Senate majority may be for Republicans, because if Trump does wind up pulling off, you know, winning, you know, Wisconsin and Michigan, Nevada, he very well could wind up with 55, 56.

Senate seats, which would be very, very high for Republicans and not what was expected. It was expected that they might have a 52-48 majority. Democrats would still be in striking distance to be able to try to come back in 2026. But that doesn't seem to be the case now. It would be a much

higher hill for Democrats to climb to be able to try to get back into the majority in the Senate a couple election cycles away from now. We'll see what happens. The House is another story. Really, the ballgame seems to be there where Democrats seem to have a shot here at winning the House.

They need a net gain of four seats. Um, overall they are holding up fairly well, but, um, Republicans in California and Arizona, as the vote is starting to sort of close there, uh, they're gaining a little bit more momentum and may be able to hold off, uh,

Democrats. We are not going to know for some time because many of these races are really, really close. We're talking about some 70 races that I've been tracking over the last day. In fact, you think about a seat like the Maryland 6th Congressional District, there's 350

votes that are separating the Democrat from the Republican. So it's going to take some time before we know. And of course, if Republicans hold the House and having taken the Senate and the presidency, as things stand right now, that opens up a whole other conversation about what Trump could do beyond simply executive power.

Of which he has a tremendous amount, and the Supreme Court has given him much more, just to establish that. I mean, legislation is important, but we're living in a new era of almost unfettered executive power. Before we go, any final thoughts? I'm going to start with you, Mara.

Well, I think there's so many things we're going to learn from this election, and both parties are going to spend a lot of time looking over the entrails. But one of them that really strikes me is that a highly professional, well-funded, sophisticated ground game is no match for just plain old organic enthusiasm. I don't think Trump's win was because he had a good ground game. I think it's because he had more organic enthusiasm. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, Trump is a one man turnout machine for the people who want to vote for him. That's it. Full stop when it comes to that. What was stunning here is that white voters actually went up to 71 percent as a share of the electorate, which is higher than they were in 2020, which was 67 percent of the electorate. And that's really stunning because we know that white voters vote.

are going down as an eligible share of the voting population overall. So the fact that Trump was able to turn them out really helped him win, despite the fact that Kamala Harris was able to win 43 percent of white voters, which is actually pretty good for a Democrat. This is political realignment in the face of democratic change. In other words, it's going in the opposite direction. It's not...

hitching a ride on the growing sections of the electorate. It's the opposite. Not to mention the movement with other demographics. I was just going to say, Trump, you know...

really pulled off a coup in how many Latino voters he was able to win over because Harris only got 53% of Latinos, according to the exit polls. That is down from 65% where Joe Biden was. That is the lowest any Democrat has gotten since 2004 when George W. Bush nearly pulled off an even race with Latinos. So there is a big gap.

that's happening in this country. And when you're in the middle of a realignment, it's really hard to see what the country is going to be like, what that realignment is going to mean. And, you know, I don't think we're going to really know any of that until maybe even 2028. Yeah, no. And now that we're since we're talking about final thoughts, there are so many of them. We're also in this whole new world where one of Trump's biggest backers, Elon Musk,

owns a massive social media company that became a megaphone for Donald Trump, not to mention conspiracy theories, disinformation and misinformation. That's going to have profound effects on American politics, too. I think there is going to be heavy debate about what the correct approach is for Democrats and how they can win in the future, because they clearly moved to the center. In fact, to the center right, I would argue, in the Biden administration, and they lost. Right.

Right now, you can say that it's because of Kamala Harris's words from 2019 and the fact that, you know, even our polling showed that people didn't believe necessarily that she was sincere about the her intentions for the proposals that she's putting forward. At least many men didn't feel that way. But there's also going to be a lot of progressives who feel like Kamala Harris really reached out to disaffected Republicans who didn't.

wound up voting for Donald Trump anyway, for the most part. And that might not have been the best approach because she wasn't able to turn out, you know, 18 to 29 year olds, for example, only 55% of them went for Harris. Democrats win when they're at 60%. So I think that's going to get fought out. And you know where that usually gets fought out? In a primary like one that didn't happen this time.

We will be back in your feed this afternoon, so be sure to hit the follow button wherever you get your podcasts so you get notified every time we have a new episode. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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