California’s 2024 Electoral College results are surprising. Exactly 58.8% voted for Harris while 38.1% picked Trump, a huge difference from 2020 when Joe Biden won 63.5% and 34.3% voted for Trump. In other words, a 30% difference between the GOP candidate and the Democratic candidate closed in to become 20%. Considering California’s strongly blue state status, what could this mean for other states?
Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona, among other states, switched from supporting Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020 and back to Trump in 2024. These swing votes determine the election, and are the main reason I believe the consecutive two-term presidencies may become a thing of the past. One in five voters indicated that they were likely to change who they were voting for in each election. Attention spans and media criticism seem to be behind these huge vote swings.
Average attention spans have decreased in the U.S. from 2.5 minutes to 45 seconds over the past 20 years, according to Northeastern University. As a result, voters forget about the negative actions of a candidate during their previous term, especially as far as two terms ago — Trump greatly benefitted from this amnesia in 2024. Forgetting about their past actions, voters side with them again because they fixate on the negatives of the incumbent candidate or party, as they did with Biden and the Democrats despite a strong economy and a record of domestic accomplishments such as a huge infrastructure bill he signed into law.
In 2018, a study found that negative ads surged by 61% since the 1960s, an increase that entailed the American populus holding negative views toward a current running office holder while forgetting about the issues another candidate had during their past tenure. This would lead to voters voting for different sides every term, causing swing votes.
Most statistics point to the cost of living and the economy as the major factors in elections. Before the 2024 election, over 50% of people blamed Biden for economic woes, with 72% of Americans saying that inflation was increasing on his watch. This parallels over half of Americans believing Trump was better equipped to handle the economy than Harris.
However, most of this belief was misguided. The claims made regarding Biden’s mishandling of the economy are inconsistent with the annual economic growth of 2% over his presidency.
The American populus is likely unaware of these issues because of negative advertisements and a lack of education on how current events affect the economy. Rather, most of the economic difficulties the U.S. faced was due to the pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war. Additionally, the U.S. is the economic envy of the world, outperforming other countries in terms of inflation and post-pandemic recovery, among other metrics.
Can you name the last two-term president? It was Barack Obama, who won in 2008 and 2012. Sadly, America may not see the feat duplicated again for many years.