High turnout, no post-election violence… Is democracy in the US still under threat?
analysis
In a presidential election that US democrats framed as a fight for democracy itself, former President Donald Trump – who pledged to rule as a “dictator” if re-elected – won a resounding victory. Was the 2024 vote a success for the world’s most powerful democracy?
Issued on: 06/11/2024 -
By: Joanna YORK
Kristin Scruggs votes at the 146-year-old Buck Creek school on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in rural Perry, Kansas. © Charlie Riedel, AP
Ballot boxes opened across the US on Tuesday amid heightened security with election officials preparing to fend off voter intimidation and potential violence.
Yet, after a tumultuous campaign, election day went smoothly. A series of bomb threats in parts of Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania turned out to be hoaxes that did little more than delay the counting of some ballots.
“That just shows you the resilience of our system and our people. We’re battle-tested,” said Brad Raffensperger, Secretary of State for Georgia where, in Fulton County, 32 polling places received bomb threats and five were briefly evacuated before reopening.
Elsewhere, as officials reported generally high turnout, voters queued peacefully – if they hadn’t submitted their ballots already. More than 84 million Americans voted early, almost equalling record figures from 2020 when the vote took place during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Yet even as they cast their ballots, nearly three-quarters of voters said they felt American democracy was "threatened", according to preliminary national exit polls from Edison Research.
Fears were divided between Democrats and Republicans: voters who said they felt democracy was under threat split their vote evenly between Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, the poll showed.
But threats of mass protests and violence in the wake of the vote failed to materialise as Trump stormed to a quick victory in several swing states.
Harris is set to deliver a speech conceding defeat on Wednesday evening, paving the way for a peaceful transfer of power.
‘Too big to rig’
“We haven't seen any trouble because Trump won,” says Giovanna Di Maio, non-resident fellow at the George Washington University and a teacher at Paris's Sciences Po university. “The scenario would have been completely different if we had areas, and especially swing states, in which the vote was so close that the two camps asked for recounts. That would have caused delays, and with delays come a lot of disinformation and questioning regarding the process.”
As vote counting began, Trump himself stoked fears that there was “talk about massive cheating in Philadelphia”, which multiple local officials dismissed as “disinformation”.
But as results fell in Trump's favour, claims of cheating died down.
Since the 2020 election, which was contested by Trump and his supporters, many swing states have introduced new voting regulations to either release results faster or reinforce the integrity of vote counting. But there is little indication that 2024 vote counts will be widely challenged.
“Past claims of voter fraud all came from Trump and suddenly that's not part of the discussion anymore,” says Emma Long, Associate Professor in American history and politics at the University of East Anglia.
She doubts that voters who feel past elections were fraudulent will be able to completely shake off their concerns. “I don't think [that feeling] is going to disappear just because they won this election. It will lurk underneath everything – ready to return at a later point if they feel that things aren't going their way again.”
Among Trump supporters, the idea that an election could be "stolen" is “rooted in people's minds and feelings”, adds Di Maio.
The former president used this fear to rally voters, she says. “One of Donald Trump’s strategies coming into the 2024 campaign was mobilising crowds, especially in rural areas, by convincing people that what they needed to do was to turn out in such huge numbers that the election was going to be too big to rig.”
The tactic succeeded. “Ironically, the man who's done the most damage to the perception of American electoral democracy is now president-elect of the country,” concludes Long.
Ballot boxes opened across the US on Tuesday amid heightened security with election officials preparing to fend off voter intimidation and potential violence.
Yet, after a tumultuous campaign, election day went smoothly. A series of bomb threats in parts of Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania turned out to be hoaxes that did little more than delay the counting of some ballots.
“That just shows you the resilience of our system and our people. We’re battle-tested,” said Brad Raffensperger, Secretary of State for Georgia where, in Fulton County, 32 polling places received bomb threats and five were briefly evacuated before reopening.
Elsewhere, as officials reported generally high turnout, voters queued peacefully – if they hadn’t submitted their ballots already. More than 84 million Americans voted early, almost equalling record figures from 2020 when the vote took place during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Yet even as they cast their ballots, nearly three-quarters of voters said they felt American democracy was "threatened", according to preliminary national exit polls from Edison Research.
Fears were divided between Democrats and Republicans: voters who said they felt democracy was under threat split their vote evenly between Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, the poll showed.
But threats of mass protests and violence in the wake of the vote failed to materialise as Trump stormed to a quick victory in several swing states.
Harris is set to deliver a speech conceding defeat on Wednesday evening, paving the way for a peaceful transfer of power.
‘Too big to rig’
“We haven't seen any trouble because Trump won,” says Giovanna Di Maio, non-resident fellow at the George Washington University and a teacher at Paris's Sciences Po university. “The scenario would have been completely different if we had areas, and especially swing states, in which the vote was so close that the two camps asked for recounts. That would have caused delays, and with delays come a lot of disinformation and questioning regarding the process.”
As vote counting began, Trump himself stoked fears that there was “talk about massive cheating in Philadelphia”, which multiple local officials dismissed as “disinformation”.
But as results fell in Trump's favour, claims of cheating died down.
Since the 2020 election, which was contested by Trump and his supporters, many swing states have introduced new voting regulations to either release results faster or reinforce the integrity of vote counting. But there is little indication that 2024 vote counts will be widely challenged.
“Past claims of voter fraud all came from Trump and suddenly that's not part of the discussion anymore,” says Emma Long, Associate Professor in American history and politics at the University of East Anglia.
She doubts that voters who feel past elections were fraudulent will be able to completely shake off their concerns. “I don't think [that feeling] is going to disappear just because they won this election. It will lurk underneath everything – ready to return at a later point if they feel that things aren't going their way again.”
Among Trump supporters, the idea that an election could be "stolen" is “rooted in people's minds and feelings”, adds Di Maio.
The former president used this fear to rally voters, she says. “One of Donald Trump’s strategies coming into the 2024 campaign was mobilising crowds, especially in rural areas, by convincing people that what they needed to do was to turn out in such huge numbers that the election was going to be too big to rig.”
The tactic succeeded. “Ironically, the man who's done the most damage to the perception of American electoral democracy is now president-elect of the country,” concludes Long.
‘A dangerous moment’
Trump won clear victories in the popular vote and with the Electoral College. His Republican party also reclaimed control of the US Senate for the first time in four years, and is heading towards a majority in the House of Representatives.
As a result, the Republicans now “don't have to turn to any anti-democratic means to increase their power. They hold all the levers of power within America's democracy,” says Richard Hargy, a specialist in US politics and visiting scholar at the Centre for the Study of Ethnic Conflict at Queens University Belfast.
The win may have quelled anxiety over the future of democracy among Trump voters, but it has realised his opponents’ fears. For Democrats, a new Trump presidency “will further undermine the institutions of government and the pillars of American democracy that have already been damaged by Trump, both in his first term and in his four years out of office”, said Long.
If anything, Trump’s presidential campaign sought to stoke rather than dispel these fears as he warned that he would deploy the military to target political opponents, take action against news organisations for unfavorable coverage and mused gutting the neutral civil service.
Trump's cabinet picks will give important clues as to his true intentions in office, says Long. “If he stacks the administration with far-right figures then that will be a sign that he's giving them free rein.”
Others believe the future president’s intentions are already clear. “Trump has gotten a very, very clear mandate. We're in for a significantly authoritarian turn in America,” says Rene Lindstaedt, Head of the School of Government at Birmingham University. “I think he feels emboldened and he will absolutely follow through on a lot of the things that he said. This is an extremely dangerous moment in American history.”
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