The 2024 Trump "realignment" is already over

It is a matter of fact that Donald Trump won the 2024 election in large part by shrinking the vote margins for Kamala Harris among non-white, working-class, and young voters, relative to past Democratic nominees.

But the interpretation of Trump’s 2024 win is a matter of opinion. Some, like the Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini, have argued Trump’s inroads with traditionally left-leaning voters represented a fundamental realignment in American politics. He is not alone in arguing this. Many in the Democratic Party, too, interpreted Trump’s 2024 win as a historic blow — the performance of a coalition on life support. On marches the emerging Republican majority. Left-liberalism is dead.

Other analysts have been more skeptical. On the subject of realignment, political scientists have tended to land on the answer “it’s complicated.” For one thing, they argue, the national shift away from Democrats in 2024 stemmed mostly from non-ideological and non-Trump variables, such as inflation and the pandemic. Longer-term trends, too, have been pushing voters toward either party regardless of what nominees say or do, including the sorting of conservatives, regardless of race, into the Republican Party. Yes, residual group-level swings exist, but they are mostly small. Trump doesn’t look so indomitable in Dec. 2024 if you account for all the variables that set him up for victory (and it was a small victory at that).

It is clear now that claims of a fundamental realignment of American politics have been highly exaggerated. The 2024 election is best seen as an anti-incumbent election stemming from economic anxiety, most but not entirely driven by rising inflation during Joe Biden’s presidency. The elections held this week were a continuation of the anti-incumbent sentiment from last year — this time directed toward the new party in charge. The biggest difference between 2024 and 2025 is that Republicans are running the country now, instead of the Democrats.1

But for the realignment theorists, it’s actually worse than it looks. From 2024 to 2025 Republicans lost the most support — 25 points, on average — among the very voters they theorized would remake the GOP into a vast, multi-racial, working-class coalition. Today’s Chart of The Week looks at subgroup vote choice in 2025. The data suggests Trump’s winning coalition has all but evaporated — if it ever existed at all.

One of the big lessons from this election cycle is that ...