Alex Tureman: US voters said nup to Trump

Referendum elections, especially in an environment where voters are dissatisfied with the direction of the country or concerned about the pocketbook issues, usually spell trouble for the incumbent and their party. The dynamics that would cause analysts to project a “wave” or an overwhelming election against the incumbent party are all there. Whether it’s escalating crime or inflation and increasing interest rates, voters have a great deal to worry about in their day-to-day lives.

Voters seem to have moderated their ballots, picking candidates viewed as less volatile on issues such as abortion and democracy itself.

However, and contradictory to all these indicators, this week’s results suggest this was not a referendum election by any stretch of the imagination.

This was a choice election. This was an election between two different paths, two different parties and, most importantly, two different political figures.

The most striking dilemma for American voters was that if they decided to sweep the Democrats out of office, they would be handing the reins back to Trump’s MAGA Republicans.

While votes are still being counted in a handful of states and districts, voters seem to have moderated their ballots, picking candidates from Biden’s Democratic Party who were viewed as less volatile on issues such as abortion and democracy itself.

While an increasing cost of living, a shaky economy, spiking crime and regular interest rate hikes turn off voters across every level of society, the results show that voters still preferred Democrats over MAGA Republicans, even with the significant structural headwinds Democrats faced.

As I wrote in The Australian Financial Review more than two years ago, Americans just want to make politics boring again. That proved true once more as voters opted for the less disruptive party in many of the races.

‘Searing indictment’ of the GOP

The Washington Post’s columnist Marc Thiessen summed it up well when he said on Fox News: “There is a broader issue, and think about this: we have the worst inflation in four decades, the worst collapse in real wages in 40 years, the worst crime wave since the 1990s, the worst border crisis in US history, we have Joe Biden, who is the least popular president since Harry Truman, since presidential polling happened, and there wasn’t a red wave.

“That is a searing indictment of the Republican Party … They [the voters] looked at all of that, and looked at the Republican alternative, and said ‘no thanks’.”

The bottom line is that while nearly every pundit, early projection and poll said that crime and petrol and grocery prices would be the determining factors in what would be a “wave” election, the outcome suggests that the American people focused on the choice between Trump and the Dobbs decision (overturning Roe v Wade), and democracy.

As Biden often says, “Don’t compare me against the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.” It looks like Americans compared him with the alternative.