Cohen: Lessons learned from the 2024 election
No shortcuts, no ceilings, no hiding from the media and other key findings from the race for the White House
“What Did We Learn From the 2024 Presidential Election?”
In preparation for our latest Px3 podcast (posting later) with the good and wise Justin Robert Young, Tom and I were prompted in our group chat with this question. Even in our hour-plus conversation, we missed some of the things I saw. So, let’s consider this a bonus lightning round just for our friends here at 24sight News.
1. Campaigns: There are no shortcuts.
This was Presiden-elect Donald Trump’s best campaign, and he hired professionals who kept him focused on the prize: becoming the first president in over 100 years to return to the White House after losing it. The power trio of Susie Wiles, Chris LaCivita, and my former boss Tony Fabrizio did an amazing job of running a low-drama, effective, and inspired operation. You want to win? Hire and then listen to pros.
The handoff between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris looked good on paper early but lost its cohesion in October. The melding of the two teams got them to the convention with a solid lead in national polling, but the messaging shift to democracy seemed a little too remote and Bidenesque and helped bring Trump back to where the race was, which was a toss-up favoring the former president. I look forward to Tom’s reporting on this as well as the books from others to follow. There are no shortcuts in the permanent campaign. You can’t just cut and paste teams, and win.
2. Strategy: Don’t accept that you can’t grow the electorate.
Perhaps the most interesting thing most of us got wrong was that Trump had a “ceiling.” In pollsters’ parlance, it’s the largest percentage of the vote you can expect a candidate to achieve on Election Day. We all thought he’d cap out around 47-48%. He’s now at almost 50%. Trump’s team rejected the conventional wisdom that they had maximized his ceiling and went at traditional groups including young men, Blacks, and Latinos. Trump even outperformed with women. Lesson? There’s always room for growth.
3. Tactics: You can’t run from the media if you’re running for office.
The Harris-Walz team were hyper-concerned about losing their early lead so they avoided doing sit-down interviews until it was already too late. This tactical error masked the reality that (1) you get points for showing up, as Trump and his team understood, and (2) Harris needed to fill in the “why” part of her candidacy, as in why are you running and why should voters choose you in this environment? No answers for voters shows you’re running from the election, not running to win.
4. Issues: Even post-Dobbs, the economy and inflation ruled.
In addition to the great documentary, someone ought to give James Carville a spot on Mount Rushmore for electing presidents. His key insight in the early 1990s that “it’s the economy, stupid” needs to be relearned every political generation. This time we were told that there were Romneyesque binders full of women voters who would support Harris-Walz because of a single issue: abortion. Wrong. Voters gave Trump a pass on the pandemic and his convictions because they remembered the economy was roaring four years ago and they wanted it back. Future candidates might want to take this into account before running because your boss had a late-life crisis, or a bad meeting with Nancy Pelosi.
5. Values: They still matter, but framing matters more.
Harris was at her best when she was talking about freedom, not democracy or decency. Again, in October that messaging got muddled and she lost the lead. What worked for Trump, particularly late, was a subtle shift into the values debate. What’s the most important thing to a parent? Their kids. Trump’s last ad’s tagline was, “Kamala is for they/them, and Donald Trump is for you.” The message was that Trump wouldn’t allow trans boys to play girls sports, and potentially harm your kid. The ad was brutal, as trans kids already have a difficult path to navigate outside of politics. But it also was powerful, and Harris’s largest super PAC Future Forward said it accounted for 2.7% of support for Trump among those who viewed it. Bottom line: values matter, but how they are framed for voters is more important.
6. Culture: Trump’s 10-year realignment is complete.
Democrats misread American culture. Their messaging on Trump was all about “this is not who we are.” But it is. Americans quickly bore of heroes who are too good, because they don’t seem authentic. Anti-heroes, flawed celebrities, and even villains are all the rage. I’m concerned about this. I’m a fan of Luke Skywalker over Han Solo, Captain America over Iron Man. Take your conflict and I’ll go all in on the light over the dark. But that’s not who the country is writlarg. Tyson and Paul broke the internet and which fighter did you root for? While others have made the argument that the GOP is now a working-class party (see: Patrick Ruffini’s Party of the People as a great example), culture overwhelms. Candidates need to be of the culture, not outside of it.
7. Polls: Pollsters did a great job learning Trump, less so on Harris.
Over the last month of the campaign on the Px3 podcast with Tom and Justin, I continuously said that we’ve figured out Trump from a polling perspective but didn’t have enough data on Harris to know who was going to show up for her on Election Day. I was right, and so were the polls, not just nationally but in the battlegrounds. In fact, this was the best performance by pollsters since Trump began running in 2015. They still undercounted his national support and in the battlegrounds but it was within the margin of error. What this says about polling is this: we learn. Pollsters should be taking victory laps but instead we’re talking about Ann Selzer’s bad poll in Iowa, which she shouldn’t have released (more on this in last week’s post).
8. AI: Still early, generated content runs against authenticity.
I’ll have a lot to say about the use of AI in campaigns when the second edition of Modern Political Campaigns gets released next year — I just filed my updated edition to the team at Rowman & Littlefield last week, make sure to pick up the latest edition when it publishes, possibly as soon as mid-April. Despite fears of widespread disinformation from content generated by AI, it is widely used as a drafting tool in campaigns, particularly downballot. Everyone understands the tech isn’t quite there yet so using these tools in finished products comes off as inauthentic, which kills campaigns. It might get there eventually, but there will be a slower roll than we anticipated.
9. Money: Less important than earned media.
Harris and groups supporting her outspent Trump $2.3 billion to $1.9 billion, and most of it was in media buys. Trump was able to spend less because of his celebrity, his first term in office, remaining in the public eye due to his court cases, assassination attempts and repeated campaign rally antics and threats. He has spent his entire adult life earning media attention, cultivating reporter relationships, and knowing when and how to make news through controversy. If money is there primarily to help you get your message out to voters, earning media is the great equalizer.
10. Media: Silos rule.
Mass media is dead. For weeks the discussion around the Harris campaign was would she do a network sit-down interview. This was a conversation for the 1990s, not the 2020s. Instead, Trump understood that sitting down with Joe Rogan for three hours would not only get a large audience, off network, but produce network effects in it being shared on social media. Harris went on 60 Minutes and the post-interview conversation around it was whether CBS News selectively clipped the best 20 minutes for the Democrat. Future candidates will lean into their silos and largely avoid national news interviews.
Michael Cohen, is the author of the book Modern Political Campaigns, president of Cohen Research Group and a 30-year veteran of the polling industry. He writes The Level regularly for 24sight News, analyzing polling and campaign trends with a keen eye and level-headed approach.
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