The US election, while shocking, was not a repudiation of democracy | Austin Sarat

Democracy requires faith of various kinds. It requires faith in the wisdom of the people, in the durability of its institutions and in a future that we cannot foresee.

As one commentator aptly puts it, we must “recognize that democracy is a process and not a destination”.

This week’s stunning election results will surely test the faith that sustains democracy. For Americans who believe in our constitutional republic, it seems almost unimaginable that voters, after hearing Donald Trump’s dark vision, still choose him as president.

Progressives and people devoted to preserving democracy clearly have underestimated Trump’s appeal. We need to take a cold, hard look in the mirror and not be blinded by our own revulsion at Trump and all that he represents.

Like many others, I have spilled a lot of ink writing about the threat Trump poses to American freedom and the American way of life. Those warnings seem to have fallen on deaf ears.

That is made clear by the fact that it now looks like Trump will win the popular vote as well as a substantial electoral college victory. As Newsweek notes, he is “on track to do something that a Republican candidate hasn’t done in 20 years – win the popular [vote] … the first time a Republican has done so since President George W Bush won re-election in 2004.”

In 2016, when he won the presidency the first time, Trump’s opponents could console themselves by pointing out that he lost the popular vote by almost 3m votes and had prevailed only because of the vestigial and undemocratic electoral college.

Not so this year.

In a free and fair election, Trump prevailed not because democracy failed but because the people wanted him back in the White House. He is only the second person in American history to have served one term, then left office only to be returned for a second term.

Kamala Harris ran a campaign that offered joy and hope to the American people. Trump offered fear and hatred. The voters have made their choice.

The vice-president was running against strong headwinds. She was an incumbent trying to convince the public that she would be an agent of change.

She offered herself as a candidate who believed in the promise of America at a time when “65% of registered voters … [think] the country is on the wrong track,” while just “28% say it’s on the right track,” according to an NBC survey.

As the pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research explained before the election, that sentiment is “terrible … for the party in power”. Harris was also dragged down by the fact that voters were sour on the economy and blamed their woes on the Biden/Harris administration.

CNN reports that while “voters were about evenly split in 2020 on whether the economy was in good shape or not … In 2024, about two-thirds of voters said the economy was in bad shape. That shift in sentiment benefited Trump.”

This was not an abstract sentiment. Compare 2020, when “just about one-fifth of voters said they were doing worse than four years before”, to this year when “nearly half of voters who say they are doing worse than four years ago. Trump won them overwhelmingly.”

Moreover, 75% of the voters said that inflation had caused their family moderate or severe hardship.

But voters did not rank the economy as the top issue facing the country. Instead, they put democracy at the top of their list, with the economy coming in second.

NBC News notes that when they were asked “to choose among five issues, 34% of voters said democracy mattered most to their votes, while 31% said the economy. Abortion (14%) and immigration (11%) ranked as the next-most-important issues, while just 4% named foreign policy”.

With democracy ranking first you would have thought that Harris would have had a big advantage. But it seems that Trump succeeded in muddying the waters by accusing the Biden/Harris administration of threatening democracy.

As he put it: “I don’t think you’re going to have another election in this country, if we don’t win this election … certainly not an election that’s meaningful.”

What was clear to commentators who warned that the election of Trump would be a body blow to American democracy was anything but clear to the electorate. Recall that in June, before Joe Biden left the race, a survey of voters in six swing states that Biden narrowly won in 2020 found many of them saying that “threats to democracy are extremely important” to their vote for president.

As the Washington Post noted at the time, “more of them trust Trump to handle those threats than Biden. And most believe that the guardrails in place to protect democracy would hold even if a dictator tried to take over the country.”

Trump was able to capitalize on the fact that only “28% of US adults are satisfied with the way democracy is working in the country.” That dissatisfaction was stronger among Republicans than among Democrats.

But it would be a mistake to infer that the 2024 election was a rejection of democracy.

Many Americans might think that Trump didn’t destroy democracy the first time and that he said a lot of things that he did not do. The message did not sink in that the guardrails and “adults in the room” will be missing.

And it’s normal for people not to face the worst possible scenarios when they haven’t experienced them. Memories are short and focused on the most recent pain in the grocery aisle.

Moreover, surveys show that “Most Americans are supportive of democracy and think dictatorship would be bad for the United States … Only 4% of Americans say it would be a good thing for the US to have a dictator in charge, while 80% disagree.” Importantly, that includes “87% of 2020 Trump voters”.

Those who were concerned about democracy and voted for Trump have a distinctive view of what is needed to fix our form of government. In their view what is needed is strong leadership.

Sixty-five per cent of Trump voters said the most important thing about Trump was that he has “the ability to lead”. They cast their ballots for him even though only 24% of them thought that Trump cares about people like them.

In the end, while we have no doubt about the threat Trump’s election poses to American democracy, it would be wrong to see the election results as an endorsement of his authoritarian plans or a reason to give up on democracy.

Starting on 20 January 2025, standing up for democratic values will be risky work. But those of us who are prepared to do it should not be fooled by Trump’s election into thinking that the American people won’t be on our side as we undertake that work.

• Austin Sarat, associate dean of the faculty and William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author of Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty