World

Thursday

7 Nov 2024

Not even close: how Trump confounded the pundits

It was supposed to be close. On the eve of election day, Donald Trump was up just 0.1 per cent in the RealClearPolitics polling average. FiveThirtyEight projected a tiny Trump advantage. PredictIt had Kamala Harris ahead. A celebrated pollster ran 80,000 simulations, and Harris won 50.015 per cent of them, versus 49.985 per cent for Trump. And it made some sense to expect a close result. With the exception of Barack Obama’s victories, every US election since 2000 has been close. In two cases, 2000 and 2016, the winner didn’t win the popular vote, which before then hadn’t happened since 1888, when Benjamin Harrison beat Grover Cleveland. What makes American

Lionel Shriver

The real test for the republic

It’s always intimidating to write for a readership more clued up than you are. I file this on the very Tuesday the international commentariat have relentlessly claimed is the most consequential election day in American history. Now, in my ignorance, I suspect this superlative reflects the blinkered vanity of the present, and I’ve braved expressing my trust on the record that the country will ultimately survive either dismaying outcome. Yet only you know if an anti-climactic calm still prevails down thousands of American Main Streets; if, rather, the cities are aflame, armed militias reign, supermarket shelves are bare, and the US army is trying to decide which side to back;

Freddy Gray

American titan: inside Donald Trump’s remarkable political comeback

Palm Beach, Florida Donald Trump’s bid to take back the White House has been triumphant. It is a decisive victory and even Trump’s bitterest enemies should recognise him for what he is: an American titan, the most extraordinary politician of our time. He has just pulled off arguably the biggest comeback in US history – a feat greater even than Richard Nixon’s Lazarus-like return in 1968. To understand the scale of his victory, recall how weakly he began. On 15 November 2022, when Trump launched his now-triumphant bid to regain the presidency, he did not seem himself. His formal campaign announcement, delivered in the ballroom of his club in Mar-a-Lago,

Wednesday

6 Nov 2024

Matt McDonald

Kamala Harris finally concedes defeat

US Vice President Kamala Harris finally took the stage at her alma mater, Washington, DC’s Howard University – a day later than anticipated, to deliver a 12-minute concession speech. She walked out at 4:24 p.m. ET Wednesday, somewhat ironically, to the chorus of Beyoncé’s ‘Freedom’: Freedom, freedom, I can’t loseFreedom I can’t lose ‘The outcome of this election is not what we wanted, not what we fought for, not what we voted for – but hear me when I say that the light of America’s promise will always burn bright as long as we never give up and as long as we keep fighting’, Harris said. She added: ‘I am

Svitlana Morenets

Ukrainians brace for Trump’s return

‘Donald Trump is like the light at the end of the tunnel’, an American told me last night at the only Washington DC bar throwing a pro-Trump election party. For many Ukrainians, though, he’s more like the end itself. Trump has called himself ‘good friends’ with Vladimir Putin. He said ‘Ukraine no longer exists’ and that ‘even the worst deal [with Russia] would be better than what is now’. Ukrainians got the hint and hoped for a Kamala Harris’s victory. But Americans have chosen, and now Kyiv will bend over backwards, trying to convince its biggest military backer not to abandon Ukraine. Trump has called himself ‘good friends’ with Vladimir

Lisa Haseldine

Olaf Scholz calls time on Germany’s traffic-light coalition

Just as Germany, along with the rest of Europe, begins to process what Donald Trump’s return to the White House will mean, more instability is heading its way – this time domestic. This evening, German chancellor Olaf Scholz fired the finance minister and FDP leader Christian Lindner, kicking the FDP party out of government and bringing Berlin’s traffic-light coalition crashing down. The result: Germany is probably off to the polls. Speaking at a hastily called press conference in the Bundestag following Lindner’s dismissal, Scholz announced that that he would be holding a vote of confidence in himself on 15 January. If that goes badly, the federal election – originally planned

Kate Andrews

Lionel Shriver on the election that smashed identity politics

29 min listen

News that Kamala Harris has called Donald Trump to concede defeat means that the US election is all but over. Of the seven crucial swing states, Trump has so far won North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Republicans have taken the Senate back from the Democrats. How did things go so badly for Kamala Harris? Is this the end of identity politics? Lionel Shriver, author and columnist, joins The Spectator’s economics editor Kate Andrews to reflect on what happened, and how she’s feeling now considering she disliked both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump as candidates.

Lisa Haseldine

Why is Putin not congratulating Donald Trump?

It’s long been assumed that Donald Trump is Russian president Vladimir Putin’s preferred opposite number in Washington. So it might come as a surprise to learn that the discussion in the Kremlin this morning has been whether or not Putin should congratulate the new president-elect on his victory at all. Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters he had no idea whether the president planned to send his regards to Trump. Whether or not he did, Peskov said, would have little difference: ‘It is practically impossible to make things worse; relations are historically at their lowest point.’ America, he reminded the press pack, was still an ‘unfriendly country that is

John O’Neill and Michael Simmons

How Donald did it: the road to the White House in charts and graphs

Donald Trump has become the first president since Grover Cleveland to be elected to non-consecutive terms in the White House. But how did he do it? Pollsters and pundits had predicted a close-run thing with Harris ahead in key states but in the end, the betting markets were right: Donald Trump swept to victory. When Big Ben bongs at 10 p.m. on election night in the UK we’re told straight away who the next prime minister will be. American exit polls don’t quite work like that. Instead, AP and Fox News’s exit poll showed us that the economy and immigration were the top issues for voters. But another poll for

Owen Matthews

Donald Trump’s win marks the beginning of the end of the Ukraine war

Donald Trump’s election victory heralds the beginning of the end of the Ukraine war – and is likely to leave Vladimir Putin in control of most, if not all, of the territory he has seized in nearly three years of bloody conflict. To many Ukrainians, such an outcome will be a betrayal of their struggle, a stab in the back by the West that will sow decades of anger and resentment. To others, though, a swift end to the conflict before more land is lost and tens of thousands more young Ukrainians die represents the best hope of actually salvaging a decent future for their country before their infrastructure, economy,

Eliot Wilson

Nato should be worried about Donald Trump

When it comes to Donald Trump’s relationship with Nato, there are two principal schools of thought. The first, articulated by Trump’s own former national security advisor, John Bolton, is that the president-elect is hostile to the alliance at an elemental and instinctive level. The second, proposed by those who are favourable to him, argues that Trump’s inflammatory language about Nato’s failures is a performance, which in the past goaded fellow member states into increasing their defence spending. Look not, they say, at what he says, but at the results. It is indisputable that the financial commitments of member states to Nato now are much higher than when Trump first assumed

Matt Ridley

Dam shame: what really caused Valencia’s floods?

Who is to blame for the devastating floods that hit Valencia on 29 October? The mob that surrounded King Felipe at the weekend and drove Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez out of town with a hail of mud and stones was angry at the failure to forecast the flood and warn people to get out of its way. The BBC would like us to be angry at man-made climate change for causing the storm – putting out a headline the very next day: ‘Scientists say climate change made Spanish floods worse.’ Charts of rainfall in Spain show no trend towards a higher frequency of more extreme downpours Yet Valencia had a

Kate Andrews

Why Donald Trump won and the real reason Kamala Harris lost

33 min listen

Donald Trump has won the election and will be 47th President of the United States after winning the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia. ‘America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,’ the Republican candidate told supporters. ‘This is a magnificent victory for the American people, that will allow us to make America great again,’ he said at the rally in Florida. It has been total victory, with the Republicans also winning Senate and the popular vote. Kate Andrews is joined by Sarah Elliott and Rick MacArthur to unpack a historic election night.

William T. Vollmann

My friends who vote Trump

On 13 October 2024, I jaunted 20 minutes south down Interstate-5 to the Cosumnes Nature Preserve, whose toy swamp I used to visit with my parents and my daughter Lisa; they are all dead now, and so was my pleasure on that Sunday, thanks to a haze that looked merely dirty until I opened the car door and realised it was smoke again, more smoke, my eyes beginning to burn and my chest to ache: poor sad California! In recent years I sometimes wake up choking; is the house on fire? Oh, no, merely the planet. One of my homeless Republican friends (who stopped speaking to me once he realised

Gavin Mortimer

Donald Trump is Ursula von der Leyen’s worst nightmare

The first European leader to tweet their response to Donald Trump’s victory was Emmanuel Macron of France, pipping Giorgia Meloni to the prize by a matter of minutes. ‘Congratulations,’ declared the President of France. ‘Ready to work together as we did for four years. With your convictions and mine. With respect and ambition. For more peace and prosperity.’ Macron tweeted his congratulations in French and English, whereas Meloni stuck to her mother tongue. ‘Good work Mr. President,’ said the Italian Prime Minister. ‘Italy and the United States are “sister” nations, linked by an unshakable alliance, common values, and a historic friendship. It is a strategic bond, which I am sure we

Brendan O’Neill

Donald Trump and the revenge of the deplorables

So now we know what happens when you sneer at voters as ‘garbage’. When you view them as ‘deplorables’. When you treat them as the dim stooges of demagoguery, the playthings of powerful men. When you brand them ‘low information’ and chortle in your coffee houses about how Donald Trump is ‘preying’ on their ‘hazy understanding’ of political affairs. What happens is that they don’t vote for you. Kamala played the ‘fascist’ card, breezily unaware of what a grotesque slight it is to the voters The past 24 hours in the United States have been nothing short of extraordinary. This is the revenge of the deplorables, to borrow the slur

Stephen Daisley

Will Democrats blame Israel for Kamala Harris’s defeat?

One of the few western nations where public opinion was in favour of Donald Trump returning to the White House is Israel. Israelis trust him as the man who recognised Jerusalem as their capital, moved the US embassy there, recognised Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and said that settlement-building was not per se against international law. So most Israelis regard a second Trump term as good news for their country, its security and its relationship with the United States. That might be the case in what we see from his new administration, but Trump’s re-election could prove in the longer term to be a fracture point between the United

Donald Trump

Full text: Donald Trump’s acceptance speech

Thank you very much. Wow. Well I want to thank you all very much. This is great. These are our friends. We have thousands of friends on this incredible movement. This was a movement like nobody’s ever seen before. And frankly this was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time. There’s ever been anything like this in this country and maybe beyond. And now it’s going to reach a new level of importance because we’re going to help our country heal, we going to help our country heal. We have a country that needs help and it needs help very badly. We’re going to fix our borders, we’re

Daniel McCarthy

How a Latino wave carried Trump to victory

Donald Trump’s victory this time may not be the surprise that his 2016 win was, but for his critics it’s even more of a shock. Trump has been impeached, arrested, convicted, shot at, and relentlessly demonised as a ‘fascist’ over the last four years. None of that was enough to stop him. Just the opposite: Trump is more popular than ever, and appears to have won a national majority of the vote for the first time. Just how this happened is a question that will be analysed for weeks and months, or years, to come. But one intriguing possibility suggested by exit poll data is that multiculturalism committed suicide. Trump

Matthew Lynn

Why the market reaction to Trump 2.0 has been muted

Truth Social rocketed. Bitcoin soared in price. The dollar rose, and bond yields were up, while Chinese equities wobbled. Over the course of last night, as it became clear that Donald Trump had won the US presidential election, the markets responded to the news. The trouble is, no one really knows what Trump 2.0 means for the global economy. Investors will have no idea until he forms an administration in January The initial price moves were very obvious. With the backing of the main crypto tycoons, a Trump White House will be a lot friendlier to digital currencies, although even that had to be kept in perspective. A 7 per