As the dust begins to settle over a week after election day, political science professors at Notre Dame have taken time to analyze the results and predict what to expect in a second Donald Trump administration.
Political science professor Michael Desch specializes in international relations and directs the Notre Dame International Security Center. He followed the polls prior to the election.
“I went to bed relatively early on election night because I thought it would be a few days before we had any inkling of what was going to happen,” Desch said. “I woke up and found out that the race had been basically called at 3 a.m., so I was surprised.”
Political science professor Michael Coppedge specializes in comparative politics and methodology and is a principal investigator for the Varieties of Democracy project. After the election, Coppedge reported feeling relieved there were not systematic procedure violations to have prompted violence, “because I think that would have been very bad for us."
“I was feeling kind of fearful that there would be violence during the election, especially if Trump lost,” Coppedge said. “I wasn’t too worried that it was actually going to be an unfair election, but I thought that there might be violence, and that would be worrisome, like a replay of Jan. 6 or something worse.”
Coppedge argued many voters made their decisions “on the basis of poor information,” and said he feels both unsure what can be done about this matter.
“If there’s a problem for democracy in this election, it wasn’t the conduct of the election itself,” Coppedge said. “I think there were some things about the environment in which the election took place that were … problematic, especially the information environment that we’re living in right now, in which there is a lot of fake news flowing around, a lot of misperceptions and bad information flowing around that has convinced too many people.”
Delving beyond the election’s winner, Desch acknowledged how the voting outcomes of various demographics which forged Trump’s victory did not align with predictions.
“The ‘blue wall’ states, you know, completely went red. The number of Latinos and even African Americans that supported President Trump was much higher than anybody had expected,” Desch said. “There was a lot of prediction that the women’s vote would be really important because of abortion. That didn’t really turn out to be the case, so … almost everything we thought was going to shape the election didn’t.”
Political science professor Dianne Pinderhughes specializes in American politics and holds a position as a Notre Dame Faculty Fellow. Pinderhughes expected Kamala Harris to win.
“I was surprised at the success of the Trump candidacy, but the numbers are looking different,” Pinderhughes said. “Things are settling in ways … that weren’t clear early on. Earlier [some were] saying, you know, ‘this is a realignment.’ It’s not a realignment.”
While Pinderhughes recognized Trump’s “substantial” electoral college vote win, she also called upon the popular vote as evidence there is not a “significant distance” between Harris and Trump. Trump secured 50.2% of the popular vote while Harris secured 48.2%, according to the Associated Press.
“Democrats have been winning seats, and the numbers are going to be a little this, a little of that. So the current speaker is going to find it very challenging to be a dominant speaker,” Pinderhughes said.
While the election did not yield a win for the Democrats, Pinderhughes stated the election results were not the “complete success” for Republicans which results initially suggested. Pinderhughes referenced a Democratic shift as reasoning why a smaller proportion of Democrats supported Harris in 2024 compared to 2020 and why strong blue areas became red.
“I think a lot of what … explains these changes is people’s ambivalence about having a woman as a president, and that seems to cross all races, ethnicities, parties, Democratic voters, strongly Latino voters, but also Black voters as well,” Pinderhughes said. “Black males in particular expressed ambivalence about having a woman as president, even though she’s a woman of color, they weren’t prepared to be strong supporters of her.”
Pinderhughes noted the gap between Black men and Black women has been evident in prior elections while emphasizing Harris needed the votes she lost to Black men, on account of lower voter turnout.
“Harris as a candidate, as a female candidate, didn’t win as many votes as she might have if she’d been a man,” Pinderhughes said. “She’s not a man, and … she’s not been aggressive about talking about gender, except for in the context of abortion issues, reproductive freedom. Those are important gender issues, but … I don’t think she’s done a strong feminist argument in the way that some women would probably choose to.”
Pinderhughes cited Hillary Clinton as an example of a woman who took a stronger feminist approach, and she also referenced the fact that many other countries have had women leaders while the U.S. has not. According to Pinderhughes, Trump allows men to maintain a “sense of power and masculinity.”
“Young men are feeling ambivalent about their status and about their economic well-being, and Trump gives them a sense of, ‘oh, we’ll be okay,’” Pinderhughes said. “‘We won’t be subordinated by this woman president.’”
Rather than pointing to gender, Desch attributed Trump’s win to his ability to target independent and undecided voters who are unhappy with the country’s direction. Desch does not attribute Trump’s win to those who are “ideologically committed” to the “MAGA agenda.”
“The way I make sense of it in my mind is there’s a deep reservoir of unhappiness with how the country’s going, and already in 2016, I think Trump had sort of intuited that,” Desch said. “I think it, you know, goes back to Obama’s election in 2008 … There was a lot of enthusiasm that he was going to be the change candidate. And really, by the end of his second term, you know, he was pretty much an establishment Democrat.”
In the same way, Desch referred to Joe Biden’s 2020 win as a backlash to the “end of the Trump administration and COVID years.”
“People are just unhappy, and they’re looking for change,” Desch said. “So there’s certainly some people, I think that you know, you could identify as being ideologically Trumpist, but I think there are also a lot of people who were just unhappy for one reason or another, and the Democrats just missed that. And I think a lot of Republicans did too, but Trump, already in 2016, had sort of intuited that.”
Coppedge felt Harris’s loss was not dependent on her as a candidate or her campaign, despite her only having 107 days to campaign. Coppedge instead attributed her loss to a failure of both the Democratic and Republican parties to address the problem of economic strategy over the past several decades.
According to Coppedge, both parties have pursued globalization and free trade, without taxing and redistributing the gains from that trade, so “everyone benefits.” Coppedge stated the United States, along with European countries, has failed at this redistribution, causing people to be left behind and feel angry.
“Given that long time neglect of a large portion of the population, I think it’s understandable why a lot of people would feel very angry at Democrats, and out of frustration, would vote for Trump,” Coppedge said.
Looking at the Republican Party today compared to the past, Coppedge believes Trump has reoriented it towards isolationism, high tariffs protectionism and lower commitment to cooperation with Democrats, NATO and European allies. He also acknowledged the demographics of the party have shifted, and the party now claims to be a “working class party.”
Coppedge however thinks the Trump administration will impose policies “bad for their base” such as high tariffs that increase inflation. Coppedge continued in stating there are foreign policy consequences as well.
“I expect that we will not be giving as nearly as much support to Ukraine and its war with Russia as we have been in the past,” Coppedge said. “That would lead to Russia absorbing at least the territory that it’s conquered in Ukraine, and maybe more, and it may have its appetite whetted to go after other countries, like the Baltic states, Georgia and some of the places in Europe.”
More dramatically, Desch believes Trump will attempt to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
“I think he’ll do his best to end the war in Ukraine, and that will be bad news for President Zelensky and Ukrainian nationalists,” Desch said. “I think in terms of the Middle East … there’s sort of an upward spiral of … how pro-Israel and how anti-Iran and … its proxies, we can become.”
Next focusing on what he termed the “big issue,” Desch referred to Trump as a “China hawk” and “geo-economist.” According to Desch, United States-China relations devolve fall into a trade war, something the United States has not “experienced in a long time.”
“The Cold War with the Soviet Union was waged by two sides that were economically autarkic,” Desch said. “China and the United States really joined at the hip economically. And so how that will play out, and you know, how it will affect the geopolitical dynamic is going to be the big question in the coming years.”
Moving to Latin America, Coppedge said he believes U.S. policy will move toward a heavy focus on opposition to Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Coppedge believes this issue will be important to many of the Latino voters that supported the Republican Party and Trump this election.
“I’m also concerned about massive deportations, and that also affects Latin America,” Coppedge said. “It’s just hard to imagine going back to something like the internment of Japanese during World War II, creating big internment camps to house people who are about to be deported. It just makes me very sad. I prefer to think of our country as a country of immigrants that welcomes everybody.”
Taking a more global view, Pinderhughes reasoned there have been incumbent losses in France, Japan and Germany, along with the United States, on account of inflation.
“The conservatism is that people are unhappy with the economy, and so they kick out the incumbents,” Pinderhughes said. “And the question is, what is that actually a sign of? Is it a sign of ideological change, or is it a sign of discomfort with the current environment, economic environment?”
In light of possible shifts in higher education, Desch acknowledged a lesser confidence in academia in the U.S. than there once was. According to Desch, the commitment to academic freedom and ability to “push the boundaries” is under pressure and a challenge for the “university world.”
“Higher education has the sort of reputation, you know, for being ultra-liberal, and if incoming President Trump decides to, you know, sort of take revenge or air his grievances, you know, [it] could be a hot time in the old town tonight for those of us in the academy,” Desch said. “On the other hand, the markets tend to like Republicans, including Trump, so maybe endowments will do very well.”
Desch spoke of his worry that universities may seem too “at variance with public opinion.” With a bigger gap between public and university opinion, Desch believes there will be a bigger problem.
“If people think … we’re all tenured radicals, you know, then … there are going to be instances where that’s going to come back to bite us, certainly at state schools, where, you know, state legislature provides a big chunk of the money that they run on, but I think even at private universities,” Desch said.
Coppedge noted the onset of the Trump administration could affect Biden’s prior policies, highlighting loan forgiveness.
“I think it will mean further limitation of … diversity, equity and inclusion efforts on college campuses and admissions and then aid and things like that,” Coppedge said. “I think it would mean an end or reduction to student loan forgiveness for a while, and I think it probably will mean some cutback in federal funding for public education at U.S. universities.”
