Donald J. Trump won the 2024 presidential election and will become the 47th President of the United States. Many polls leading up to the elections showed that it was a tight race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, but that was not the case.
Trump won by a landslide, gaining 312 electoral college votes (with 270 needed to win) fairly quickly. He pulled through and was able to win all the swing states, which include Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada. During at least the first two years of his term, both the House and the Senate have a Republican majority.
As of November 15th, 149 million ballots were counted, which was 7 million votes fewer than in the 2020 election. However, there was a major increase in people voting early. As for young voters, according to CNN’s exit poll, 9% more of first-time voters voted for Trump over Harris.
How did social media affect the election?
Both the Trump campaign and Harris campaign utilized social media to spread their message. Elon Musk, a well-known Trump supporter, was constantly urging people to vote for Trump on X (formerly known as Twitter). Both of them utilized TikTok and used trending sounds to try to appeal to younger voters. It seemed like their tactics worked, as many people were talking about their videos and posts in relation to their rallies and debates.
Leading up to the Election
Within the last few days of the election, ballot drop boxes were set on fire in 3 states: Oregon, Washington, and Arizona. Apparently, federal officers were warned beforehand that social media influencers had encouraged people to try to sabotage votes. However, most ballot drop boxes have some sort of way to put out fires. For example, when the fire went off in Portland, Oregon, only 3 ballots were damaged because of the fire suppressant inside the box. However, in Vancouver, Washington, hundreds of ballots were damaged because their fire suppressant didn’t work.
Both in Washington and Oregon officials have been trying to identify the damaged ballots to send new ones in the mail to voters, and they have been pretty successful. People do believe that these two instances are connected. Multiple politicians on both sides have come out saying that this is a direct attack on democracy and Republican Joe Kent, called the fire “a cowardly act of domestic terrorism.” As for the fire in Arizona, the man who did it, 35-year-old Dieter Klofkorn, turned himself in saying that he just wanted to be arrested, and it wasn’t politically motivated.
This isn’t the first time this has happened, as in 2020 there were instances in Los Angeles and Boston that were similar. Oregon and Washington vote exclusively by mail or dropbox and in Arizona most voters usually cast their ballots early. However, everyone seemed to get their ballots replaced and were still able to cast their vote in time.
New Jersey Recap
New Jersey may have ultimately voted blue, but the votes were much closer than expected. Harris won by about 5% of the votes, which in 2020, Trump had lost by 16%.
As for the Senate race, Democrat Andy Kim won, replacing Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez after he was convicted on bribery charges in federal court in July. For the House of Representatives, Democrat Donald Norcross, Republican Jeff Van Drew, Democrat Herb Conaway, Republican Christopher Smith, Democrat Josh Gottheimer, Democrat Frank Pallone, Republican Thomas Kean Jr., Democrat Rob Menendez, Democrat Nelie Pou, Democrat LaMonica Mciver, Democrat Mikie Sherrill, and Democrat Bonnie Watson Coleman won the 12 seats.
Reactions
No matter what side you are on in this election, a lot of memes came out of it. Some against Trump and some against Kamala. Either way, there haven’t been any major reactions to Trump winning, unlike what was predicted. A lot of people thought that no matter who won, there would be riots and protests. However, there hasn’t been. Many people actually agree that the votes were counted fairly, and the election went pretty smoothly.
So, that’s another one for the history books.
