Story by Noelle Harff
They were surprised to see him win.
More than 2,000 students gathered on the steps of UNC’s South Building, one of numerous demonstrations across college campuses.
Other Americans are worried; economically worse off. They aren’t thinking about women’s rights or wars abroad when filling out their ballot.
Meanwhile, the new president-elect stoked the flames, “Never forget, the press is the enemy,” Richard Nixon said. “The establishment is the enemy; the professors are the enemy. Write that on a blackboard 100 times and never forget it.”
While feminists, pacifists, and activists protested, a majority of Americans were at home, casting ballots for a different kind of change. “The voices of quiet anguish, the voices that speak without words,” Nixon said, coining the term, “silent majority”.
Sound familiar? Fast forward 55 years and witness another red wave.
In the months before the election, people protested Donald Trump. He has been impeached twice. He has 34 felony convictions. The Democratic party calls him a threat to women. A threat to democracy. A racist. A fascist.
And in November, a majority of Americans elected Donald J. Trump.
In his victory speech in Florida, Trump attributed the outcome to what he called “the biggest, the broadest, the most unified coalition” in American history. “They came from all quarters. Union, non-union, African American, Hispanic American,” he declared to an enthusiastic crowd. “We had everybody, and it was beautiful.”
Trump is the first Republican to win the popular vote since 2004. He improved on his 2020 margin in 2,764 counties. His margin decreased in only 317 counties. Though, unlike Nixon, Trump narrowly won, 50% to 48%, against Kamala Harris.
Non-battleground states shifted an average of seven points toward Trump from 2020 to 2024. In battleground states, where the election was decided, the shift was only three points. “The thing that got Trump to 50% is dissatisfaction with the economy,” said Marc Hetherington, professor of political science at UNC.
Black and Latino voters, particularly men, tilted more toward Trump this year than in 2020, with Black support nearly doubling to 15%.
“The reason Democrats lost is because the white working class is racist and they’re horrible and they’re awful. Latino and Black men that voted for Donald Trump, well, they must be misogynist or have some sort of internalized racism,” said Quinn Edelman, a 20-year-old Black UNC student from Kernersville, North Carolina. He also works part-time at Wegmans Grocery.
Edelman pointed to the exit polls, “Or maybe the Democrats didn’t do a very good job governing.”
Edelman grew up in a middle-class family. He says Kernersville is a small town, “but it’s big enough to have all the major stores like Walmart and McDonald’s.”
Forsyth County, where Kernersville is located, is a microcosm of North Carolina: home to Wake Forest University, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, and the upper-middle-class suburbs of Winston-Salem.
“There is a lot of political discourse… Kernersville leans red but there’s a large enough democratic presence there that is far from monolithic,” Edelman said.
Though North Carolina is split, feelings run strong.
“People like hate Kamala Harris and Joe Biden,” Edelman said, “Kamala Harris specifically takes the most vague stance as possible to avoid any blowback from the electorate…if you try to appease everybody, you please nobody. And she found that out on Election Day… Donald Trump found out that you can piss a lot of people off and still win big, and he did just that.”
Trump’s victory came down to the issues Americans cared about when they stepped into the voting booth. A narrow majority of U.S. voters believe Trump would handle the economy, immigration, and foreign affairs better than Harris.
Conversely, climate change, abortion or foreign wars—Harris’ strengths—didn’t do much to help her secure a win.
Americans felt angry when the Biden administration emphasized strong economic indicators like a healthy GDP and low unemployment. “I know a lot of people who just stopped trusting the economic data, because they’re like, well, this doesn’t add up,” said Preston Hill, Vice President of UNC’s College Republicans.
According to a study by the Wall Street Journal, 68% of economists said inflation would be higher under Trump’s economic policies than Harris. The inflation Americans feel is an “unavoidable outcome” of post-pandemic spending.
“Are you better off than you were four years ago?” Hill asked while tabling a ‘get out and vote’ booth on campus, “and there was a resounding no almost every single time.”
According to a Gallup poll, immigration is the second most important voter issue.
Trump promised the “largest deportation effort in American history.” Incoming Vice President J.D. Vance estimates 1 million undocumented migrants could deported in the first year.
Madi Valdez, is the daughter of undocumented immigrants.
Her mother moved to the United States when she was 8 years old. “So, she grew up here. She went through the education system here. She went and got her GED. She doesn’t know another way other than, like, the American way of life,” Valdez explained.
Her mother is in her 30s and qualified for DACA. After over two decades living in the U.S. “there’s been no real progress on her citizenship.”
Her father “is the usual story,” Valdez said, alluding to the ‘American Dream’. He’s been working in construction since he was 17-years-old. In the summers, Valdez and her sisters work with him.
90-degree days, 60-hour weeks, her father never complains. Yet, he hopes to go back to Mexico one day. He hasn’t seen his mother in 24 years.
“That’s what makes me mad. We’re not rapists, were not criminals,” she said. “My dad pays taxes… he is literally building this country.”
This year, Republicans bolstered inflammatory examples of migrant criminals, most notably, the murder of Laken Riley.
When Trump was first elected in 2016, Valdez was in 6th grade. Her classmates asked when her “deportation date” was. After that, she stopped using her last name. From then on, she was just Madi V.
But despite the challenges the Trump presidency brings to her community, her boyfriend still supported Trump.
“He drives a Mustang with terrible mileage, so he’s only concerned with gas prices. And I was just kind of like, dude,” Valdez said, rolling her eyes.
Valdez’s boyfriend is exemplary of November’s exit polls. Though Latinos have traditionally been a key part of the Democratic Party’s voter base, Trump saw a 14% jump in support, largely driven by men, since the 2020 election.
Trump has called migrants “animals” and “not human”. In another campaign speech, Trump went as far as saying migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”.
“It’s glorifying someone who has so much hatred towards us… Like, dude, you’re also part of the Hispanic community… your parents are also immigrants.”
But for most, racial and gender identity is no longer a deciding factor. Trump won the highest percentage of Hispanic voters in modern history.
Hetherington teaches a class on political parties. “Donald Trump has always been a ‘confidence man,’” Hetherington said, “I mean, you think about how old Trump is and his age, he grew up during the Nixon presidency… there are really strong echoes of politics from that era.”
Like Nixon, Trump is someone who convinces people through sheer self-assurance. It’s a trait that’s defined his career, from real estate to reality TV, starting back in the 1970s.
And though Hetherington agrees that the Trump presidency is unprecedented, he finds assurance in historic familiarity. “I don’t know what’s going to happen… and I am worried,” he conceded, “but I don’t think it’s the end of America.”
Americans may be deeply divided, but “our humanity is the same,” Hetherington said. “I’ve had students approach me, you know, asking ‘Do you think I should date someone from the other party?’”
His answer is clear: “Yes.”
