3 reasons why the 2025 election could change US politics
Here are three reasons why the balance of power could shift in the 2025 election and affect key figures in both parties.
Many observers saw the 2024 election as a triumphant affirmation of Donald Trump’s Republican policies and a total repudiation of the Democratic Party.
Looking back on that day on November 5, 2024, countless stories have depicted how Trump and the Republican Party seized the historic task of rebuilding the American government, while the Democratic Party fell into disarray, leaderless and rudderless.
A year later, many economists say the outcome of the 2024 election was not actually about partisan politics.. For many voters, the decisive issue on Election Day was the economy, and more specifically inflation, or the price of eggs.
“Higher inflation and higher costs of living have pushed them,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “It was a very high hurdle to overcome.”
The inflation rate reached a 40-year peak of 9.1% in the summer of 2022. That year, a global inflation crisis fueled by COVID-19-era supply chain shortages and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent prices soaring around the world.
By Election Day, consumer prices were more than 20% higher than in 2020.
Exit polls revealed that Trump’s victory over Democrat Kamala Harris has caused runaway inflation to become more serious. In an ABC News poll, more than two-thirds of voters said the economic situation is bad. In a CBS News poll, three-quarters of voters said inflation is difficult.
In a sense, inflation was doomed to destroy the Democratic Party.
“Inflation was a big issue in that election,” said Desmond Luckman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank. “It seemed like most people were really upset.”
Why did Trump win in 2024? Theories abound.
In the year since, pollsters and pundits have come up with a number of theories to explain President Trump’s victory, part of a massive rout of the Republican Party that has left him in command of all three branches of government: the executive branch, the House and Senate, and the conservative Supreme Court.
One theory is that Democrats chose a bad candidate, starting with the aging President Joe Biden and replacing him with Harris after Biden left office.
Another explanation: Trump built an insurmountable coalition of multiracial working-class voters, especially men.
And one more thing: This election showed that America is moving to the right, or that voters have abandoned Harris and the Democratic Party.
Biden himself told USA TODAY that he could have won the election had he not chosen to withdraw from the campaign under pressure from his party.
Pandemic-era inflation brings down dozens of world leaders
But global trends suggest that either Biden or Harris would have faced an uphill battle against inflation in 2024.
Harvard political scientist Stephen Levitsky told The Associated Press that in 40 of the 54 elections held in Western democracies between 2020 and 2024, incumbent lawmakers lost their jobs.
One casualty of global inflation was Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who resigned this year amid growing anger over the cost of living.
“The coronavirus-induced inflation has upended the elected leaders of most of the developed countries on the planet,” said Joshua Gotbaum, a resident fellow at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution. “The United States was no exception.”
American voters blamed the Democratic Party for the rise in prices. Was that fair?
In March 2021, President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill directing payments of up to $1,400 to pandemic-weary Americans. The Trump administration had already sent out two stimulus checks in 2020.
Many economists say Biden’s stimulus plan has worsened inflation.
“The American Rescue Plan was a major policy mistake,” said Douglas Holtz Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum.
But America’s inflation crisis did not occur in a vacuum.
When USA TODAY polled seven prominent economists last November, most cited the global pandemic, not Biden, as the main cause of rising prices.
2024 wasn’t all about the economy.
Inflation wasn’t the only reason Democrats lost the presidency.
Many accounts focus on Biden’s decline and 11 things.th-Time withdrawal will be a crucial factor in Trump’s victory.
Immigration was also a factor in the Democratic Party’s defeat. President Trump vows to stem illegal border crossings under Biden and Democratic administration.
“I think Trump was elected for two reasons,” Holtz-Eakin said. “Reason number one was immigration and border crossing issues, and number two was the economy.”
Mr. Biden and Mr. Harris insisted that the economy would be strong in 2024. In many ways, it was. The economy was growing. Unemployment rate was low. The stock market was high.
Nevertheless, most Americans thought the country was on the wrong path. And they blamed Democrats.
“I do think it’s true that President Trump benefited politically from the fact that he wasn’t in office when inflation was at its worst,” said Ryan Bourne, an economist at the Cato Institute, a libertarian group.
Inflation will still be on voters’ minds in 2025
Just as consumer prices helped Trump and the Republicans win the White House in 2024, persistent inflation could hurt Republicans in 2025.
On the campaign trail, Trump promised to “end inflation.” In an interview on “60 Minutes” aired on November 2, President Trump said he had fulfilled his promise of “no inflation.”
In fact, as of September, annual inflation remained at 3%, above the Federal Reserve’s inflation target of 2%.
Consumer prices are now at least 24% higher than at the beginning of 2020.
And although President Trump took office amid high expectations for his economic response, the latest CNN/SSRS poll found that more than 7 in 10 Americans rate today’s economy as “bad” or “very bad.”
Most voters, and even some Republicans, blame President Trump for rising prices, according to a Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll released Nov. 4.
As voters headed to the polls on Nov. 4 for local elections in New Jersey, Virginia and other states, there were concerns about rising consumer prices, similar to Election Day a year ago.
“We know that in New Jersey, for example, the cost of energy is driving them crazy,” Gotbaum said. “That’s economics.”
