Three important takeaways from the election

OPINION:

As always, the commentariat has expended a lot of intellectual firepower examining the election results from every possible angle. As usual, most of that has been a waste of time.

Let’s make it easy and focus on three things.

First, President-elect Donald Trump improved his performance among young voters, among independent voters and among Hispanics (by 14 percentage points, and at least 2 points better than President George W. Bush in 2004). He won the suburbs by 4 points, the same as 2016; and he continued to erode support for the Democrats among the working class.

Remarkably, the Republicans had a 4-point advantage (35%-31%) among voters in party identification. That’s almost certainly a function of Republican voter registration drawing even with the Democrats in a bunch of states, which is, in turn, almost certainly a function of automatic registration when you reapply for your driver’s license (which was Democrats’ idea). You have to love irony.

The closeness in registration and the advantage in party identification suggests the Republicans are going to be reliably competitive — even after the departure of Mr. Trump — for some time.

The second thing that is striking is that about 4 in 5 voters identified either the economy or immigration as the issue that drove their vote. In the initial surge of victory, it is easy to think that voters agree with you on everything, and maybe they do. But the numbers tell us that voters want the new Trump administration to focus on the basics — deliver on the economy and solve the immigration challenge. There doesn’t appear to be much appetite among voters to reform the deep state or relitigate old battles.

The third thing about the election results that is immediately obvious — and that no one seems to be talking about — is that there were about 142 million voters this year, compared with about 158 million voters in 2020. That’s very odd. In 2020, turnout as a percentage of voting age population was about 67%; this year, it was more like 54%.

There’s no real reason for that. If anything, turnout in 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, should have been lower. It’s not just this year. In 2016, turnout (137 million) as a percentage of the voting age population was 55%. In 2012, turnout (129 million) as a percentage of voting age population was 54%. In fact, since 1932, there has only been one election (the ill-fated and controversial election of 1960) in which turnout was as high as the pandemic election of 2020.

I’m not a big believer that the 2020 election was stolen, but the macro numbers are divergent enough from the historical trend line to make any reasonable person wonder whether there should be some closer examination of that election.

• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.