‘Many Americans want Donald Trump again — if only women voted, Kamala Harris would win’

Sir Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke, the historian explains key trends shaping 2024’s US Presidential election:
Why is the 2024 US election so close — and are there historical precedents?
■ It isn’t immediately obvious why the US is 50-50 because it isn’t so across the board. If only women voted, Kamala Harris would win a landslide — if only white men voted, Donald Trump would win. Every division in American society — gender, race and class — is in play now. National polling is neck and neck but even swing states are so, each having its own reasons for the divide. There are big differences, for instance, between Michigan and Pennsylvania in terms of the make-up of their populations — yet, there’s a coin toss.
There was also an extremely close election in 2000, with some recounts in Florida, ending at the Supreme Court. This time, we could be in for a nail-biting November 5 — which might continue for a week or month.

He’s inspired an insurrection, rather likes Russia and threatens to prosecute his opponents — so, why do you argue Kamala Harris could be a bigger threat to US democracy than Donald Trump?■ I don’t think January 6, 2021 was an insurrection — Donald Trump and his supporters did try to overturn that election by legal and dubious means but the Capitol being overrun was the result of reckless behaviour on Trump’s part and utterly incompetent policing — it was a protest which got out of hand. Violence around the election was actually less than the riots seen after George Floyd’s murder. Also, 2020-21 was a strange year — all kinds of things happened in the context of Covid.



Trump’s platform now, even with the Heritage Project 2025, doesn’t contain plans to alter the Constitution. There is no move to make Trump President for life or give him another term. Republican plans are usually quite traditional — they emphasise reducing the federal bureau cracy’s size, relaxing regulations, etc., which aren’t Constitutional points. The Democrats are far more ready to talk about changing the Constitution — they often mention how the Supreme Court has too many conservatives and needs more liberals or the electoral college has too much red state representation which should be fixed and so on. We don’t know if Kamala Harris endorses any of these ideas as she refuses to endorse almost any idea — the Democrat strategy is to say nothing on policy in case it costs them votes. So, it’s Unknowns versus Donald Trump.

What is Trump’s popular appeal about?
■ He personifies a certain kind of American male. Although he’s a New Yorker born with a silver spoon, Trump has the uncanny knack of connecting with working-class Americans. His consistent appeal is on issues they take very seriously, the first being illegal immigration — Trump criticises this while the Democrats basically opened the southern border in the last four years, impacting life across America. Second, Trump’s economy was very popular with the average American household, disposable income rising by about 10% after flatlining between 1999 to 2016, and no inflation either.
However, while Trump appeals to the middle American working-class man who didn’t go to college, he doesn’t appeal to college-educated Americans. He doesn’t appeal to female Americans. He has a problem with minority voters. Trump has a very strong electoral base — but he struggles to get beyond this. Kamala Harris’ approach — say as little as possible and just appear nice — is more reassuring to middle-of-theroad voters. If Trump loses, it’s because his appeal to the male working-class middle American was a turn-off to the female, college-educated coastal American — and there are a lot of those.

What is the difference between, say, how a Taliban seeks to control women and Trump?
■ There is a massive difference. Afghanistan is under religious law, it’s not a democracy and violence is used to make women second-class citizens. In the US, as a result of the Trump Presidency, the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade judgement and removed a federal ruling legalising abortion or reproductive rights. That left the decision to individual states — some restricted this, others didn’t. Kamala Harris says if she’s elected, she will enact a law legalising this across America. This is a key issue the Democrats hope will get them across the line — and it doesn’t play well for Republicans because women across America are very concerned.

Are there geopolitical issues too?
■ It’s conventional to say politics is local in the US and Americans don’t care about global events but foreign policy plays an important role here — many voters see the Biden-Harris administration as having been weak in Afghanistan, failing to deter Vladimir Putin in Ukraine and being lax on Iran, leading to Hamas and Hezbollah’s actions in Israel.

While Americans don’t want to be engaged in ‘forever wars’ directly, as in Iraq 20 years ago, they also don’t want to seem weak — this hurts Harris as Vice President.

Meanwhile, Trump says if he’d been elected, he’d have deterred the Taliban, Putin and Iran. We don’t know if that’s true — all we do know is none of these guys did much on his watch. Trump’s foreign policy was quite successful actually, improving relations between Israel and the Arab countries, for instance, with the Abraham Accords brought about by him and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. Rejecting that, the Biden administration tried resuscitating Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran — it was a failure. So, Harris is on weak ground with foreign policy.

Why do you argue the US is exhibiting ‘late-Soviet characteristics’ now?
■ The first point is the old age of most American candidates. Joe Biden dropped out but most US legislators are way older than in almost any other country. There’s a strange gerontocratic aspect to US politics. Alongside, life expectancy is going backwards — there are ‘deaths of despair’, with as many Americans having committed suicide or perish ing in drug overdoses in the last decade as lost during Covid.

The US is rich — yet, mortality rates, especially among prime-age men, are rising. The only other place where that happened was the Soviet Union in the 1970s-80s where ‘deaths of despair’, mostly alcohol and tobacco-related, reflected a deep disillusionment with the system. Many Americans are disillusioned now — confidence in Congress, a core part of government, is just 8%.There’s a sickness in American life we miss by only looking at elections and candidates. We also miss why many people are sick enough of the status quo to gamble on a Trump second term — despite all the evidence against him.