US elections: Six reasons why Kamala Harris was always on track to lose to Donald Trump

By Leigh Sales*, ABC

Analysis - It is truly extraordinary the Democrats have convincingly lost a presidential election against one of the most discredited figures in modern American political history - a convicted felon, no less.

And yet, the challenges for the Democratic Party, and the campaign's obvious mistakes and missteps, have been clear from the day Kamala Harris became the nominee.

There is little that's surprising about Donald Trump's victory beyond the obvious shock that a candidate so vulgar and base - last week, he pretended to fellate a microphone, just the latest pitiful example in a long line - is not unelectable.

Here are six obvious reasons why the Democrats were on track to lose:

Economic pain

There is a huge gap between how the US economy is going and how the public perceives it's going.

Under the Biden administration, the economy has improved significantly on the key indicators of unemployment, inflation and growth. But Americans feel like they're doing it tougher than they ever have, something that has been termed "the vibecession".

It's not all just perception either. Goods that people buy every week - groceries and petrol - are far more expensive than they were pre-Covid.

You have to look back further than Biden's four years to see the full economic picture. In recent decades, the gap between the haves and have-nots in America has widened. The middle class has shrunk. Formerly prosperous towns have struggled as jobs have moved offshore.

Politically, incumbent governments almost always pay the price when voters are feeling economic pain and that would have been the case whether Joe Biden or Kamala Harris was the nominee.

Harris was left with an impossible task: to attempt to share the credit for the economic achievements of the Biden administration without being seen to minimise the real financial hardship many Americans feel.

The priorities of the Democrat base

While mainstream voters have fretted about how to make ends meet and wondered why life is harder for their kids than it was for their parents, the noisiest wing of the Democratic Party has been preoccupied by what some call culture war issues, including gender affirmative health care, #defundthepolice and Gaza.

For Americans who baulk at those progressive causes, and believe in traditional Christian values, Trump's message of Make America Great Again resonates, even though it's a promise that's largely based in fantasy.

For example, his pledge to impose tariffs on foreign goods is not going to return manufacturing jobs to states such as Ohio, Wisconsin or Pennsylvania. He's also an unlikely pin-up for conservative Christians.

Nonetheless, when the Democrats opted to run a liberal candidate from the progressive heartland of San Francisco, some swing voters, and Republicans who dislike Trump, were likely to be suspicious that she would be a Trojan horse for the implementation of the kind of "woke" agenda they hate and fear.

Harris can say all she likes that she's a gun owner who won't take anyone's weapons away, but sceptics would never trust her.

The shift from Biden to Harris

Kamala Harris was the accidental Democrat candidate. She was never meant to be the nominee - she inherited the role at the eleventh hour thanks to Joe Biden's muddled performance in the first presidential debate.

Despite being vice-president, she was not a well-known figure to the American public, particularly compared to Trump.

It was a close-to-impossible ask for her to win the trust of the American public in the limited amount of time she had.

Historic and contemporary sexism and racism

Of the 46 occupants of the White House, only one of them has been Black: Barack Obama. There have been no women. Victory for a Black woman was always against the odds.

Democrat campaign misjudgements

We know the mood of the American electorate is sour.

Poll after poll shows Americans thinks their country is heading in the wrong direction. In many places, the mood is bitter, frustrated and angry: the exact vibe Donald Trump mirrors back to them. The Harris message of optimism and hope was the wrong fit for the times. It wasn't the time for a re-run of the 2008 Yes We Can campaign.

The Democrats also had a tin ear when it came to the gap between rich and poor and how politically potent it is. Why was Harris constantly campaigning with squillionaire celebrities?

Much was made of the value of the Beyonce endorsement at a rally last month. The music megastar's gleaming, lustrous hair screamed: "I spent more on this colour, cut and blow-dry than you earn in a month."

Meanwhile, Trump was off serving fries at a McDonalds drive-thru.

Every time the Obamas appeared with a lecture about what Americans needed to do, or who they should vote for, perhaps it was a reminder to working class, Black and Hispanic Americans that for decades, they have loyally voted Democrat.

Perhaps it prompted them to ask themselves, have we received enough in return or are our votes taken for granted?

Voter motivation and turnout

We know that American voters are more polarised than ever.

New York Times journalist Ezra Klein has written a book called Why We Are Polarised, which meticulously dissects this. He notes that 50 years ago, people voted according to what is called positive partisanship: they voted for the party they liked the best, the one whose values best aligned with their own and that offered the policies with which they most agreed.

In recent decades, that has changed.

American voters are now more motivated by negative partisanship: they vote for a party because they really hate the opposing party. You don't have to particularly trust, understand, agree with, or even know what your party is offering; you simply have to find it less offensive than the values and beliefs of the other side.

Turnout figures and demographic breakdowns in coming days will give better insights into this, but it would appear Trump voters were more motivated than Harris voters.

This is unsurprising because there has never been a more effective or extreme negative campaigner than Trump in American history. He was able to mobilise his base in 2021 to attack the very seat of American democracy, the US Capitol. Of course he can motivate them to tick a box by whipping up their hatred of Democrats.

But, by contrast, think about the Taylor Swift endorsement that was meant to be such a game changer for Kamala Harris by compelling young women to vote in droves.

Taylor Swift was encouraging positive partisanship: she was saying vote for this person because she is the person I support and our best choice. That's not what excites most American voters these days.

There are other factors which have come into play too, notably the double standards applied to Trump. Trump can say or do pretty much anything without penalty, behaviour no other candidate in history has been able to get away with. There's also the spread of misinformation and its amplification by social media.

Was Trump ever beatable? It's hard to know. But it's very clear that Americans, more than ever, are buying what he's selling.

Given the United States still has the world's biggest military, the world's biggest economy and the world's most influential culture, the rest of us around the globe are strapped into a second spin of the Trump rollercoaster as well.

*Leigh Sales is a long-serving ABC journalist who has anchored Australian Story, 7:30. and Lateline. She was previously the network's national security correspondent and Washington correspondent.

This story was originally published by ABC News.