This interview originally aired on "In the Moment" on SDPB Radio.
The MAGA movement expanded on election night. Voters are sending Donald Trump back to the White House for the next four years.
Our Dakota Political Junkies share their analysis on how the new Senate, House and executive branch may work together in the future.
Lisa Hager, Ph.D., is a South Dakota State University associate professor of political science, and David Wiltse, Ph.D., is a professor of political science at the university.
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The following transcript was auto-generated and edited for clarity.
Lori Walsh:
The first thing that I predicted wrong is that we would be talking without knowing who the presidential victor would be. There was a lot of thought that we might not know until the weekend what was happening, but this was a decisive victory even though we went in with nearly a dead heat.
Which one of you wants to kick us off with what happened and how we can put into context so many swing states being in play, but then really, I hate to say it, but how quickly we found out who the winner was? What happened?
Lisa Hager:
I can go ahead here first, and then send it over to Dave.
I think the thing that ended up being really interesting about this particular election was how Georgia and North Carolina started going, and then what that meant with the blue wall of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. And at least for me, I did not actually stay up until the election was formally called for President Trump, but I did start to see how the proportion of remaining votes and how Harris was performing wasn't looking like she was going to be catching up in any of those states. And I think that's something that was very noteworthy with what we were seeing.
And for me, I think it came down to a variety of different things, but definitely this referendum essentially on the performance of the economy.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. All right, let's talk more about that in a minute. But first, what would you add to that, Dave Wiltse, about how close it was going into the election and then how decisive the victory was?
David Wiltse :
Well, it was close. Both going in and coming out of the election, I think. Remember, we're talking about the aggregation of a bunch of states here. And in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, we're only talking a percent or two points between the two candidates. So it is decisive in our new standard of, "Do we find out within a week?"
Lori Walsh:
Right. Yeah.
David Wiltse :
But it, you know, was still a fairly close election, a fairly evenly divided electorate. We have just gotten used to very close elections over the past eight, 10 cycles, and that kind of is not the norm historically. I mean, I'm not talking about 1984-style blowouts, but there's usually a very comfortable electoral victory for the winning candidate over the course of our history.
But we are just close now. It's just where we are in terms of how strong partisan identity is shaping our vote.
Lori Walsh:
And that's the direction I want to take this in next, because when I say decisive, I do mean like we know the answer but it's not decisive in the sense that it was a landslide or a mandate. We live in a plural democracy where we are going to be working with a lot of people who voted for the other candidate, and how are the ways that we do that in a democracy? It was a close race. There are a whole lot of people who are disappointed today and their voices are going to matter going forward, and yet we see some leader shifts in Congress that might be relevant.
So that's the direction I kind of want to go here. Lisa, what do we know about when the Senate and the White House are led by the same party, and then we guess, I'm not really sure where the House is at or is going to be at. Is that going to make a difference?
Lisa Hager:
Well, I think right now we're seeing the Republicans looking to take over the Senate and then also, obviously, be in control potentially of the House as well. It is just kind of seeing what will happen, and I think when you do have the unified government like that it doesn't necessarily mean that everything just flies through even though you do have the one party controlling these branches or branches of government in these different chambers. There may still be some folks that need to decide if they want to work that closely with President Trump and his agenda and whatnot.
But for the most part, it is going to make it a lot easier than having to deal so much with possibly divided government or even split control between the Democrats and the Republicans of the chambers of Congress. So I think that's where some of this decisiveness can come in, where when you have one party kind of controlling things, then it is more decisive.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah, but there's still checks and balances. Dave Wiltse, what does that look like when the Supreme Court has largely been influenced by Donald Trump's previous presidency? Now we see what's happening in the Senate, so there are a lot of people who would say, "Hey, this is, there's a lot of control. There's a lot of opportunity to get an agenda in America that might be what he's been talking about on the campaign trail."
Whether you're excited for that or you're mortified by it, there's an expectation that there are possibilities that weren't before, but yet we also have these three branches of government who are supposed to watch each other. Help the college students in the room figure out how to look at some of these things in the days ahead, the months ahead.
David Wiltse :
Yeah, the court's clearly not a check any longer. I mean, they have very consistently ruled in the President's favor up to and including near absolute immunity in any kind of official act. So they're out. The Senate, we still have Rule 23 there. Are they going to be willing to junk the filibuster and change the rules of cloture for routine legislation? That's something that Thune or Cornyn, or whoever winds up as majority leader, is going to have to decide. There's no telling if they are willing to do that or not. And how much pressure the president will be putting on them to do so, that's an open question. So the Senate is definitely a potential roadblock here.
And as far as a House goes, even if it breaks their way, we're going to be talking about a very slight majority here. The Republicans might improve by a few seats, but remember, very rarely is every single elected member of the House of Representatives actually in the House. There's almost always a vacancy, even on day one, of each new Congress. So every vote counts and keeping that caucus together is still going to be hard. It is still going to be a hard slog for leadership.
And it probably is easier now for Speaker Johnson, but it's still going to be a challenge for him to keep some of his more recalcitrant members under control and some of his more vulnerable moderates that are still in the party in competitive districts that could turn the institution in the midterm. So it'll be an interesting few weeks as we kind of see how this shakes out and how, what the leadership decisions are going to be and what the rule changes might be.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. So, U.S. Senator John Thune has not been best friends with Donald Trump in the past, they have had their issues. What's his play here? What does he do next if he is chosen to lead the Senate? Dave, you'll start with you and we'll go to Lisa next. Yeah.
David Wiltse :
It probably would be something along the lines of Mitch McConnell. He won't genuflect the President, but I mean he will have to supplicate himself to a certain degree. He is going to have some more Trump allies in his caucus and he's going to have to keep them happy.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Lisa, you would add to that anything?
Lisa Hager:
There's not really too much to add there, I think Dave put it really well. That yeah, for the most part you do have to play ball with the president and you got to placate those folks within your party who tend to agree with him in order to accomplish things.
David Wiltse :
Yeah. One of the things we forget often as casual observers of politics is these party leaders in Congress, they have to keep their caucuses together, and that can be very difficult.
And in the Senate too. I mean, what are we looking at now? A 52 or 53 Republicans being elected most likely? That's, again, not a big majority.
Lori Walsh:
All right. What does this election say about who we are as America right now? What, when you woke up this morning, were you reflecting on still after you watched or checked in on the results as they came in? Lisa?
Lisa Hager:
I think for me, I found it interesting as I was watching CNN last night how they were breaking down what issues were important to voters in each of the states, and the economy and democracy were continually ranking as the top two issues. And I think this definitely came down to probably those issues, but also some of the others that were thrown in the mix relating to abortion and immigration.
But I think those two won out and I think, obviously, the record inflation that we've had in the past four years broke towards Trump. And I think what was getting missed was this issue relating to democracy, where a lot of the interpretation had to do with Trump being a threat to democracy. But I think what was getting missed is that there were a lot of people in the past four years feeling like their viewpoints were not being taken into account and were oftentimes being called wrong by the Democrats and the Biden administration. And I think that also broke towards Trump's favor. So looking at this issue of democracy one way, I think, was missing some of the point of what happened with this election.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. What would you add, Dave?
David Wiltse :
I would say that this is, in many respects, a very typical election. When it comes to which way undecided voters break and who kind of makes and breaks an election and makes a majority for a presidential candidate is the economy, and more importantly, people's perception of the economy is one of those driving factors, as is presidential popularity.
And all of this is kind of through the lens of partisanship. And in this election, you had a very, very unpopular president. Joe Biden was about as unpopular of an incumbent as we've had, probably in my memory, if not lifetime.
And the economy. I mean, despite some very good things happening comparatively around the world, there were people who were hurt, people who were feeling the pressure from inflation, and the impression of folks was the economy is struggling. And when those two things are working against the incumbent president, people in his party are punished. And in some respects, I think it's remarkable that Kamala Harris came this close to Donald Trump in the overall popular vote and in some of these, so-called blue wall states, where you have at the Rust Belt areas, areas that have been really hard hit in the last 20 years economically, the fact that she kept it that close was kind of surprising to me.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. All right, what do Republicans have to do next? What do Democrats have to do next? Very briefly, in like 30 seconds? What's the recovery plan or the plan to prove it, that they can do what they said they were going to do when they got elected?
David Wiltse :
Stick together. I mean, just keep their caucuses intact, do whatever they can to put themselves in the best position possible for the midterm. Dems probably are going to pick up seats and they might even flip both chambers if things break their way as they very often do historically.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. All right, we're going to leave it there. Dave Wiltse, Lisa Hager, professors at South Dakota State University, always insightful to have you on the air with us. Thanks so much for being here.
Lisa Hager:
Great to be here.
David Wiltse :
Thank you.
