Professors analyze election results
By: Pete Mendoza and Eduardo Escamilla
In the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election, two UTRGV political science professors shared their initial thoughts on the results in an interview with The Rider.
Political science Professor Mark Kaswan said Trump winning the election was not surprising, but what was surprising was the performance.
“I was shocked at how poorly Democrats did pretty much across the board,” Kaswan said.
Political science Professor Nicholas Kiersey said the election outcome was “a very, very good thing for people who cared about the Democratic Party,” implying it was a serious wake-up call.
“I mean, this was not a close election; it was a landslide,” Kiersey said. “And people need to get serious now. No more childish silliness. No more appeasing Wall Street. Let’s get back to a working-class Democratic Party, or throw out the Democratic Party, and start a new worker, working-class party or something. But this, this cannot go on.”
Kaswan said the contested elections between both parties are good for democracy.
“It also means, in the long run, that Democrats are going to have to step up their game if they want to continue to have as much influence in the region,” he said.
Kaswan said this election is similar to the 2016 election.
“It was an election driven by fear,” he said. “What comes across to me fairly clearly is that it wasn’t about policy. It was about how people felt.”
With all 254 Texas counties reporting results as of Wednesday, Trump garnered 6,375,318 votes, or 56.22%, compared to Harris’ 4,806,441 votes, or 42.38%, according to the Secretary of State election results website.
Kaswan said it is possible that people want a more authoritarian government.
“One of the promises of democracy is the idea that it brings people together,” he said. “And I think what people see is that democracy is dividing people. On that level, I think people are actually not as supportive of democracy as we might like to think.”
Kaswan said Trump is a great salesman who knows how to change the minds of the people.
The political science professor said Trump is able to get “people to set aside their perception of reality and accept what that person is telling them.”
“For whatever reason, they didn’t feel like they could trust Kamala Harris, but they felt like they could trust Donald Trump,” Kaswan said.
He said Harris’ loss is due to multiple factors, including Biden’s time in the presidency.
“Harris was unable to escape the unpopularity of Joe Biden,” Kaswan said. “As Biden’s vice president, there was no way she could shake that, or she didn’t succeed in shaking that negative attitude toward the Biden administration.”
Kiersey criticized the Democratic Party’s strategy in recent years, referring to the “Chuck Schumer strategy” of trying to appeal to moderate Republican voters in the suburbs rather than focusing on their traditional base of blue-collar workers.
“What timeline are we in where Democrats abandon the working class, which is their traditional and historical bread and butter for votes, and do it again and again, and not learn their lesson?” he said.
Kaswan said Congress was able to do a few big things during the beginning of Biden’s administration.
“But, the Democrats are really bad at communicating their success,” he said.
Kiersey said he questioned the party’s decision to “parachute” Harris into the presidential slot without her being “battle tested” or “proven.”
He criticized the Democratic Party for prioritizing rules and norms over substantive policy changes, citing the role of the Senate parliamentarian in blocking student debt relief and the failure to codify Roe v. Wade. He said these failures were due to a lack of political will, rather than any insurmountable legal or constitutional barriers.
“They could have legislated Roe versus Wade, but they didn’t do it,” Kiersey said. “They didn’t want to do it because they preferred to keep it alive, the political football.”
He added that “Trump is a fairly vanilla conservative guy who used to be a New York Democrat.”
“He’s not anti-abortion,” Kiersey said. “He’s very much in favor of it. He triangulates a lot. He figures out where, you know, where the wind is blowing, and he tends to follow what his base wants.”
Kiersey, who is an Irish citizen, said if he could vote in the U.S., he would have “been very tempted to vote for Trump” due to his interest “in the United States not getting sucked into more wars.”
Kaswan said with the final decision, radical changes in policy are to be expected.
“If you look at any of the reporting that’s been done on Project 2025, I think you’ll see,” he said. “They’ll at least try to pass a national ban on abortion and funding for the war in Ukraine.”
Kaswan included that the Trump administration will attempt to limit many programs that provide support for the needy, such as Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
Kiersey also noted the Democratic Party’s messaging on issues, such as the conflict in Gaza, was inconsistent, with the party running “ads that said the exact opposite” in different parts of the country.
Regarding the Supreme Court, he suggested that Trump’s appointments may be more moderate than expected.
“I think he understands that the abortion issue … that the Dobbs [v. Jackson] decision, as it were, is nationally, very unpopular,” Kiersey said. “This may be a controversial opinion, but I would expect that he would actually maybe appoint people who are traditional conservative justices, states rights justices, but … they’re not going to legislate a nationwide ban on abortion.”
Regarding the political landscape in Texas, he noted the state is likely to “remain Texas,” with the Republican Party continuing to challenge the federal government on issues, such as border policy. He suggested that the Supreme Court may not be as supportive of Texas’ hard-line approach, but with a more pro-border-hardening president in office, that may change.
The professor also touched on the shifting political landscape in South Texas, where Republicans have made significant gains in the recent elections.
Kiersey attributed these shifts to the Democratic Party’s failure to adapt to the diverse political interests within the Latino community.
He said that within the Democratic Party, there is a “notion of demographics as destiny, that the more diverse the American population becomes … as the number of Hispanics in the country increases, the Democrats are destined to win. … But what Trump has shown is that is completely false.”
