US Elections: If Harris wins, here's why

2024 Election: This was always a challenging race for Vice President Kamala Harris. She started late, and ran against a tough opponent in a bleak environment. She faced an electorate hungry for change, upset with the direction of the country and the economy.

If she wins, she will be able to credit a handful of factors that helped her fight those headwinds and defeat former President Donald Trump.

Here is what analysts will be saying should Harris win.


Turnout, Turnout, Turnout
The vice president's embrace of the traditional Democratic get-out-the-vote effort, relying on paid staff and unions to knock on doors, will have proved to be every bit as effective as promised. By contrast, Trump largely outsourced this work to allies, including Elon Musk, who had far less experience in the world of organizing and reaching voters.

The Harris campaign said it had dispatched 2,500 staff members, working from 353 offices nationwide, to work on finding supporters and getting them to vote. In one week alone, the campaign logged 600,000 door-knocks and 3 million phone calls. A Harris win would offer proof for what has often seemed a barroom theory of political operatives and strategists: that turnout operations make a difference in close races.

Abortion
In the two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and abolished the constitutional right to abortion, Democrats have repeatedly won in national and congressional elections. Every abortion-rights measure that has appeared on a state ballot has been approved.

This trend became clear in the 2022 midterm elections, when Democrats defied expectations and staved off big losses, a surge that analysts in both parties said was because of the court decision. Democrats said they had spent more money on advertisements highlighting abortion than any other subject.

Harris' victory would leave little doubt about the issue's potency. Trump's efforts to muddy the waters, by saying he would not sign a national abortion ban, appears to have fallen flat. Republicans in future elections will most likely need to find new ways to neutralize the issue.

Thank You, Mr. Trump
If Harris wins, it will most likely also be because Trump turned off as many voters as he appealed to -- particularly in the final days of the campaign, with his disjointed, rambling speeches filled with dark and often menacing rhetoric.

Two weeks before Election Day, Harris delivered a speech from the vice president's official residence at the Naval Observatory, calling Trump "unhinged and unstable," setting the frame for the final stretch of the campaign. And he seemed determined to help her do that, from the time he spent some 30 minutes swaying onstage to music to when he suggested that Liz Cheney, one of his most prominent Republican critics, be put on a battlefield "with nine barrels shooting at her."

Change
Harris has spent the past four years in the White House, and Trump went to great effort to link her to President Joe Biden's legacy. If she wins, she succeeded, after some faltering efforts, in presenting herself as a candidate of change, in an election in which change was a powerful force.

It helped that she is 18 years younger than Trump and a woman.

The Gender Gap
Unlike Hillary Clinton in 2016, Harris did not highlight the historic nature of her candidacy -- that she would be the first woman, never mind the first Black woman and the first Asian American woman, to serve as president. There was no need. A Harris victory would be powered by a surge of support from women. The final New York Times/Siena College poll, taken at the end of October, found a stark gender divide: Harris led Trump among women, 54% to 42%, while Trump led Harris among men, 55% to 41%.

(This article originally appeared in The New York Times)