If you talk to ten Democratic pundits and politicians about why Kamala Harris lost, you will get fifteen different reasons. Rather than me providing my biased progressive perspective on what took place, let’s see what the election data tell us. Donald Trump did very well getting around 2.5 milllion more votes than he did in 2020. He received almost 77 million votes, 49.9 percent of the votes cast.  Harris received around 757 million votes or 48.3 percent of the vote (312 to 226 electoral votes). Trump’s margin of victory was around 2 million votes or 1.5 percent.  It was 4 million votes less than Biden got in 2020, but the first time since George W. Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004 that a Republican Presidential candidate won the popular vote. Trump won a bigger share of votes in every state and across genders in 2024 as compared to 2020.  The result was not a landslide when compared to Richard Nixon receiving 59 percent of the vote in 1972 or Ronald Reagan receiving 61 percent of the vote in 1984, but it was a clear victory. The Associated Press reported that the number of votes cast was about 157.6 million, down slightly from the record 158 million votes cast in 2024. In counties where at least 40 percent of white adults hold a college degree, total turnout declined by about 230,000 votes, or 3 percent, from 2020. Ms. Harris won 271,000 fewer votes in such places, while Mr. Trump added 61,000.  Overall, there was an across-the-board drop in Democratic turnout and an increase in Republican turnout and a decrease in voting among women and an increase among men. Trump received about a million more popular votes in 2024 than he did in 2020.  Kamala Harris, on the other hand, got 7 million fewer votes than the 81.2 million votes Joe Biden got in 2020.  Harris lost far more votes than Donald Trump gained. Many voters who had voted for Joe Biden in 2020 stayed at home in 2024. Trump swept all of the seven highly contested battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona. Two of these states, Pennsylvania and Michigan, were part of the so-called “blue wall” that voted Democratic in every election between 1992 and 2012. According to an article in The New York Times by Michael Bender that focused on fall-of in Democratic turnout, Trump won Pennsylvania, a key battleground state because he increased the percentage of the vote he received in the five counties with the highest percentage of registered Democrats.  While Harris won these counties, she did not get the margin she needed to overcome heavily Republican areas in the rest of the state. Harris got 78,000 fewer votes than Biden and Trump added 24,000 votes to his total in these same counties.  This gap was the key to Trump winning in Pennsylvania and, in many ways, was emblematic of the nature of his victory nationwide. Even in our own blue New Jersey, Harris won by just five points. In 2020 New Jersey voters rejected Trump by a resounding 16 percent. Turnout was down this year by 442,000 votes, very close to the 475,000 fewer votes less that Harris got than Biden did in 2020. Despite the decrease in turnout, Trump increased his vote total in the state by 26,000 votes. Had Harris performed close to as well as Joe Biden did in 2024, she would have won the presidential race.  However, this was not the case as she under performed in liberal strongholds in both urban centers and in suburban communities where there was clear evidence that Trump successfully persuaded significant number of Biden voters to flip.  In the suburbs, Harris received 940,000 fewer votes than Trump, while Trump added 1.3 million votes. According to the Bender article “counties with the biggest Democratic victories in 2020 delivered 1.9 million fewer votes for Ms. Harris than they had for Mr. Biden. The nation’s most Republican-heavy counties turned out an additional 1.2 million votes for Mr. Trump this year.” Bender added, “The drop-off spanned demographic and economics. It was clear in counties with the highest job growth rates, counties with the most job losses and counties with the highest percentage of college-educated voters. Turnout was down, too, across groups that are traditionally strong for Democrats – including areas with large numbers of Black Christians and Jewish voters.” The Trump campaign strategy aimed at motivating low-propensity voters who don’t usually take part in the political process appeared to have worked extremely well.  In 2020 Biden won first-time voters; Trump reversed the trend and won them handily.  It should, however, be noted that a smaller portion of voters reported casting their first ballot in 2024 than in 2020.  This suggests a lack of enthusiasm among this voter cohort for both candidates. Likewise, the Republican strategy of making in-roads among Hispanic/Latino voters bore dramatic results. There was a huge spike in Trump’s vote among Hispanic/ Latino voters.  Trumps vote increased by 13 percent and Harris was down by 12 percent.  Trump got 43 percent of Hispanic voters. Among Hispanic men the flip was an astonishing 33 points with him winning 48% of their total vote. In the Bronx, New York, with a largely black and Latino population Trump increased his vote total by 34 percent. Exit polls indicate that the overwhelming reason for the dramatic shift was economic issues. In spite of a multiple economic signs pointing in the right direction with regard to inflation, job creation and growth indicators, James Carville admonition regarding the main issue in most campaigns being how voters feel about the economy, appears to be the case in 2024. Working people blamed Biden/Harris for the crush of rising prices of groceries and gas.  As Arlie Russell Hochschild wrote in Stolen Pride: Lose Shame and the Rise of the Right, “In talking with those I came to know in KY-5, I heard little about federal dollars newly directed to rural areas. Talk was of the cost of gas, trans people entering girls’ bathrooms, retribution for a “stolen” election, the failing memory of a Democratic president, and most of all, the eight thousand migrants crossing the border daily.” All the issues Democrats though would sway voters – embracing of organized labor, the investment in hallowed-out communities more often in red states than in blue states, the countless Trump indictments, Trump’s xenophobia and racism, Harris’ excellent debate performance many celebrity endorsements, Dems warnings that democracy was in peril and that a national abortion ban was on the horizon and the future of NATO and Ukraine were on-the-line; were — trumped by the anger and anxiety of Americans who were concerned and anxious about inflation, immigration and cultural/woke issues. I, unfortunately, have a strong suspicion that many of those who voted for Trump because they are struggling economically will come to regret their 2024 electoral decision, but let’s hope I’m wrong. Irwin Stoolmacher is president of the Stoolmacher Consulting Group, a fundraising and strategic planning firm that works with nonprofit agencies that serve the truly needy among us.