By Donald Blair

The outcome of this latest Presidential election surprised both sides. Polls and pundits alike failed to predict the significant shift to the political right. Criticism and complaints usually start on the losing side, and this election was no different. Democratic critics were quick to deride Harris’ campaign, claiming she was either too bold or not bold enough. Others lamented voters who seemingly voted against their self-interest. Trump’s improved showing with minorities was especially galling to them. But outside of assigning blame, none of these criticisms offered a core understanding of what happened. 

The standard view of the race was that the Democrats and Republicans were locked in a tight partisan struggle, and the winner would be the one who could pull the political center to their side. In the run-up to the election, the general feeling was that Harris was making the more overt play for the center, taking the edge off of her and the party’s more left-leaning policy positions. Trump, according to the same view, was sticking to his unabashedly right-wing loyalists and counting on their higher turnout to win the day.

In the aftermath of Trump’s Electoral and popular vote victory, many Democratic-leaning experts declared the death of the political center. The lesson they took away was that the success of Trump’s more extreme partisanship was a sign that there was no longer a political center of significance in the US. They pointed to an ugly coalition of greedy rich people, under-educated adults, and small-minded bigots that powered Trump’s comeback.

There are certainly elements of that assessment that are true. It’s clear that Trump supporters are much more likely to include the worst of the far-right wing, just as Harris’ is more likely to include those of the extreme left wing. However, something more than that must be going on to explain the strength of Trump’s showing. Those observers are right that the center they were counting on is dead. Or better said, the center we commonly imagine is dead. The key to understanding how that happened in the last election is understanding the mathematical difference between the median and the mean.

The mean is what we usually call an average. The median is the number that falls in the middle if you were to list all the numbers from lowest to highest. If you have three numbers – 4,5 and 9 – their mean is 6, and the median is 5. Why review grade school math terms? The American political center is more the median than the mean. The vision of the political center is still rooted in America, which existed in the 1980s when the mean and median were closer together. In past eras, the center was generally satisfied by its place in America. According to the Congressional Business Office (CBO), from the 1950s to the mid-1980s, incomes grew fairly equally across most households.

But since then, income growth has grown much faster for higher-income households. To see that effect, look at the hypothetical case of five households that saw their incomes rise by the following percentage in the last 10 years: 35%, 25%, 20%, 15%, and 5%. In this case, the mean and the median are the same at 20%. Three of the five households say they do the same or better than the average. Now assume the same households grew instead at  60%, 20%, 15%, 10%, and 5%. The mean is still 20%, but the median – the household in the middle – is five percentage points below that average. So, in this case, most households would say they’re doing worse than average. That is what has happened in the US. The middle that was generally satisfied with their place in America has disappeared.

Perhaps a more accurate way to look at it is that the center didn’t disappear but moved. The true center rightfully feels left out of America’s growth and progress. The new center feels the hit when inflation makes household items more expensive but does not benefit when the stock market rebounds. Whereas the old center was happy to have things continue as they were, the new center sees the status quo as bad for them and their future. An impatient citizenry only spends a little time paring out policy differences between candidates. In fact, one study that described policies without saying which party they were from found that most people preferred the Democrat’s policies.

But the general tenor of the campaigns struck different chords. Putting aside the strong cultural differences between the two sides, the Harris campaign was about staying the course and protecting our institutions; the Trump campaign was about shaking things up. You can argue about the sincerity and efficacy of just how he proposed to do that. There’s little in the Republican platform designed to do anything to address the historically high gap between the top and the middle. But Trump and the Republicans won the day by appealing to a modern center feeling left behind by what they see as an unfair system.

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Donald Blair, is an author & respected political commentator and has been featured on Fox, Axios, Yahoo News, Mashable and Expresso.

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