Political Psychoanalysis of Donald J. Trump’s Presidential Election Victory
FEATURED RESEARCH PAPER, 24 Feb 2025
Claude R. Shema – TRANSCEND Media Service
Why did Professor Lichtman’s “Predicting the next president” model get it wrong?
Abstract
Jan 2025 – One of the most controversial presidential candidates in history of United States of America, Donald J. Trump secured his second non-consecutive victory in the 2024 US presidential race (Samuels,2024). This can be interpreted also as hard work that Trump and his team have put in place since he begrudgingly left the White House office after one term presidency when he lost to Joe Biden (Street,2024). Trump lifestyle ever since 2021 was driven by the endless campaigning events on virtual platforms or in person settings on every occasion, while he kept his base energized, entertained and motivated, and consolidated the republican party power around himself (Baptist & Clark,2024).
During that election cycle, not only Trump was a convicted felon, who will be historically known as a “sworn-in criminally sentenced” US president (Finkelstein & Painter,2024) and he’d been indicted in many other cases, and or pending trials (Farrell, 2024). These are significantly unusual circumstances and occurrences in many ways and in many cultures, given that his opponent [Vice President Kamala Haris] was former career prosecutor, an achieved state and federal law enforcement officer, senator and vice-president from California (Harris, Bickham and Broussard,2024).
Thus, a jury convicted, indicted by courts and sentenced felon [ Trump] versus a prosecutor, attorney, senator, a sitting vice-president [Kamala Harris]. In normal circumstances, predicting a winner in this case would have a simple task, so had confidently predicted Professor Alan Lichtman’s “Predicting the next president” (Lichtman & Lichtman,2024. However, on November 5th, 2024, Donald J. Trump was declared victorious, and Kamala Harris the loser as the electoral college results confirmed.
Objectives
This paper examines overall the socioeconomic and political behaviour of Americans’ unearthed perceptions during the US presidential campaign, and the leading underlying factors of the election’s outcomes between Donald J. Trump and Kamala Harris in political psychoanalytical lenses and transcultural psychiatry perspectives.
Methods: Psychological analysis of the literature pertaining to the 2024 US elections, socioeconomic perspective, political behaviours and perception of the key voting blocs.
Findings: Perception of
- gender or misogyny,
- international wars and US related policy,
- economy, and
- immigration issues as threats to Americans played a significant role in voters decision making.
Whilst Trump’s relentless big megaphone echoed into voters’ brain cognitive process system, the Democrats old fashioned strategies of linking left policy and minority voting pattern failed to persuade American voters.
Conclusion
Professor Lichtman’s predictions have been excellent for more than 4 decades (Lichtman& Lichtman,2024). During the 2024 US presidential election cycle, he favoured Kamala Harris on some keys, which skewed his predictions, whilst voters’ perception on the keys psychologically favoured Trump instead. These keys were pivotal for voters, such as the “war” between Israel and Hamas designated terrorist group in Palestine which may have contributed to the loss of the “blue wall” state of Michigan (Traugott,2024; Ward,2024).
Moreover, the Lichtman’s predictions on the “economy” scored great in the book and for incumbent party (Democrats) and for Kamala Harris, but voters’ perception across the nation was the opposite, including the pinch of inflation (Kapoor & Fridell,2024), and they displayed anxiety over the economic situation for the future (Struby & Farhart,2024), which may have cost Kamala Harris the state of Pennsylvania, another “blue wall” commonwealth state in addition to the state of Wisconsin. Undoubtedly, from intersectionality analytical lenses, the “gender” perception and or misogyny has been overlooked, as many voters, majority of both genders, women and men didn’t feel that the US was ready for a “black female” president…yet (Cerja et al.,2024; Harris, Bickham and Broussard,2024)!
Last, the power of social media which was a profound and strong conducive machine of misinformation and disinformation which can’t be ignored (Roozenbeek & Van der Linden,2024). It was through that big social media and mainstream far right leaning media megaphone that the “Bidenomics” had become a dirty word (even though it has created unprecedented record of more than 16,000,000 jobs nationwide), but American voters believed the alternative reality in many instances (Zienert‐Eilts,2024). Unsurprisingly, the war between Ukraine and Russia became a real concern for American voters, whereas asylum seekers (immigrants) were labelled as the greatest threats to the majority of Americans through southern border, threatening the American livelihood, values and beliefs, which can be interpreted as a living with diversity challenges (Kirmayer,2024).
The rhetoric went a bit far to state that there was creation of a terrorist califate in the American neighbourhoods, aiming at killing Americans and taking their jobs and properties, including pets (such as the infamous case of Springfield in Ohio), lands and houses, to framing asylum seekers and fearmongering strategy on American voters (Pashko & Gardikiotis,2024). Thus, immigration in one way the other, become another key factor for voters, both White Caucasians and minority voting groups including Arabs, Black, Latins Americans and alike, as the perception on immigration handling favoured Donald J. Trump and republicans in general, not Democrats or Kamala Harris who believed that voters of colour would turn back against Trump.
Recommendations
From psychological standpoint, human behaviour can be influenced by perception. Therefore, for the future improvement in predictions, the election predicting tools such as the “13 Keys to the white house” may increase their predictability outcomes in the events perception is taken into consideration for better analysis. The perception may include (a) war, (b) gender, (c) economy and (d) immigration perspectives.
References
Baptist, N. K., & Clark, K. A. (2024). Unmasking the authoritarian mob boss: A critical analysis of Donald Trump’s political leadership. Social Sciences, 13(8), 397.
Cerja, C., Nave, N.D., Winfrey, K.L., Helen Palczewski, C. and Hahner, L.A., 2024.
Misogynoir and the public woman: analog and digital sexualization of women in public from the Civil War to the era of Kamala Harris. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 110(1), pp.74-100.
Farrell, T. J. (2024). Thomas B. Edsall on the Convicted Felon Trump, and Walter J. Ong’s Thought. New Explorations, 4(2).
Finkelstein, C. O., & Painter, R. (2024). When an Indicted Candidate Wins the Presidency: What Happens to The Trials If Donald Trump Wins the Election?. Southern California Law Review Postscript [online], 1.
Harris, R.K., Bickham, S.B. and Broussard, J.C., 2024. Intersectionality and the framing of news: A discourse analysis of Black press and mainstream coverage about Vice President Kamala Harris. Journal of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, 2(1), pp.3-22.
Kapoor, I., & Fridell, G. (2024). Case studies in development politics: psychoanalytic inflections. In Rethinking Development Politics (pp. 82-110). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Kirmayer, L. J. (2024). The fragility of truth: Social epistemology in a time of polarization and pandemic. Transcultural Psychiatry, 61(5), 701-713.
Lichtman, A. J., & Lichtman, A. (2024). Predicting the next president: The Keys to the White House, 2024. Rowman & Littlefield.
Pashko, A., & Gardikiotis, A. (2024). News Framing Effects on Society (Doctoral dissertation, Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης).
Roozenbeek, J., & Van der Linden, S. (2024). The psychology of misinformation. Cambridge University Press.
Samuels, R. (2024). Antisemitism, Free Speech, and the Political Unconscious. In Culture Wars, Universities, and the Political Unconscious (pp. 137-151). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
Street, P. (2024). Fear of Violent Retribution. CounterPunch.
Struby, E., & Farhart, C. (2024). Inflation Expectations and Political Polarization: Evidence from the Cooperative Election Study.
Traugott, M. (2024) Voters in Arab American strongholds likely tipped Michigan in Trump’s favor, The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/voters-in-arab- american-strongholds-likely-tipped-michigan-in-trumps-favor-242854 (Accessed: 19 January 2025).
Ward, A., 2024. The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy After Trump. Penguin.
Zienert‐Eilts, K. J. (2024). The conspiracy narrative “The Big Lie”—Psychoanalytical considerations on the development of susceptibility to an “alternative reality”. International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 21(1), e1845.
___________________________________________________
Claude R. Shema, MD. Msc(c) psychiatry. Post Graduate Cardiff University School of Medicine, Wales, UK. Dr. Shema is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.
FEATURED RESEARCH PAPER STAYS POSTED FOR 2 WEEKS BEFORE BEING ARCHIVED
Tags: Elections, Research, Trump, USA
DISCLAIMER: The statements, views and opinions expressed in pieces republished here are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of TMS. In accordance with title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. TMS has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is TMS endorsed or sponsored by the originator. “GO TO ORIGINAL” links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the “GO TO ORIGINAL” links. This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
One Response to “Political Psychoanalysis of Donald J. Trump’s Presidential Election Victory”
Join the discussion!
We welcome debate and dissent, but personal — ad hominem — attacks (on authors, other users or any individual), abuse and defamatory language will not be tolerated. Nor will we tolerate attempts to deliberately disrupt discussions. We aim to maintain an inviting space to focus on intelligent interactions and debates.
Read more
Click here to go to the current weekly digest or pick another article:
FEATURED RESEARCH PAPER:
‘the “war” between Israel and Hamas designated terrorist group in Palestine’ hardly an objective portrayal!
The whole episode seems to me to be a waste of time and effort. People do not necessarily vote rationally, the media have a huge influence and as we can see right now (with Trump and Russia/Ukraine) they tend to unite and the lack of truth is evident to anyone who actually follows the real events. People want hope, and Trump is so extreme that he is believed because the alternative is so terrible too!!! Can anyone think that Harris, after the horrors of the Biden administration, would actually help their lives???