The US Election: Expectations vs. Outcomes SYNOPSIS COMMENTARY Expectations

Second, nearly all serious analysts anticipated that the Republicans were likely to take the Senate by a close margin but that the Democrats were likely to take the House of Representatives – a flip from the situation since the November 2022 midterms. [...] Fourth, were Trump to win the election and especially if the Republicans were also to take the Senate, most analysts expected an administration that would quickly commence, shock-and-awe style, the use of every means available, legal and not, to: take revenge against political opponents, not to exclude the use of arrest warrants, mafia-style coercion, and even direct violence; that would seek to s. [...] If because of legal artifice and harassment directed at local officials some states proved unable to certify election results and thus send Electors to Washington for the legally mandatory January 6 counting ritual, according to the Electoral Law of 1887, a small but widely discussed possibility existed that the election would be thrown into the House according to the 12th Amendment, and hence Tru. [...] The single pivotal question that looms over the election outcome the morning after is a stark one: How could We the People elect a man to the presidency who clearly lied about the result of the November 2020 election, bitterly divided the nation over it, tried to foment a coup on January 6, 2021, and told an audience on July 27, 2024, in urging them to vote: “You won’t have to do it anymore. [...] You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians”? In other words, what kind of demos has We the People become? Trump won a double victory: He and the Republican Party not only soundly defeated the Democrats, but also shamed the broader strata of elites represented by the mainstream domestic media commentariat, the universities, and the pro-US elites of major American allies.