The end of the post WWII liberal consensus and the emergence of a new fascism?

Based on the most recent opinion polling, Trump will win the electoral college.

The main lesson to be learned from the end of WWII and the Cold War is that fascism, totalitarianism, and authoritarianism tend to end in tears, often very bloody ones, but that lesson has been lost in the intervening years. The rise of Trump, the invasion of Ukraine, the Israeli genocide of Palestinians, Brexit, and the re-emergence of hard right parties throughout Europe all challenged the post war liberal consensus that international cooperation, freer trade, economic integration, social inclusion, gender equality, and human rights were the path to greater peace, prosperity, social cohesion, and democratic governance.

The rot set in when China began to eat the “West’s” lunch in terms of manufacturing, and India began to compete successfully on software development and services. Africa’s population explosion amid climate change has also put huge pressure on migration pathways. Investment by Global corporations gravitated toward cheaper labour costs in less developed countries, and those countries gradually moved up the economic food chain. The world economy grew more rapidly than ever before, but relatively speaking, many in the West were losing out, and particularly the working classes who used to rule the roost in many industrialised communities. Computerisation, automation and AI threaten to extend that loss of relative affluence and influence to the middle classes.

The political response has been to scapegoat immigrants and blame free trade and those elites seen to benefits from both. A huge political divide has opened up between the relative winners and losers of globalisation. It matters little that the USA’s economy has recovered from the financial crash and Pandemic in great shape with solid growth, rapid employment growth, low unemployment and declining inflation. People feel they are losing out to foreigners and need someone to blame. Trump addresses that need perfectly. Warnings from some of Trumps closest past collaborators and advisers that he is a fascist are falling on deaf ears. The events of the 1930’s have no resonance for most voters now.

At his last major rally in Madison Square Garden, for instance, Trump replaced his signature blue suit and red tie with the Black and gold of the neofascist Proud Boys, the extremist group that was central to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capital. At the rally, the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe described Puerto Rico as a floating island of garbage in scripted and vetted remarks that were included in the teleprompter feed. About six million people of Puerto Rican origan live in the USA, a million of them in critical battleground states. Blacks, Latinos, Hispanics, gays and other minorities also came in for regular abuse. It doesn’t seem to matter. His base lapped it up, and that base includes increasing numbers of minority voters.

Trump has gained about 2 percentage points in the polls in the past few weeks and that has been enough for him to move past the tipping point in key battleground states:

The “blue wall” has been breached in Nevada and Pennsylvania, and while the margins are wafer thin, the trend has been all in one direction. Meanwhile Harris’ compensatory pick-up opportunities in Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina have trended further out of reach. 538 still has Trump behind Harris in the national popular vote although one poll aggregator, https://www.realclearpolitics.com, which uses a simpler aggregation methodology, now has Trump in the lead there as well.

So, unless there is a major polling industry failure, something not unknown in US politics, Trump looks by far the more likely to win at this stage. In 2020 the polls underestimated Trumps appeal by about 2% while in 2022 they underestimated the performance of the Democrats in the mid-term elections by a similar margin. Given Trump’s lead in the polling in key marginal states, it would take a collective error by the polling industry of a similar magnitude for Kamala Harris to win the election now.

Polling failures can arise for a number of different reasons.

1. Polls are a snapshot of opinions at the time they are taken, and opinions can change right up to the moment a voter enters the polling booth. A lot of voters only make up their minds very late in the day.
2. Giving an opinion to a pollster and taking the trouble to travel, queue up, and vote are two different things. Pollsters try to account for this by seeking to measure the degree of voter enthusiasm for either candidate and adjusting their results by the “likelihood” that a voter will actually vote. Some polls are a sample of all registered voters, some of “likely voters” only.
3. A lot of polls are by pollsters with partisan leanings, sometimes including contractual ties to either campaign to provide polling intelligence. There may be a tendency to tell the client what he wants to hear.
4. Some polls, called “push polls,” are more designed to actually influence rather than measure attitudes by creating a media narrative that their favoured candidate is winning or at least improving in the polls.
5. Pollsters who get results very different to other pollsters may “adjust” their results to avoid being seen as a total outlier and unreliable pollsters – a phenomenon known as “herding”.
6. The “shy Tory” effect, whereby those giving their opinion are reluctant to share their true feelings with the Pollster. In the past this may have resulted in more people actually voting for Trump than said they would do so when asked by a pollster. Alternatively, women in conservative, religious, or patriarchal households or communities might be reluctant to admit a preference for Harris. Some right wing commentators have suggested that wives have a duty to vote in line with their husbands.

So, it is still quite possible to construct an argument that Harris will win, but the bottom line is that the signs are ominous for her: The trend has been inexorably towards Trump in recent weeks and early voting trends have been mixed, with more Republicans voting earlier than usual, but also more women – who tend to favour Harris by wide margins in the polls.

Personally, I still think Harris will win, but I am almost afraid to write that for fear of it being wishful thinking on my part. Certainly, what polling data we have doesn’t support that view. Perhaps I am just reluctant to give up my faith in humanity. A victory for Trump would have huge negative repercussion for the future of this planet, and those who say such fears are overdone simply don’t know their history.

Frank Schnittger is the author of Sovereignty 2040, a future history of how Irish re-unification might work out. He has worked in business in Dublin and London and, on a voluntary basis, for charities in community development, education, restorative justice and addiction services.