Columbia Experts React, Share Insights on 2024 Election Results
Columbia faculty and staff share their insights on a tumultuous election season and look at what’s next.
After a tumultuous election season, Americans went to the polls and elected Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States, four years after he left office as the 45th.
Throughout the fall, Columbia faculty and staff have helped make sense of the politics at play through interviews, events, and resources. We turn to them again in the days after the election to help analyze and offer insights on election results and what comes next.
First published on Nov. 7, we’ll be updating this page throughout the coming days with more links to recommended readings from Columbians.
Ways to Deal With the Stress and Uncertainty of Another Trump Presidency (Vox)
Riana Elyse Anderson, Associate Professor of Social Work, School of Social Work
"Getting people in person with each other is how we’re going to be able to show up for each other and also get the work done more effectively,” Anderson said.
Columbia Professor on Trump's Return to the White House (Spectrum News NY1)
Donald Green, Burgess Professor of Political Science
"We expect it to be quite different. When you think back to 2017, the Trump administration was not moving with any particular alacrity," Green said. "They only proposed two major pieces of legislation and let valuable time slip by while controlling Congress. As we know, they ended up not passing one of their hallmark pieces of legislation and they lost their majority in the 2018 election. So this time, I expect them to be less slow-footed, get down to work immediately, and leverage the fact that they are likely, not certainly, to be in full control of Congress."
How Harris Won at TikTok but Lost the Election (The Boston Globe)
Ioana Literat, Associate Professor of Communication, Media and Learning Technologies Design, Teachers College
"The internet used to be about seeking information, then it became about networking with the popularization of chatrooms, blogs and social apps," Literat said. "Now, it’s about expressing ourselves. As people create and engage with content on TikTok, they’re being politically socialized - with the help of a powerful and inscrutable algorithm, of course. These voters will remember the ideas they encountered on TikTok long after they swipe past."
Trump Will Create 'Interesting Challenges’ for Federal Reserve, Says Columbia’s Frederic Mishkin (CNBC)
Frederic Mishkin, Alfred Lerner Professor of Banking and Financial Institutions, Columbia Business School
"Monetary policy takes a long time to have an effect," Mishkin said. "We've just had an extraordinary election, the election of Donald Trump as president. That's going to create some very interesting challenges for the Federal Reserve. One of them is the issue of Federal Reserve independence. Trump was extremely critical of the Federal Reserve when it wasn't lowering interest rates to his likely. Trump tends to be a low interest man...when Jay Powell comes up for renewal it is extremely unlikely he'll be re-nominated and then who knows who Trump will put in?"
Reflections on the Recent Election (Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science Blog)
Andrew Gelman, Higgins Professor of Statistics and Professor of Political Science
"What happened yesterday? The first answer from political science is the economy," Gelman wrote. "More specifically, dissatisfaction with the economy. More generally, dissatisfaction manifesting itself in anti-incumbent feeling. Ever since Rosenstone’s 1983 book, we’ve thought that party, not candidate or campaign, is what matters most in presidential elections, and recent elections do not contradict that view."
What Trump’s Victory Means for Climate Change (The New York Times)
Martin Lockman, Climate Law Fellow, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law
“The locus of climate action is going to shift to the states,” said Lockman. “Unless there is a complete reversal of the Inflation Reduction Act, this is something where climate issues, even in red states where they won’t say the word ‘climate,’ the impact on the ground is undeniable.”
Musk's 'Golden Ticket': Trump Win Could Hand Tesla Billionaire Unprecedented Power (USA Today)
Gita Johar, Meyer Feldberg Professor of Business, Columbia Business School
“I think it could be a very cozy arrangement that benefits Musk,” Johar said.
Johar shared further insight on Musk and Trump with The Guardian.
Video: ‘Levels of sexism and racism’ that many are ‘willing to tolerate’: Dem strategist on Trump victory (MSNBC)
Basil Smikle, professor of practice and director, M.S. in Nonprofit Management Program, School of Professional Studies
“There are levels of sexism and racism that clearly a lot of people in this country are willing to tolerate, which is also something that, you know, we may have not—we may have woken up in the same country in a sense, but that becomes much more clear this morning,” Smikle said. “... This isn’t a democratic problem, per se, because it’s not a problem that can be solved with a campaign. These are deep-rooted issues in our country that we absolutely need to address.”
Smikle also offered insight on the relationship between New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Donald Trump in Gothamist.
What Donald Trump’s Win Means for Housing Market (Newsweek)
Robert Shapiro, Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government and Professor of International and Public Affairs, School of International and Public Affairs
“We really do not know exactly what his policies would be,” Shapiro said. “[Vice President Kamala] Harris’ ideas to offer subsidies/incentives and promote deregulations to builders and local governments to increase housing were good ones that would not conflict with conservative ideology, in contrast to her proposal to offer subsidies to first-time buyers, which would increase the price of housing.”
Shapiro also offered insight to NBC News on the economic hardship felt by voters.
‘Trump’s America’: Comeback Victory Signals a Different Kind of Country (The New York Times)
Timothy Naftali, senior research scholar, School of International and Public Affairs
“In many ways, this is the last chapter of the Jan. 6 drama. Many Republicans thought they had managed to thread the needle, to avoid pissing off their base while also jettisoning Trump. And it turned out they hadn’t. And now they have him back. And if he wins the bet, and he’s returned to power, then the final verdict of Jan. 6 is that in modern America, you can cheat and the system isn’t strong enough to fight back.”
Another Letter to a Young Journalist (Columbia Journalism Review)
Samuel G. Freedman, professor of journalism, Columbia Journalism School
“The gap that has opened within America between the more and less educated, between urban centers and rural or small-town regions, is a reality. A demagogue like Trump can cynically expand the divide, but he didn’t invent it. And, from my own career, I am convinced that the divide has cracked as deep and wide as it has partly because of the evisceration of local journalism. One part of your mission is to rebuild it.”
Yes, the Election May Actually Be Hurting Your Mental Health (Amsterdam News)
Robert Klitzman, professor of psychiatry and sociomedical sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health; bioethics program director, School of Professional Studies
“If one is depressed to start, one may … focus even more on the negative potential outcomes,” he said. “Of course, we don’t know what’s going to happen in the election. And my guess is, even after Election Day, there may be quite a bit of uncertainty for several days … similarly, anxiety can spiral.
“And so if you’re feeling anxious to begin with … this anxiety could feed into that anxiety about the election, that is about the future [of] the country, and about worries about ways that might affect one’s own life. And those anxieties can perpetuate each other. They can become mutually reinforcing in a negative way.”
It’s Ugly Out There. 5 Tips for Talking to Those with Divergent Views. (CNN)
Peter T. Coleman, professor of psychology and education, Teachers College
“I think it’s harder for more people, more of the time because of the culture that we live in today.
“The climate right now, certainly in the US, but frankly in many democracies around the world, (it’s) so polarized that when things happen, whether it’s Covid or a presidential campaign or a war, they become quickly weaponized and quickly polarizing—and then we have a very hard time talking about them,” he said.