For those watching CNN's "Magic Wall" in the early hours of Wednesday, November 6, as Pennsylvania's 19 electoral votes tipped over into Donald Trump's favor, this dizzying moment may at first have seemed like déjà vu. Indeed, in 2016, it was by winning these deindustrialized Rust Belt states, long held by the Democrats, that the Republican candidate surprised, even stupefied, and ended up winning with 306 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton's 232, while she led him by almost 3 million votes nationwide.

But the comparison is short-lived because the significance of Trump's victory in 2024 is quite different. First, in the scale and the indisputable nature of his electoral success. While further distortions due to indirect election were expected, and the polls showed two candidates neck-and-neck in each of the key states, Trump's victory was resounding. His success went far beyond what the polls predicted, across the country and all social groups. He won not only the Electoral College but also by 5 million votes in the popular vote. Not to mention that the Republicans regained control of the Senate, and very likely of the House of Representatives.

Trump's triumph is all the more complete because his political trajectory is that of a comeback. Defeated in 2020 after a year of chaotic management of the Covid-19 pandemic, compromised in the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, and caught up in multiple court cases, two of which he was actually convicted in, Trump should logically have found himself removed from power and fallen into relative oblivion. Instead, by embedding these setbacks in a narrative that makes him the victim of judicial persecution, and relying on the unwavering support of an electoral base galvanized by his posture of defiance, he has only strengthened his grip on the Republican Party over the past four years.

Mystical aura

In 2016, Trump was an outsider whose political instincts unexpectedly encountered the anti-establishment mood of part of the country. In 2024, he leads a vast MAGA movement that sees him as a savior. Since the assassination attempt he survived in July, his ear bloodied and his fist raised, he has had the mystical aura of a resurrected man among his supporters.

None of the institutional safeguards designed to contain the excesses of a dishonest, corrupt or abusive president worked to punish Trump. In 2019, his first impeachment proceeding established that he had attempted to trade military support for Ukraine for help from President Volodymyr Zelensky to discredit Hunter Biden, the son of his main political opponent. But the Republican Senate chose to acquit him. In 2021, after the assault on the Capitol, when a second impeachment proceeding was brought for inciting insurrection, which would have made him unelectable, only 10 out of 211 Republican representatives in the House voted guilty, and the proceeding failed again in the Senate.

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