Top Trump campaign strategists explain why 2024 was a 'black swan election'

19 December 2024

When Chris LaCivita was hired as co-manager for Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, Democratic strategists expected the veteran GOP operative to play hardball. LaCivita was behind the Swift Boat Veterans strategy, which attacked 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's military record and helped President George W. Bush win a second term.

Republicans have lost the popular vote in most of the United States' post-1980s presidential elections, but there were two exceptions: Bush in 2004 and Trump in 2024. And LaCivita was a part of both campaigns.

During an interview with Politico's Jonathan Martin published in Q&A form on December 19, LaCivita and GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio discussed Trump's narrow victory over Vice President Kamala Harris. And Fabrizio explained why he considered 2024 a "black swan election."

Fabrizio told Politico, "If you look at all the events that took place and said, now we're going to have an election and just one of them is going to occur — you'd say, 'Wow, that’s incredible.' You have two assassination attempts. The incumbent candidate leaving in the middle of the race. You had his replacement being chosen without getting a single vote. You had all of these different things happening — candidate getting indicted, candidate getting convicted. Those were all challenges that we faced."

Fabrizio added, "Nothing was inevitable to us. We knew that the environment was primed for us to be victorious. But it was us — think about a farm, right. You got all of this fertile land but if you don’t farm it right, you're not going to get a crop."

During the interview, Fabrizio recalled discussing the popular vote with Trump.

Fabrizio explained, "So, the president asked me Election Day, he said: 'What about the popular vote?' I said: 'Well, sir, popular vote is tough.' It really depends on what happens in states like New York and California. Because it all depends on what their margins are, how much we lose them by."

Fabrizio and LaCivita recalled that when President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and Harris became the nominee, they didn't take her campaign lightly.

Fabrizio told Politico, "I would say, the first couple of weeks after he dropped out, Harris just took off like a rocket…. Her image changed 20 points. But what happened is — I used to describe it like a wave coming up on the shore, and the wave hit its high-water mark and then it just receded back. And so, the one thing she was never able to do was close the sale…. Because they just didn't really have a coherent message. "

According to LaCivita, Trump's television background proved advantageous in the 2024 election.

LaCivita told Politico, "Donald Trump is a man who has made a large part of his living in a visual medium: TV. He understands that politics is a visual medium. And som he looks at everything through the prism of that. And your average candidate for public office doesn’t look at the world that way."

Read the full Politico interview at this link.

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