Five lessons from the campaign that surprised everyone

A lot happened in Campaign 2016 that no one expected — starting with its ending, the election of Donald Trump.

So, what have we learned? Here are five lessons.

Good afternoon, I’m David Lauter, Washington bureau chief. Welcome to the Friday edition of our Essential Politics newsletter, in which we look at the events of the week in the presidential campaign and highlight some particularly insightful stories.

POLITICS IN A 50/50 NATION

We’ve had five elections this century (yes, technically, 2000 was the last year of the 20th century, but let’s not be pedants). The contests of 2004 and 2008 were decisive, but pointed in opposite directions; the other three were essentially coin-toss victories.

Since the Civil War, American politics has never had such a prolonged period of an even split between deeply divided parties. The polarization of our politics has reached record levels, but neither side has managed to gain a permanent advantage.

Instead, each side has followed a similar pattern: Win, try to force through the program you favor over the objections of the other side, suffer a backlash.

Will the new Trump administration now follow suit?

Does an alternative path even exist? After all, a political party that came to power and didn’t try to enact the program favored by its voters wouldn’t be worth much. Nor would a party that quietly acquiesced in policies its supporters find abhorrent.

Whether Trump, who ran a campaign that defied the rules, can find a path forward to break the 50/50 deadlock will be among the most consequential questions of the next year.

PARTISANSHIP MATTERS BIGLY

Up until the end, Hillary Clinton’s campaign poured resources into trying to peel Republican voters away from Trump. They had powerful allies — the GOP’s last two presidential nominees and its last two presidents all refused to endorse their nominee, so did a host of prominent former officials, especially in the national security realm.

It didn’t matter.

Clinton did win a few big, suburban counties that Republicans have carried in the past, but not enough to carry additional states.

In the end, Trump and Clinton each won about 90% of the votes of those who identified with their parties, according to the exit poll. Support collapsed for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian nominee, whose campaign served for a while as a parking spot for Republicans unwilling to back Trump. The president-elect seems to have benefited from that drop.

Many Democrats blame FBI Director James Comey, saying his last-minute interventions inflamed partisan feelings against Clinton. They may be right, but it’s also possible that partisans would have come back to their usual home anyway — they typically do.

In either case, this election served as the ultimate test case for the power of partisanship. In the highly polarized politics of America today, nothing matters as much as the D or R after a candidate’s name.

Indeed, assuming that Republicans hold the Senate seat in Louisiana — they are expected to win next month’s runoff — we will have had the first election ever since the 17th Amendment mandated popular election of senators in which not a single state voted for one party for president and the other for Senate. Never has ticket-splitting been at such a low.

As a result, mobilizing partisans matters more to candidates than persuading elusive swing voters. If Trump’s election proved nothing else, it’s that.

DEMOGRAPHICS AREN’T DESTINY

Democrats spent the last eight years telling themselves that a demographic wave of younger, more racially and ethnically diverse voters would give them a lasting hold on political power. Lots of Republicans worried about that too.

They were wrong.

Part of the reason they erred is that the country still has a disproportionate number of white voters. The SurveyMonkey national post-election poll indicated that whites made up about 75% of this year’s electorate — up slightly from four years ago and a much larger share than the white percentage of the adult population. White voters who did not graduate from college made up 47% of voters, SurveyMonkey found.

(The exit poll done for the television networks and the Associated Press indicated a lower figure for white votes and for non-college-educated white voters in particular, but the SurveyMonkey number corresponds better with the actual election returns).

An upsurge of white voters in non-urban counties clinched Trump’s victories in Florida, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania, delivering the White House to him.

That highlights a persistent problem for Democrats: Their reliance on younger, less affluent voters gives them a constant challenge with turnout.

In the aftermath of the election, many Democrats have blamed Clinton for not inspiring a larger vote among core Democratic constituencies, especially African Americans and young people. But the problem for the party goes beyond her — Democrats also suffered from big turnout drops in the 2010 and 2014 mid-term elections.

A party that can only sporadically get its supporters to the polls is always going to face a disadvantage.

BUT DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS AREN’T MEANINGLESS

Republicans shouldn’t get too giddy over their success: Clinton will have won about 2 million more votes than Trump once the counting finishes, and four years from now, the demographic trends favoring Democrats will be even bigger.

Demographics alone won’t deliver the White House or Congress to the Democrats. But if Republicans continue to push away non-white and urban voters, they will be making their future more and more tenuous.

Politics in the past several years has resembled a race in which the GOP tries to outrun a rising tide. It failed in 2012 and narrowly succeeded this year — winning key states by a few tens of thousands of votes out of roughly 135 million cast nationwide.

But the tide won’t turn anytime soon, and sooner or later, outrunning it won’t be a viable strategy. Can the GOP come up with an alternative?

HUMILITY IN ANALYSIS

Every election prompts grand theories about why the victor won. Unsurprisingly, a lot of those theories tend to follow the line of “this election proves that whatever I advocated before was right all along.”

The reality is that in an election this close, lots of issues — and random chance — could have tipped the balance.

Trump’s victory really did resemble a contest in which the coin toss turns up heads four times in a row. That happens sometimes, but it’s not much of a basis on which to build broad constructs, whether about the power of trade as an issue or the alienation of coastal elites from the heartland or the ability of an unconventional candidate to rewrite the political rule book.

Years from now, Trump’s election may come to be seen as the start of a new political era. Or it may be as much of a one-off as Jimmy Carter’s victory in 1976, which briefly interrupted a generation of Republican dominance of the White House.

In an era of instant analysis, “time will tell” isn’t a popular line, but right now, it’s the one thing we know to be true.

THE UNFOLDING TRANSITION

Mark Barabak and Nigel Duara talked to a host of Trump voters after the election. “We’re called redneck, ignorant, racist. That’s not true,” one voter said. Their story on Trump supporters explaining why they voted for him is an important one.

At the same time, there’s no question that Trump’s campaign has created an opening for points of view that until this year were seen as fringe beliefs. Jaweed Kaleem looked at how Trump’s win has brought ‘white pride’ out of the shadows.

What to make of Trump’s first week? Cathy Decker’s analysis stands up well: He’s unpredictable and keeping his options open.

President Obama has been trying assiduously to counsel the president-elect, both in their Oval Office meeting and in public statements. Mike Memoli looked at the new task Obama has taken on: educating Trump. And Christi Parsons looked at how Obama has enlisted European allies, especially German Chancellor Angela Merkel in his effort to influence Trump.

Other foreign leaders are making their own assessments. Bill Hennigan and Brian Bennett looked at how Russia and Turkey have started expanding their military operations in Syria during the transition.

Republican lawmakers have also been pushing Trump. Lisa Mascaro reported that despite talk of GOP unity, Trump’s programs could face opposition from Republican budget hawks.

As the week progressed, Trump started giving strong signals of how he will govern in some areas. One important early sign came with the appointment of Steve Bannon as the chief White House strategist. Evan Halper explained why Bannon’s appointment provoked angry rebukes.

Another signal came with Friday’s announcement that Sen. Jeff Sessions would be Trump’s nominee for attorney general. Civil rights advocates are bracing for a radical shift in Justice Department priorities, Del Wilber wrote.

Trump has also begun to indicate how he’ll reverse policy on immigration. Brian Bennett assessed some key parts of Trump’s immigration platform, including this: When Trump says he wants to deport criminals, he means something starkly different than what Obama meant.

By contrast, Trump has given conflicting signs about his plans for healthcare.

As Noam Levey wrote, during the campaign Trump used to call for lowering prescription drug prices. Now, he seems to have abandoned that idea, and the pharmaceutical industry’s allies are helping shape his agenda.

Meantime, more than 300,000 people have signed up for Obamacare since Trump’s election, highlighting how complicated will be the effort to reverse the program.

As Jim Puzzanghera wrote, Trump’s victory also could mean the end of the FCC’s net neutrality regulations.

Democrats have been divided as they try to shape a response. Halper looked at Bernie Sanders’ prescription for how Democrats can find their way back to power.

And Melanie Mason examined how California officials hope to block Trump in some areas, making California the new Texas.

Meantime, a USC/LA Times poll showed how California went its own liberal way in the election.

L.A.’S FAILED PENSION REFORMS

This is a bit off our usual topic, but it’s an important local story with national implications for public policy: the latest installment from The Times series on pension issues in California.

The numbers tell a story jarringly at odds with political rhetoric about reforming the pension system in Los Angeles. Taxpayers are underwriting retirement benefits that are among the nation’s most generous — at a cost that has never been higher. L.A.’s vaunted pension reforms have not cut the city’s pension costs; at best, they have modestly slowed their rate of growth. Read the latest installment here.

SEE YOU AFTER THANKSGIVING

Essential Politics will be taking a brief break for the holiday. We’ll be back Nov. 28 with some changes to the format as we move from the campaign to the transition and beyond.

For news next week, continue to check our coverage of the Trump transition (latimes.com/trailguide) and California politics (latimes.com/essentialpolitics) and follow @latimespolitics on Twitter.

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Have a great holiday.