UCLA faculty expressed mixed reactions to the outcome of the 2024 presidential election and predictions for the incoming administration.

Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump defeated Democratic nominee and sitting Vice President Kamala Harris with 312 electoral votes to 226, winning close races in seven key battleground states and the popular vote. The president-elect has begun nominating cabinet officials ahead of his January inauguration.

The economy – specifically, historic inflation under the current Democratic administration – was a top driver of voter turnout, said Mark Peterson, a professor of public policy, political science, health policy and management, and law.

“Anyone under 50 years old who was voting in this election had never seen inflation above 4%,” he said. “They don’t have a very strong appreciation for what caused the inflation – they just know that it’s really hurting.”

High costs of living and housing prices also swung voters toward a new administration, said Lee Ohanian, a distinguished professor of economics.

The median home price in California is over $900,000, with under 20% of households able to afford mortgage interest payments, property tax payments and homeowners insurance on a home at that median price, he said.

Election outcomes are historically dependent on consumer perceptions of the economy, meaning Harris faced an uphill battle after increases to housing prices and mortgage interest rates that occurred while she was vice president, Ohanian added.

“The Trump administration is implementing some measures to reduce federal spending, and one of the reasons why inflation was so high in the Biden-Harris administration is because the federal budget deficit was extremely high,” Ohanian said. “I suspect that inflation will decline under the next administration.”

Trump has pledged to reduce global conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, which would reduce inflationary pressures, he said. However, he has not yet released a detailed plan for reducing those conflicts.

Trump has also expressed interest in expanding tariffs, or fees levied on imported goods – particularly against China, Ohanian said. He added that whether tariffs are levied or not, they depend upon negotiation with China, and it is hard to predict what the outcome of that will be.

In addition to the economy, UCLA faculty said the outcome of the election will also have important environmental implications.

Trump has pledged to roll back President Joe Biden’s climate policies, which were aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions, said Ann Carlson, faculty co-director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change & the Environment.

Trump also plans to undo parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, which contains huge tax incentives, grants and loan programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, she added.

Trump has also pledged to curtail California’s power to regulate pollution from mobile sources, such as cars and trucks, said Carlson, whom Biden previously appointed as acting administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. California regulates this pollution through waivers from the Environmental Protection Agency, and Trump has promised to deny or reverse any waivers the Biden administration granted, she added.

Globally, Trump has pledged to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, which could also have dire consequences, she said.

“It makes it a lot morally more difficult to ask countries that are still developing, countries like India and Indonesia and Brazil, to cut their emissions, when the United States is denying the existence of the problem and is not participating in the major global negotiations to really limit the emissions that are causing temperatures to rise,” Carlson said.

She added that she does not believe that climate change or environmental issues played a significant role in shaping voter decisions this election cycle. However, Carson said that may change as we see more of the effects of climate change.

“The Harris campaign did not make it one of its major arguments or selling points, and frankly, I think that should have been of huge appeal to many voters, and especially younger voters who express serious concern about climate change,” Carlson said.

Another influential issue for voters was immigration, said Ahilan Arulanantham, the faculty co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy.

“Trump made the promise to conduct the largest mass deportation in U.S. history the centerpiece of his campaign,” he said. “He also repeatedly claimed that immigrants were poisoning the blood of the country and a whole number of false claims about the crime committed by noncitizens, and all of these were central to his messaging.”

Many state and local governments refused to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement during the Trump era, Arulanantham said, adding that the federal government lacks the resources to engage in mass deportation without local compliance.

However, Trump’s deportation efforts could prove more successful during his second term because of a more amenable Supreme Court, they said.

“Last time, they tried to effectively punish California by taking away its federal grants and law enforcement as a sort of retaliation for California having adopted the stringent sanctuary laws,” Arulanantham said. “It’s possible that now, similar tactics might prove more successful for the Trump administration than they proved the first time around.”

UC policy and California state law prohibit UCPD and other UC officials from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement in the vast majority of deportation cases, he added.

“While ICE officers can walk around the campus like anybody else in the open parts of the campus, … they cannot enter the nonpublic parts of the campus without a judicial warrant under California law and UC policy,” Arulanantham said.

However, it is possible that the Trump administration could try to retaliate against states with policies that facilitate undocumented students receiving higher education, a move currently illegal but not yet ruled upon by the Supreme Court, they added.

Peterson said recent elections have focused less on the role of government, instead serving as a debate on what kind of society Americans want.

“What do we want the people in this country to look like? What kind of values do we want them to have in terms of their orientation towards gender, towards traditional family values, the role of women in society?” he said. “Those are all different kinds of things that would not have motivated the campaign between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter back in 1980.”