Because people were (and still are) struggling and wanted something to change. Trump was the change candidate. Harris straight up said she wouldn't change anything.

The election was a rejection of stability.

At least, that's how people in the middle, who decide election results, saw things.

We rolled the dice and lost. But things still aren't working very well in society, so we'll roll the dice again.

Those are my conclusions as well, though I want to note anyone who paid attention to her campaign rather than getting it second hand or third off of vibes would not have made the claim that she “straight up said she wouldn’t have changed anything”.

A lot of voters in the middle aren’t taking the time to understand why things seem to keep not changing (somewhat understandably so, but also unfortunately given the need for an engaged electorate in a healthy democracy). Both parties are being sticks in the mud, but one in particular is doing a lot more to keep change from happening than the other.

In the usa we have an overemphasis on the president, but we’ve slow walked ourselves into a dysfunctional congress that just can’t do anything. The point of democracy is to let the best ideas win, and part of that is being able to try those ideas out, and respond when they don’t work. Having a senate with two votes per state regardless of population, that are only replaced a third at a time, with an archaic but also recent rule that effectively requires 60/100 vote to pass almost anything meaningful, is just a recipe for failure.

End the filibuster as it is today. If you want a filibuster, force people to talk for it the way it worked for the first ~150 years of our country at least.

This basically. Change election after change election but nothing changes except the country keeps getting worse and more corrupt.

You can see the same thing playing out in Brazil