Trump's own campaign thought that the anti-trans ads attacking Harris were their most effective so they clearly felt they had something there.
Mind you, if we were putting together a list of "reasons Harris lost" I'd probably have something like this:
- Dissatisfaction with Inflation/Cost of living/Corporate price gouging
- Anti-immigration sentiment (There's at least two prongs here - I'd argue the larger one is a direct symptom of the above, with immigrants being used as a scapegoat like always. But there's also a very real white nationalist strain in the alt-right that fuels this as well)
- Sexism (People not wanting to vote for a woman to be head of state)
- White grievance/victimization complex (Been simmering since the Civil War of course, this current flashpoint being a prolonged reaction to Obama's election. But you see this in the vitriol the right has towards addressing systemic racism and how they insist that actually we fixed everything already everyone is equal it's all fair and actually you're putting "them" over "us" by trying to address these issues)
- Anti-trans sentiment
- Overseas wars/international order (Israel/Gaza, Ukraine, NATO, etc.)
or something idk probably a few other things I could add. Anti-trans sentiment isn't in the top 3 but it is also very much a thing they used to drive the base and while you can't ever really *know* what drove people and how much it certainly wasn't repudiated or drove people away who "don't want to hear about/talk about/care about that." Because as said, it was Trump and the right who made it an issue, Harris was basically silent on it beyond some early "I was following the law, Trump did the same thing as POTUS." It's certainly
on the list IMO.