Don’t Be Gaslit— Trump’s Victory Was Very Narrow Compared To Every President Since Nixon’s In 1968

Trump's Claims To A Big Mandate Are Based On Bullshit

I was on a Zoom call with the board of a large non-profit public interest group this week. I sensed panic and desperation. I didn’t like it at all… and it was primarily ruled by disinformation that has permeated media— social and otherwise. People need to be clear that Trump’s victory was not some massive mandate like FDR’s. Yes he won but… when the votes are finished being counted, his margin of victory will be less than 2%, probably 1.7%. Here’s how that compares to other recent elections:

• Biden beat Trump with a 4.5 point popular vote margin

• Hilary beat Trump with a 2.1 point popular vote margin

• Obama beat Romney with a 3.9 point popular vote margin

• Obama beat McCain with a 7.2 point popular vote margin

• Bush beat Kerry with a 2.4 point popular vote margin

• Al Gore beat Bush with a 0.5 point popular vote margin

• Bill Clinton beat Dole with an 8.5 point popular vote margin

• Bill Clinton beat George HW Bush with a 10.6 point popular vote margin

• George HW Bush beat Dukakis with a 7.8 point popular vote margin

• Reagan beat Mondale with an 18.2 point popular vote margin

• Reagan beat Carter with an 8.7 point popular vote margin

• Carter beat Ford with a 2.1 point popular vote margin

To find a president who won with a smaller margin than Trump, you have to go all the way back 56 years to 1968 when Nixon squeaked past Hubert Humphrey with 0.7 point popular vote margin.

Trump won a decent electoral college vote— 312 to 226 but claims it was the biggest ever are kind of like his bogus claims that his inauguration drew the biggest audience. His win was very noticeably below the electoral vote average, which is 346. The other recent presidents:

• Nixon (1968)- 301

• Nixon (1972)- 520

• Carter- 297

• Reagan (1980)- 489

• Reagan (1984)- 525

• George HW Bush- 426

• Clinton (1992)- 370

• Clinton (1996)- 379

• George W Bush (2000)- 271

• Bush (2004)- 286

• Obama (2008)- 365

• Obama (2012)- 332

• Trump (2016)- 304

• Biden- 306

• Trump (2024)- 312

The 3 “Blue Wall” states put Trump over the top. He certainly didn’t win them decisively, let alone overwhelmingly.

• He won Michigan with 49.7% (80,618 votes)

• He won Pennsylvania with 50.6% (145,036 votes, due almost entirely to lower voter turnout in 5 blue counties: Allegheny, Delaware, Lackawanna, Montgomery and Philadelphia)

• He won Wisconsin by 49.7% (29,417 votes)

In 2020, Trump was supported by 74,223,975 voters while 81,283,501 voted for Biden. As far as the votes counted so far this year, Trump has won 75,551,895, a normal increase. Nut Kamala’s voted crashed compared to Biden’s— so far just 72,372,332, although that will rise as more votes from the West coast are counted. Michael Bender, who is reflexively helping to perpetuate the bullshit that Trump won a “commanding victory,” noted on Monday that “Voters in liberal strongholds across the country, from city centers to suburban stretches, failed to show up to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris at the levels they had for Joseph Biden four years earlier, contributing significantly to her defeat by Donald Trump, according to a New York Times analysis of preliminary election data... Trump won the White House not only because he turned out his supporters and persuaded skeptics, but also because many Democrats sat this election out, presumably turned off by both candidates. Counties with the biggest Democratic victories in 2020 delivered 1.9 million fewer votes for Harris than they had for Biden. The nation’s most Republican-heavy counties turned out an additional 1.2 million votes for Trump this year, according to the analysis of the 47 states where the vote count is largely complete… The decline in key cities, including Detroit and Philadelphia, made it exceptionally difficult for Harris to win the battlegrounds of Michigan and Pennsylvania. The drop-off is an extraordinary shift for Democrats, who, motivated by Trump’s surprise victory in 2016, had turned out in eye-popping numbers for the three subsequent elections. They clipped his power in Washington in 2018, removed him from office in 2020 and defeated many of his handpicked candidates for battleground races in 2022.”

Hard to explain voter fall off in the bluest counties in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin made Trump President. “Branden Snyder, a liberal organizer in Detroit,” wrote Bender, “said he had conversations with other activists in the final weeks of the race about how strange they thought it was for Harris to bring Cheney, a former Republican House member from Wyoming, on the campaign trail in Detroit. Many progressive voters in the city viewed Harris as a centrist, he said, and they may have been better served hearing from a fellow liberal who could explain why they should be excited to support the vice president. He said he vividly recalled realizing that Democrats were in trouble during the final weekend of the race when he was knocking on doors on the east side of Detroit and he could not find a way to persuade a middle-aged Black woman to cast her ballot. Black women have long been some of the Democratic Party’s most reliable voters. ‘When you have Black women not voting because they say nothing is going to happen— that neither candidate is going to change anything— that is doomsday for Democrats,’ Snyder said.”