None of this is true. Yes, Trump won the popular vote and the electoral college. Yes, Republicans won the Senate and the House. But, contrary to both Republican talking points and breathless headlines and hot takes from leading media outlets (“resounding”, “rout”, “runaway win”), there was really nothing at all historic or huge about the margin of victory.
Repeat after me: there was no “landslide”. There was no “blowout”. There was no “sweeping” mandate given to Trump by the electorate. The numbers don’t lie.
First, consider the popular vote. Yes, Trump became the first Republican for two decades to win the popular vote. However, per results from CNN, the Cook Political Report, and the New York Times, he did not win a majority of the vote. Barack Obama did in both 2008 and 2012. Joe Biden did in 2020. But Donald Trump failed to do so in 2024.
And the former president’s margin of victory over Harris is a miniscule 1.6 percentage points, “smaller than that of every winning president since 1888 other than two: John F Kennedy in 1960 and Richard M. Nixon in 1968”, as an analysis in the New York Times noted last month. In fact, in the 55 presidential elections in which the popular vote winner became president, 49 of them were won with a margin bigger than Trump’s in 2024.
We actually know what a landslide in the popular vote looks like: the Democrat Lyndon Johnson defeated the Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964 by an enormous margin of 22.6 percentage points!
Second, consider the electoral college. Trump won 307 votes, which is 37 more than is needed to secure victory in the electoral college. But it’s still far fewer than Bill Clinton won in 1992 (370) and 1996 (379) and far fewer than Barack Obama won in 2008 (365) and 2012 (332). And it is pretty similar to what Trump himself won in 2016 (304) and what Biden won in 2020 (306). Trump’s margin of victory in the electoral college ranks 44 out of the 60 presidential elections in American history.
We actually know what a landslide win in the electoral college looks like: the Republican Ronald Reagan won re-election with a whopping 525 electoral college votes in 1984!
By the way, did you know that Trump won the crucial blue wall states – Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – by 231,000 votes? So if just 116,000 voters across those three swing states – or 0.7% of the total – had switched from Trump to Harris, it is the vice-president who would have won the electoral college … and the presidency!
Third, consider the so-called “coattails” effect, where a presidential candidate’s massive margin of victory also boosts their party’s numbers in Congress. In 2024, Republicans flipped the Senate and held onto the House but Trump still ended up having “limited coattails”, to quote from the New York Times analysis. Of the five battleground states (Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania) which held Senate races in November, the Republican candidate triumphed in only one of them (David McCormick in Pennsylvania, by a narrow 16,000 votes). Democrats held on to the other four.
So where were the Trump coattails in the Senate?
Meanwhile, over in the House of Representatives, Republicans held onto control of the chamber with the aid of an extremely partisan and anti-democratic gerrymander in North Carolina, signed off by a conservative-majority state supreme court. They are on course for what the CNN election analyst Harry Enten is calling a “record small majority”.
So where were the Trump coattails in the House?
And yet, the president-elect and his army of Republican sycophants cannot stop bragging about the landslide that wasn’t. You almost have to admire their chutzpah.
But there is also method to their megalomania. As the political scientist Julia Azari has observed, when a president and a party claim a sweeping mandate it has “historically been connected to unprecedented expansions of presidential power” and can become a way “to give an unchecked executive the veneer of following the popular will”.
Trump, the 49.9% president, doesn’t represent the popular will. Yes, he won the election fair and square, and won the popular vote for the first time, but if we are to prevent him from expanding his power in the Oval Office we must resist this new Republican election lie. We must not allow him to pretend that he has some sort of special “mandate” for controversial policies and personnel.
Repeat after me: there was nothing unique or unprecedented about the election result last month. Republicans may feel they won a huge victory over the Democrats. And Trump may feel his election win was historic. But, to borrow a line from the right, the facts don’t care about their feelings.
Scottie's Playtime 
good luck with this. he is such a consummate liar that his people will believe anything and stick with it to their death (or jailing)
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Hi. Suze. I agree. But I post it more for our side who were pretty discouraged that it seemed a majority of our population / public went for him with all his baggage / history over a competent black woman. Our side needs a booster, a shot of good news. This is one of those. Because you are correct the other side has been crowing loud and proud. To me that just shows how uninformed they are and how they don’t dare look at facts and data. Hugs
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“They are wringing bells now….Soon they will be wringing their hands” British Prime Minster Walpole when his government was forced into war with Spain through a combination of public hysteria and opposition political chicanery.
Footnote: Britain got it’s backside kicked in that War, we were lucky there were a lot of other wars going on we could take advantage of .
Lincoln had the last word on the subject for the USA:
“You can fool some of the people all of the time
And you can fool all of the people some of the time.
But you can’t fool all of the people all of the time”
Not that Trump has any idea of American history.
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Hi Roger. The bad part of their hand wringing is that when they get to that point it will be hurting the people that did not vote for him. He is going to hurt the entire lower income public but the tRump voters always thought it would hurt everyone but them. They have a weird view that they will be living the high life while the rest, the people who looked down on their backward ways, the fundamentalist felt they would see everyone be forced to live as they dictate, the ones who felt the economy was bad will be shocked to see it get worse as they were told it would. But the bad part is it will hurt the rest of us also.
I posted this morning of a politician already talking about how they just had to slash Social Security and Medicare because of the debt, regardless of the fact the Social Security doesn’t add to the debt. The fact is the fund was raided and handed IOUs that the republicans don’t want to pay back. They don’t want to talk about the real cost of debt, the slashing of revenue to give tax cuts to those most able to afford to pay them. That has been happening since 1980 started by Ronald Reagan. The best time this country ever had was between 1950 and 1970. The infrastructure was being built and maintained, the education system at all levels was the envy of the world, we went to space and the moon, we built, we researched, we created things constantly.
But that all changed with greed taking over. It was no longer enough to be wealthy and have more than you needed or those around you. It was not enough to live with no worries and all the luxuries, no now the goal was to be the most wealthy, to be the one with all the toys and the highest numbers in the banks. The costs to the people and country mean nothing to them. They have lost sight of community, fellow humans, sense of belonging. Nope they and their family are above all those below them and need to climb to the next level to look down on those now also below them. Hugs.
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It is a commonalty amongst governments that when they cut public spending the most vulnerable will be the ones to suffer first.
Our Labour Government which is supposed to be the caring one; one of the first financial acts it took was to cut the elderly’s access to Winter Fuel Payment, a one off which was universally handed out in December to help with fuel costs. Now there as many folk out there who will not qualify under the revised rules but relied on that payment. Sheila and I are fortunate that is just an inconvenience. There was no consultation with charities, no thought about warning it might have to be phased back – just- wham, two three month’s notice.
Of course that caused outrage, and at once the newspapers went hunting for hypocrisy and naturally found out that government ministers had been getting large costly gifts of one sort or another. I know those governments you vote for will at some stage disappoint you, but in this case Labour did it in record time, and like they meant too.
Naturally those in the UK who are greedy, wealthy and don’t like Labour instinctively are being very hypocritically outraged by the whole business.
As I have said before no one is celebrating Brexit, either. But a lot of folk think that Nigel Farage (big chum of Trump) would make a good leader. At least a lot don’t think he will though.
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Hi Roger. There are two parts to the cutting of social services I don’t get. When cuts are made like the winter the fuel assistance you mentioned, what is the gain for the politician? The anger, the outcry, the public upset has to be offset by some gain. Plus how do they think those who lost the funding to help will stay warm, how will they pay for their fuel needs?
Do they think that it is a scam and no one needs the fuel assistance? Do they need to see frozen older peoples bodies to see it is a bad idea? In the US the rabid right is comforted that the left who don’t ever want to see people suffer will rush to create ways for the older people to get help. This way the right gets to claim cuts to the massive government spending … yet never mentioning they threw that need to save lives on to the backs of low income people who suffer to give all they have to help others. All the while the full power and money of the government again moves more money to the upper wealthy levels removing it from the people who need it the most.
Sorry Roger, I don’t mean to be so … dystopian but just today I watched reports of right wing governments ripping food supports from people unable to stop their invasion. Hugs and loves I know you are a grand person and mean no harm to anyone. Best wishes. Scottie.
PS. Anyone reading along with the ability. Send aid to the many areas of conflict the US is a member of, the US is not always the knight in shinning armor it is described as. Hugs and loves.
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Hi Scottie.
There is a difference here between the actions of the coming US government and that of the current UK which is of no comfort to anyone losing out on their actions.
As you say and it is so obvious that the coming administration in the USA will be out to look after its own. This Idea that somehow if you let the rich become richer then everyone will benefit by the rich handing out crumbs to less advantaged folk who will then be inspired to become rich themselves. That is social hoo-hah. Or as Bush snr said once when he was still in conflict with Regan ‘Vodoo Economics’ (then he said ‘No new taxes’- and created them).
Folk who have money will be inclined to keep it and that’s that. As Sam Eagle used to say in the Muppets ‘It’s The American Way’
In the UK Kier Stammer and his Chancellor Rachael Reeves have taken a technocratic approach. They have looked at the books, done the sums their way, talk with ‘The Dark Lords’ H M Treasury (the outfit which has the final say in everything in the UK) and took a technocratic decision, in an almost robotic voice. Stammer is reckoned to be someone who does not care what folk think of him and will do what he sees as fit- technocrat.
I worked as a technocrat in H.M Inspector of Taxes, one thing I learnt was, if you want to try and avoid problems and get things done with the minimum of fuss, you have to ‘sell’ the solution to folk – it won’t always work, but you do the best you can.
That said, it is difficult is it not to see things through a dystopian lens. Us down at this level can only do the best we can, as we can, how we can, when we can, and hope we somehow make a difference.
Take care now you and Ron.
PS ‘grand person’…thanks for that, so much, I will try and do better on the ‘not meaning harm; though, and shove that side of me back down into places it can’t come out from.
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Oh Roger that is what makes tomorrow worth living. I have a mantra I try to repeat to myself every morning, especially if I have a night when my mind replays every time I was told I was wrong, every mistake I made even if it was not a mistake, just being plagued by negative intrusive thoughts which sadly constantly hound me. That mantra is “Today I will try to be a better Scottie than I was yesterday”. And if I feel I am reverting to anger or other negative emotion / action I start repeating it to myself over and over. “Today I will be a better Scottie than I was yesterday”. For me it works great, but it has been something I have been doing since I was a person out of the control of my abusers. For me repeating it and the meaning behind it also helps with the intrusive negative thoughts when I don’t have other data saturation happening. Best wishes, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and wonderful end of year for your family and friends. Hugs
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We’re moving into the ‘Christmas week’ when all should be happy and folk wishing each other a Merry Christmas, etc.
And yet….
The conflicts and the arguing go on.
One of aspect of the more sober and reflective school of Christian thought is to ponder on the fact that ‘We’ (that is folk who subscribe to this way of belief) are all sinners…..Sinners in the ‘Well that could have gone better couldn’t it?’ style of thinking. And we try and move on.
It’s a similar outlook Scottie.
I try and go through the Catholic Order of Mass every day (it doesn’t take that long.. about 15-20 mins) and in the reading of, the thought pops into my mind ‘Oh fudge, I fell short again there…try again’
It’s all a healthy process, like your idea of uplifting, because a believer should not think by simply saying ‘sorry’ that’s it. You have to feel it and try and do better.
I’m still working on that, and guess I will until this body packs up….and then?
We keep on keeping on Scottie. We do not give in.
Thus I conclude this wishing a Happy Holiday and Better Year to you and Ron too!
Roger & Sheila.
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Hi Roger. What a wonderful world that would be if everyone would self reflect as you and I do. It seems as simple as having empathy for others, treating others as you wish them to treat you. Maybe I read that in a book somewhere? 💖🤷♂️😉
Hugs to both of you. Please take the time to enjoy your holiday time together with family. Scottie
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I think the approach comes under ‘The Golden Rule’ concept Scottie.
Though there are those who try and pick holes in that, but I would suggest they are nit-picking, even if they are considered to be thinkers of great repute. They miss out on the concept of the Universality of each treating another with respect and equality.
As we go into this the Christmas Week I will keep in mind you and Ron and wish you well in this time, along my other good friends.
on WP
Let us try and keep Hope and Tolerance’s candles alight 🕯️🕯️
Best wishes to you guys.
Roger & Sheila.
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