Trump won, but it wasn't a landslide, friends, despite what national and international media outlets have repeatedly reported, from a range of perspectives, including USA Today, The Hill, The Guardian, Daily Mail, The Telegraph, France 24, the Washington Times, Boston Herald, and Fox News. As of this writing, two nights after the polls closed across the country with a couple states still awaiting official results, Trump has 50.7% of the popular vote and 295 electors. If he wins Arizona and Nevada, as anticipated, he'll wind up with 312 electoral votes to Harris's 226. This comes as little surprise. Presidential races have been relatively evenly split during the first quarter of the 21st century. We've had two two-term presidents from each of the two major parties and two one-term presidents from each major party. Now Trump has won a second term, giving Republicans a slight edge in 21st-century presidential terms. Indeed, the last time we experienced a presidential landslide in US politics was four decades ago, when running the table was a much more recurrent feature of late 20th-century politics, dominated by Republican tickets: Reagan v. Mondale in 1984: 525 electoral votes to 13 Reagan v. Carter in 1980: 489 to 49 Nixon v. McGovern in 1972: 520 to 17 Before the '70s, Democrats were the main beneficiaries of landslide presidential victories: Johnson v. Goldwater in 1964: 486 to 52 Roosevelt v. Landon in 1936: 523 to 8 Before the First World War, landslides were relatively rare: Lincoln v. McClellan in 1864: 212 to 12 (during the Civil War, among only 25 Union states) Jefferson v. Pinckney in 1804: 162 to 14 So let's keep things in historical perspective. Language matters, and it will matter even more over the next four years. IMAGE: A Legitimate Electoral College Landslide: 1980 Presidential Electoral Map, Ronald Reagan v. Jimmy Carter. Reagan won by an electoral order of magnitude, 489 to 49. Although Reagan received a similar popular majority as Trump this year, with 50.7% of the overall popular vote, he won majorities in 44 states and beat Carter by 8.5M votes and nearly 10 percentage points. Independent candidate John Anderson won 6.6% of the popular vote that year but no electoral delegates from any state.
The margins are small but the victory is complete. Trump has maybe a 1.5% margin in the popular vote and 295 electoral votes, but those are enough not only to win the Presidency but also control of the Senate and perhaps the House. That will certainly embolden Trump’s GOP to enact the drastic legislations they promised and the Democrats fear. We’ll see in the coming days. The Democratic Party must regroup, reorganize and reimagine their basic purpose as a Party.
Not to split hairs, but when literally every single state has had a rightward shift, including blue states, then that's a landslide. When ALL swing states swung red, GOP won the Senate & House, and fir the 1st time the popular vote. That is a landslide even if it is less landslidish than Reagan
The summary was best i have seen so far. To me, accountability is far more important than language
Joshua Humphreys Thanks for the necessary (comparatively recent) historic context. It is certainly time to look to smaller scale, insightful analysis because it is certainly time to stop obsessing over national media clickbait.
Thank you I have been thinking how best to communicate this. Such an Important point to make.?
Great context
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