Was Trump’s victory over Harris a landslide?
As of November 22, according to the Cook Political Report tabulation of the official United States vote in the November presidential election, Democratic candidate Vice-President Kamala Harris had 74,514,035 votes to former President Donald J. Trump’s 76,993,271 votes.
A total of 154,409,708 votes had been counted in the election.?Trump’s share of the vote comprised 49.86% of the total to Harris’ 48.26%, giving Trump a margin of 1.6% over Harris in the popular vote.[1]
Notably, Trump’s share of the popular vote fell to below a 50% absolute majority since November 5, as votes arriving after the election date were counted, as many states allow.?
California, the most populous state in the U.S., is typically the last state to report its vote totals. As of Friday, November 22, Harris led Trump by 9,172,482 to 5,978,512 votes in the state. As more votes trickle in, Trump’s share of the popular vote is expected to shrink.
Trump’s communications director Steve Cheung has called Trump’s victory a “landslide”. ?With his share of the vote having fallen below 50%, that seems to stretch the meaning of the term.
On November 21, Ed Kilgore of New York Magazine reported that Trump had lost his popular-vote majority.[2]
“The data suggests it was a much closer contest than he and his allies are suggesting,” remarked James FitzGerald of the BBC.[3]
Still, Trump’s electoral college win over Harris was resounding, having won 312 votes in the U.S. electoral college compared with Harris’s 226.
Trump outpaced Harris in the critical swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin by just over 230,000 votes, according to the latest numbers from CBS, a major U.S. media company.
“If just over 115,000 voters in that group had instead picked Harris, she would have won those Rust Belt swing states, giving her enough votes in the electoral college to win the presidency,” FitzGerald noted.
Trump’s victory looks to be less of a landslide than a mudslide.
[2] Ed Kilgore (November 21, 2024). Trump Has Lost His Popular-Vote Majority. New York Magazine. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/election-results-show-trump-has-lost-popular-vote-majority.html
[3] James FitzGerald (November 23, 2024). Just how big was Donald Trump’s election victory? BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn5w9w160xdo