The majority of voters refused to vote for Donald Trump | John Nichols

“America has given us a powerful and unprecedented mandate,” declared Donald Trump in the early morning of November 6, 2024, after the close of polls for the presidential election.

Indeed, he claimed to have won “a political victory that our country has never known before, nothing like it”.

Trump was excited by the numbers showing him well over 50% of the popular vote and a wide lead over his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris. Unfortunately for the president-elect, the United States is slow to count 155 million votes to within a million and this long count has deprived the president-elect of his bragging rights.

Trump can no longer claim this powerful mandate. By most reasonable measures, the starting point for such a claim in a two-major party system is a majority vote in favor of your candidacy. Trump doesn't have that anymore.

Over the weekend, as California, Oregon, Washington and other Democratic states neared the end of their counting, Trump's percentage of the popular vote fell just below 50%. And his margin of victory turns out to be exceptionally small: in the 59 presidential elections since the country's founding, it appears that after all 2,024 votes are counted, only five popular vote winners in history will have prevailed by margins weaker than Trump.

Trump's popular vote advantage has declined steadily since election night. As of Monday morning, Trump was at 49.96% while Harris was at 48.24%, according to the authoritative Cook Political Report's tracking of results from official sources in states across the country. And it is likely that the Republican total will continue to decline. (In Wisconsin, Trump also fell short of a majority, winning 49.7% to Harris's 48.8%.)

Trump is still ahead of Harris in the popular vote, and he has a credible Electoral College lead slightly smaller than Barack Obama's in 2012, slightly larger than Joe Biden's in 2020, based on a pattern of wins in the battleground states. Failure to obtain a majority will therefore not cost him the presidency. But he has lost his ability to suggest that he beat the Democrat. In fact, she is now only 1.7% behind him.

Let's put this in perspective: Trump wins a lower percentage of the popular vote this year than Biden in 2020 (51.3%), Obama in 2012 (51.1%), Obama in 2008 (52.9%) ), George W. Bush in 2004 (50.7%), George HW Bush in 1988 (53.2%), Ronald Reagan in 1984 (58.8%), Reagan in 1980 (50.7%), or Jimmy Carter again in 1976 (50.1%).

And, of course, Trump's numbers are far lower than those of presidents who won what could reasonably be described as “powerful and unprecedented” terms, such as Richard Nixon's 60.7 percent in 1972, 61, 1% of Lyndon Johnson in 1964 or 60.8% of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. in 1936. As Trump's percentage continues to decline, it will fall below the thresholds reached by most presidents. in the last century.

Harris, on the other hand, is starting to look like a much stronger candidate than she was on election night. In fact, the Democrat now holds a higher percentage of the popular vote than Presidents Trump in 2016 (46.1%), Bush in 2000 (47.9%), Clinton in 1992 (43%), or Nixon in 1968 (43%). .4%).

She also did better than recent major party candidates such as Trump in 2020 (46.8%), Trump in 2016 (48.2%), Mitt Romney in 2012 (47.2%), John McCain in 2008 ( 45.7%), George W. Bush in 2000 (47.9%), Bob Dole in 1996 (40.7%), George HW Bush in 1992 (37.4%), Michael Dukakis in 1988 (45.6%) %), Walter Mondale (40.6%), Carter in 1980 (41%) and even Gerald Ford in 1976 (48%).

Why rate all the presidents who ran better than Trump? Why discuss the narrowness of his advantage over Harris? Why note, further, that the Republican majorities in the House and Senate will be among the narrowest in modern American history? Because it puts the results of the 2024 election into perspective and, in doing so, gives members of both parties an understanding of how to respond when Trump claims that an unappealing candidate or policy should be accepted out of respect for his powerful mandate.

Trump's victory was not of epic proportions.

There was no “landslide” for the former and future president, as Fox News repeatedly suggested in post-election headlines. The election did not produce Trump's “decisive victory” that the Associated Press referred to immediately after the vote. Nor did it result in the “resounding defeat” for Harris that the AP reported at the same time.

That won't matter to Trump, who claimed office even after losing the 2016 popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. Four years later, Trump refused to accept his defeat by more than 7 million votes and denied that majority support for Biden in the 2020 election amounted to anything resembling a mandate.

The full results also shouldn't deter Democrats from looking for ways to reform their party. Now is the time to assess strengths and weaknesses as part of a necessary examination of how to build a multiracial, multiethnic working-class coalition that can win decisively not only at the presidential level but also in the fight to take back control of the House and Senate. 2026.

What these numbers provide to Democrats and progressives is an argument against despair and capitulation, especially as debate begins over Trump's Cabinet picks, judicial nominees and legislative priorities.

Research suggests that mandate claims, despite their tenuous connection to reality, can be effective in influencing legislative behavior, notes Julia Azari, an associate professor of political science at Marquette University and author of “Delivering the Peoples Message: The Changing Politics of the Presidential Mandate.” “Political science studies show that legislators will change their behavior in response to the perception of an incumbency election, but only for a certain length of time.

The first months of Trump's presidency will go a long way toward defining the character of his second term. Democrats and a handful of thoughtful Republicans have the potential to temper Trump's worst excesses and ensure the constitutionally mandated system of checks and balances is maintained.

When Trump argues against control of Congress by claiming that his appointments and policies reflect the will of the electorate, members of the House and Senate can counter this specious claim by explaining that the majority of the American people have not voted for him.

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