In each of the last three presidential elections three states decided the winner in the electoral college - & by small margins. By this I mean that if the losing party had been able to overcome the small vote margins he or she lost by in the three critical states the decision would have changed in all three of the last presidential elections. See tabulation below. Source: Federal Elections Commision, The Cook Political Report, & BBC.
For instance, in 2020, the closest of the last three presidential elections, Biden had a 42,918 vote victory, 0.03% of the total popular vote & 0.37% of the votes cast in the three states that decided the election - WI, AZ, & GA. The electoral college victory was 306 to 242. Had Trump earned more votes than the infinitesimal amounts he lost by in those three states he would have won reelection. Yet Biden claimed he had a mandate & wanted to be compared to FDR who won the 1936 electoral college 523 to 8 with a popular vote margin of over 11 million votes when the population of the country was way less than half of what it is today. To see the fragility of the last three elections & the importance of the three deciding states in these elections see the tabulation below.
Wow - that is whisker close by anyone's measure.
But there were more favorable trends for Trump in 2024 than his other two runs for the presidency. Not only did he win the electoral college vote by the familiar three state tally we have become use to, 312 to 226, Trump had a 1.47% popular vote plurality (49.80% to 48.33%) receiving 77,301,997 votes nationwide to Harris's 75,017,626 with 2,891,660 votes going to third party candidates - a 2,284,371 popular vote margin. See tabulation below for other positive trends.
The above tabulation shows that after subtracting the huge Democrat margins in California & New York that Trump had a popular vote advantage of more than twice that of 2016 by this measure. After receiving more votes in California than in Texas in 2020 Trump once again received more votes in Texas than in California in 2024 while receiving a higher percentage of the votes in both states. Although still far from actually winning the states' electoral votes Trump also has a positive trend in New Jersey, New York, & Illinois while Arizona & Florida solidified.
The tabulation below shows Trump's increased voter share of selected demographic categories from 2020 to 2024. Source: AP VoteCast conducted by NORC @ the University of Chicago.
The above statistics show that Trump & Republicans (& hopefully future Republicans) increased their share of the vote in many demographic categories & in many states. The statistics also show that like the previous two presidential elections, the GOP should not rest on their laurels because all of this progress could reverse if Trump does not deliver. The Trump vote was 84% white, 3% black, 8% Latino, & 4% another race.
We were told by many nervous conservative pundits that the election of 2024 was the most important election of our lifetime & yet the turnout dropped by 3,218,348 votes from the 2020 election. Both the voting-eligible population & voting-age population turnout rates declined in 2024 from those of 2020 as follows: VEP 66.6% to 63.9% & VAP 62.8% to 59.0%.
Most of the turnout decline can be attributed to California (-1,635,905 votes or down 9.3%), New York (-354,366 votes or down 4.1%), & Illinois (-400,434 votes or down 6.6%) meaning that Harris was so inept & uninspiring that she could not hold much of her stronghold base.
Trump's terrible opponent in 2024 was put in place four years earlier when South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn's support in the 2020 primaries vaulted Biden(Harris) to the top of the Democrat ticket. Since both Biden & Harris were incompetent it was destined to fail - but as the first tabulation above shows not by much. The most alarming point is that even with the Biden/Harris deliberate anti-American record they came as close as they did to winning. We're still on the knife's edge.
The three most important issues to the electorate were the economy (39%), immigration (20%), & abortion (11%). The electorate saw that Harris had nothing to talk about except abortion & that she wasn't Trump. The electorate perceived that Trump would be stronger on the economy & immigration & was willing to overlook or dismiss Trump's January 6, 2021 betrayal of his constitutional oath where he asked Pence to throw the election his way.
But Biden/Harris brought the country to such new lows that America has more fundamental bedrock problems for Trump to work on than a new tax bill, or issues like healthcare reform, climate change, the national debt, the budget deficit, or even adequate national defense.
We have to reestablish that we are a sovereign country & are not fools for the rest of the world to abuse, where millions of illegal aliens tell our elected representatives the rules for living in America like being put up in luxury hotels or having sex-change surgery for imprisoned illegal aliens all courtesy of legal citizens. First & foremost we must eliminate the fallacious destructive anchor baby claim to birthright citizenship, settle the incompatible relationship of Muslims who follow Sharia law taking a U.S. citizenship oath, ban people from Muslim countries from entering America until we know that immigrants & refugees from these countries are not terrorists, end sanctuary cities & states, & restore the enforcement of immigration laws.
Trump, using the government offices & personnel that he controls, has to lead by example for corporations, schools, & individuals to follow - dispelling the made up notion that America is a nation full of inequities where the entire system of institutions, policies, & laws are themselves racist in need of total overhaul. Trump must focus on ending DEI, ESG, critical theories, cancel culture, the use of preferred personal pronouns, the teaching of the hateful 1619 Project, & the non-common sense "wokeness" that Biden/Harris thrived on where gender identity & sexual orientation are taught to children in kindergarten. It is pathetic to think that the American society was being dumbed down to think there are more than two sexes, that men have babies, & that you need to state your preferred pronouns when being introduced to someone or enlisting in the army.
You never heard Biden/Harris talk about liberty, deregulating incentives to unleash the free enterprise system, or productivity & economic growth that are the basis of an improved standard of living. These are the things that will return America to the excellence of our full sovereignty - free from our enemies intentionally putting "woke" anchors around our necks so that high school & college graduates don't have the education or training to get a meaningful job despite employers' multiple openings per unemployed worker.
None of this will be easy for Trump & time is of the essence. Conservative pundits do not make it any easier by wishfully declaring the election result gave Trump a mandate.
Whether going by the electoral college (Trump won by six more electoral votes than Biden had in 2020) or the popular vote (Trump had 1.47% more votes than Harris nationwide) the election was close in that it can easily be reversed in 2028 the same way the 2016 & 2020 elections were. Trump's popular vote margin was the fourth smallest of the 22 presidential elections since 1940 (Kennedy-Nixon 1960, Nixon-Humphrey 1968, & Bush-Gore 2000 were smaller). More people voted for someone not named Trump than Trump in 2024. So get ready for Democrat resistance.
The political definition of mandate is that the opposing party recognizes the will of the voters & capitulates or @ least stops resisting some issues the way Democrats did with President Reagan's Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 which passed the Democrat controlled House 282 to 95 & by voice vote in the Republican controlled Senate. Judge for yourself how much of a mandate Trump has by the resistance he encounters including from other Republicans. The first test for that being Mike Johnson's bid to be re-elected Speaker of the House on January 3 when Republicans hold a 219 to 215 miniscule advantage. The House majority will be as slim as 217 to 215 by the end of January when representatives Elise Stefanik & Mike Waltz resign from Congress to take jobs in Trump's administration - Stefanik to be UN Ambassador & Waltz to be National Security Advisor.
And we don't have any signs that the Democrats will cooperate. 1) Harris issued a word salad video telling her voters to stay in the fight; 2) Biden has offered some economic pointers that would only continue his Bidenomics program that was rejected; 3) Two days after the election Biden again extended a $10 B sanctions waiver that will allow Iran access to money in Iraq & Oman - money that can be used for terrorism or advancing its nuclear program; 4) Biden has been auctioning off border wall materials @ GovPlanet.com under the heading "government surplus for sale" to make Trump's immigration work all the harder - a court order prevented any further selling of these materials that are slated to be used when the border wall construction begins again after Trump retakes office; 5) Biden is spending every cent he can on the Green New Deal authorized under the Inflation Reduction Act; & 6) Three federal judges have unretired meaning these positions will not be vacant for Trump to fill.
The resistance stakes increased the day after Christmas from annoyance like those listed above to plans for blocking Trump from taking office. Two legal scholars, Evan Davis (Columbia) & David Schulte (Yale) wrote an op-ed on December 26 in The Hill giving Democrats ideas of how to block Trump's certification on January 6 on grounds that "an oath-breaking insurrectionist is ineligible to be president" & that "the evidence of Donald Trump's engaging in such insurrection is overwhelming." Both the op-ed & The Hill received plenty of online coverage from the NY Post, the Washington Times, FNC, Election Law Blog, AOL, Newsweek, & Daily Mail.
But the Democrats don't need another legal plan @ this late date no matter how valid it may appear. Kamala Harris holds her fate in her own hands in that just like Mike Pence four years earlier she is the person presiding over the counting of electoral votes this coming January 6. If Harris has the nerve & follows Trump's plan in principle that he laid out for Pence she will throw out enough electoral votes for Trump to make herself the winner. As detailed above a reversal of the electoral votes of WI, PA, & MI are enough to put her in the White House. Her evidence for this action would be the same as Trump provided Pence - nothing. After Harris deemed the Electoral Count Act of 2022 unconstitutional she would have taken the steps to delay or otherwise throw Trump's inauguration out of kilter thereby wasting precious time that is of the essence for Trump to straighten out the mess that she & Biden are leaving him.
