Tuesday’s Electoral College tally confirms that Trump fell short of the “large mandate.”
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses the crowd after being declared the winner during an election night party at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida on November 6, 2024.
(Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
No institution in American politics is more worthy of being consigned to the dustbin of history than electoral college. Created by founders who feared the will of the people—and who denied not only the right to choose, but also the most basic measures of equal citizenship for women, people of color, the poor, and in many cases, religious dissenters—the quadrennial assembly of political insiders was understood as a check and counterpoint to the popular voting and the promise of real democracy. It has continued to function as such for most of the past 235 years. But the Electoral College rarely serves the useful function of clarifying what election results mean.
In the rush from Election Day to Inauguration Day, mid-December caucuses across the country offer a brief respite to reflect on the true sentiments of the American people. Insights gleaned not only from counting electoral votes, but from examining how shifting a handful of those votes in a few states could have led to a very different outcome: an outcome that, in this particular case, could easily have favored Kamala Harris.
Knowing that the presidential election is close does not change the final outcome. But it may change our understanding of the outcome, just as it may provide some insight into the credibility of the “mandate” claims — especially such sweeping claims as those Trump and his supporters continue to trumpet.
This is the case with the 2024 competition, which was held officially decided on Tuesday, as voters gathered in state capitals across the country to cast their ceremonial votes. The meetings of the College of Electors themselves did not bring any surprises. Republican voters (including at least 13 members of the 2020 party a conspiracy of fake voters) voted for Donald Trump and JD Vance. Democratic voters voted for Kamala Harris and Tim Waltz. Trump won the popular vote — 312 to Harris’ 226 — and will be elected president on January 20, 2025.
However, Trump failed to get what he had been claiming since the morning after the November 5 election: an “unprecedented and powerful mandate” – neither in the popular vote nor in the Electoral College vote. And final vote counts in key states gave a startling glimpse of how close he came to losing his Electoral College majority.
Trump’s claim to a “mandate” has always been overstated. Serious observers of the political process knew that the slow tallying of votes, which always takes several weeks, would show that the results were much closer than early results suggested. Some even suspected that Trump would fall below the 50 percent threshold that allows the winner to claim the support of a majority of the American people.
As it turned out, that’s exactly what happened. When state vote counts were completed Tuesday ahead of the Electoral College, it was clear that the majority of Americans who voted in the 2024 election. chose someone other than Trump. The Republican candidate fell more than 300,000 ballots short of the majority vote threshold, finishing just 49.8 percent from the total number. That’s a much smaller percentage of the electoral vote than President Joe Biden in 2020, than Barack Obama in 2012 and 2008, than George W. Bush in 2004, or than the vast majority of American presidents on the way to white. House. Indeed, when we compare the vote share of the two major party candidates, it turns out that the 2024 election was one of upcoming presidential contests in American history.
The same applies to voting in the Electoral College. Of the 60 presidential elections since the founding of the country, 43 gave more willful victories for the winner than Trump got. The percentage of Republicans in the Electoral College in 2024 was lower than Obama’s in any of his bids, than Bill Clinton’s in 1996 or 1992, than George W. Bush’s, Ronald Reagan’s, or most other postwar presidents.
But the real story about the narrowness of the 2024 election, and how close Trump was to defeat, is revealed in the pattern of narrow results that gave Trump the lead in the Electoral College. It’s no secret that both candidates’ campaigns in 2024 have focused on seven battleground states, a fact that no doubt reduced turnout in populous states like California and New York, where Harris could very well build the reserves he needs. to ensure the national victory of the popular vote.
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It is true that Trump has won every state on the battlefield. But in the Great Lakes states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, which voted for Trump in 2016, for Biden in 2020 and for Trump in 2024, the GOP candidate barely made it this year. As noted by Dave Wasserman, the renowned numbers writer for the Cook Political Report, pointed out “The 2024 election was decided by 229,766 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin out of about 155.2 million cast nationally.”
If only the Harris campaign had mobilized more grassroots voters in these states instead of wasting valuable time on Republican propaganda events with Liz Chaney— they could well make up the difference. Or, if they could strategize so that only 114,884 working-class voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania would switch from Trump to Harris, the Democrat would win.
That’s about as many people as Taylor Swift’s show in Philadelphia this year. In Wisconsin, historically the most closely contested of the battleground states, the shift is less than 15,000 votes would give the state to Harris.
Why is it important to crunch the numbers? Because politics is perception. And too many circles, including the media, believe that Trump won “great mandate”.
It’s not uncommon for presidents to boast that they have more support than they actually have, and this certainly isn’t the first time Trump has done so. Countless presidents have traded on the fantasy of widespread popularity to gain an edge in wrangling over cabinet picks and policy initiatives.
But voters did not give Trump a large mandate.
Rather, they produced a result so close that the Electoral College would have made a Democrat the 47th president of the United States by a small margin of victory.
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