He didn’t get a majority of the electoral vote, and the idea that America has completely gone MAGA is amazing.
The big lie Donald Trump told after the 2024 election was that he received a “powerful mandate” from the American people. He didn’t, and neither did his MAGA movement. The United States is undoubtedly a divided nation. But the majority of Americans who voted in the 2024 presidential election actually agreed on one thing: They did not want Trump as their president. With nearly all the votes tallied, we now know that about 50.2 percent were cast for someone other than Trump. That’s a small majority against Trump, but it’s enough to vex the incoming president, who since election night has tried hard to push the fantasy that he’s achieved “a political victory like our country has never seen before, nothing like it. » His right-wing allies were equally outlandish in their claims that America had gone full MAGA.
Why are Republicans so desperate to claim they secured a “landslide” when the results show it was one of the closest presidential elections since World War II? Because they know something that Democrats sometimes forget: Politics is about perception, and a president who is perceived to enjoy overwhelming support from voters is in a much better position to change not just policy, but the trajectory of our politics. This is what happened to Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s and 40s and to Ronald Reagan in the 80s.
FDR and Reagan had the numbers needed to win the mandate. Trump does not. That’s why it’s important, as he prepares to retake the Oval Office, that progressives spin the narrative of the election that put him there. Yes, Trump beat Kamala Harris. But not much. And the narrowness of the GOP lead makes it possible for Democrats — along with a dwindling but potentially crucial number of rational Republicans — to block the worst appointments and the most dangerous policies of a president with only a majority of the popular vote.
Let’s crunch some numbers, shall we?
Trump’s margin was historically narrow. The president-elect’s 1.5-point margin over Harris was, according to a post-election analysis by the Council on Foreign Relations, “the fifth smallest of the thirty-two presidential races since 1900.” In 2020, Trump won 4 million fewer ballots than Joe Biden. In 2024, if roughly 120,000 voters changed their preferences in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, Harris would win the Electoral College and become president.
Voters rejected the Senate stamp. Republicans recaptured the Senate with a 53-47 majority, but that was largely due to the small-state advantage that usually favors their party. In the country, 1.4 million more voters voted for Senate candidates from the Democratic Party than for Republicans. In key swing states, Democratic candidates won all but one race, even as Harris lost all of the battleground races. This reality will be difficult for the 20 Republicans up for re-election in 2026.
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The house is very close. Democrats began the 118th Congress with 213 seats; they will begin the 119th Congress with 215 seats. If it weren’t for extreme partisan gerrymandering in North Carolina, they probably would have regained control. “The only mandate that exists is for Congress to work together,” said House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. But if the past two years are any indication, House Republicans may not even be able to work with each other. A special election (some of which was prompted by Trump’s induction of House members into his cabinet) could reduce the GOP’s slim 220-215 lead, possibly even handing the House seat to Democrats.
“There is no mandate to shove far-right politics down the throats of the American people,” Jeffries says. He is right. Polls — along with referendum results in red states like Missouri and Alaska — show that voters favor higher wages and the populist economic agenda promoted by progressives like Bernie Sanders. As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich put it, the real charge from voters is “a battle against the forces of wealth that have rigged the economy in their favor.” This is a mandate that Democrats must uphold.
