Summary
Trump’s popular vote share has fallen below 50% to 49.94%, with Kamala Harris at 48.26%, narrowing his margin of victory.
Trump’s share of the popular vote is lower than Biden’s in 2020 (51.3%), Obama’s in 2012 (51.1%) and 2008 (52.9%), George W. Bush’s in 2004 (50.7%), George H.W. Bush’s in 1988 (53.2%), Reagan’s in 1984 (58.8%) and 1980 (50.7%), and Carter’s in 1976 (50.1%).
The 2024 election results highlight Trump’s narrow victory and the need for Democrats to address their mistakes and build a diverse working-class coalition.
The numbers also give Democrats a reason to push back on Trump’s mandate claims, noting most Americans did not vote for him.
The fact that a majority of voters did not want Trump to win makes me simultaneously feel happy (that I’m not surrounded by idiots) and more depressed (that the Electoral College has screwed us AGAIN!)
It’s a lack of majority not a lack of plurality. Harris is still trailing Trump by 3m votes or so (and 1.6%), Trump is just not above 50% after further votes have been counted. So this isn’t an electoral college steal
Yeah, but even if Kamala wins the popular vote, this is going to be the closest a republican has gotten in…
Decades?
Maybe longer?
But the DNC is going to latch onto this and try to claim if they had moved just a little more right they’d have won.
Regardless of what happens, the DNC will always say the answer is moving to the right.
The DNC brain trust is already claiming that they should go further to the right
They were told they abandoned workers, and somehow heard “What if we betray Transpeople?”
Corporations fund the big name democrats and their campaigns. These same corporations benefit greatly from Republican wins. They are buying intentionally ineffective democrats who are unincentivized to either win races or appeal to worker interests as they are typically directly at odds with these big bankrolling corporations.
I am not saying every democrat is paid for or every democrat is ineffective or democrats as a whole are an entirely bought and paid for organization, but what I am saying is that enough of the prominent enough democrats legitimately are financially disincentivized from helping the people they’re supposed to represent so as to effectively gum up the works of the whole machine.
They’re already starting to trial run the messaging through lower ranking democrats in safe seats. (Link)
Well at least they’re getting roasted for it, I mean in this link the aide who said that was fucking fired over it. Yeah it said he resigned, but when you get up enough you aren’t “fired” you’re “asked to resign”
Oh no, you’re reading that wrong. The aide resigned in protest to Rep. Moulton’s comments. The article also quotes Rep. Tom Suozzi. Moulton is also in the House Equality Caucus, which is supposed to be protecting LGBTQ rights. I’m not sure how they square that with his comments that fundamentally misunderstand the process for transgender kids though. His comments show a fundamental misunderstanding of scholastic sports, human physiology, and hormone blockers. Which you think 2 of the 3 would be required reading for that caucus…
Ah yes the whole “They’re sending what is basically a 27 year old Mr. T in a dress to play Volleyball against a 12 year old girl!” messaging
Well yeah they’re strategists are essentially corporate lobbyists.
“Poor me, my constitutes don’t like that I am not representing them in government. Corporate lobbiest, you’ve done nothing but shower me in money, won’t you tell me what Americans really want?”
This isn’t borne out by trending or statements. What kind of crystal ball are you smoking?
Two examples: ran on being humane to migrants and continued title 42 three years into the Biden term and proposed a draconian new immigration law.
Ran on reforming the police, flooded them with money.
The kind that’s had me watching politics since Clinton… Have you been under a rock?
FPTP should get FAR more attention as the culprit for this situation. Sure, the electoral college caused Kamala to lose (or whatever) but if we had a true democracy, there wouldn’t be only two possible parties to choose from.
This fixes congress. How does this fix the presidency, which is one single office?
FPTP applies to ALL political offices in a country that uses it.
Using the presidency in this graphic would have been a very poor choice to display the difference between the two. Comparing 1 result with another result on a scale of 1 person would not have the pedagogical weight that the Congress graphic does.
Yes, and you abolish FPTP and now you elect a president how? I’m interested in your proposal, because it’s incomplete to say get rid of FPTP… Otherwise top vote getter, who gets maybe 30% of the vote leads the country which is also an abomination as 70% didn’t vote for that person.
Abolishing FPTP requires doing something else on top of it, ranked choice or run off would be better than the highest count.
Ranked choice voting
Right that is the problem wolfpack described. So what’s the solution?
Ranked choice voting
You can do it in a multitude of ways. The French for instance elect their president by voting twice, the first time they vote for their favorite candidate (and the parliament), the second time they vote for either of the two candidates that got the most votes (a run off)
There are other ways, like ranked voting, or you could look up parliamentary republics for an alternative form of government.
Read up on what happens in the rest of the world, at this point, we, as a human species, have tried pretty much everything
the simplest fix for states would be to adopt something like what maine and nebraska have, since they have vastly more representative turnout compared to FPTP.
Wouldn’t be perfect, but would basically kill any chance of republican DEI in the fed ever again lol.
It could give people opportunities to vote for third parties without feeling like they’re throwing away their vote
Okay so you go with what system?
Let’s say the breakdown of votes looks the same as the Swedish breakdown. There will be more people that voted for a different candidate than the red one (Social Democrat).
This then requires a run off system like france, or a ranked choice, which is also fine to propose, but you can’t hold up a visual of a parliament and say the system is so much better, when we talk about one singular office.
The post compared two things that have different end goals
Any system where your vote is a list instead of a checkbox.
That way in 2016 you can vote for Bernie as 1, and if he loses, you can vote for Hillary by putting her as 2. You don’t have to give up your moonshot to get your safety net.
Great video on the problems with first past the post, with links to some other videos discussing better systems: https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo
Don’t worry, you’re still surrounded by idiots no matter who wins the presidency
Yeah does it really make that much of a difference in terms of “being surrounded by idiots” whether 51% of the people around you are idiots or 49%? Sure, I’d prefer the 49% scenario, especially if there’s an election happening, but you’re still surrounded by idiots.
The fact that Trump could get elected at all, let alone twice, is proof that there’s too many idiots to want to participate in normal society
Typical liberal cope.
“We KINDA won!”
Face it y’all. Democrats and liberals are a LOSING block. FAILURES.
I’ll continue to vote straight D, because it’s the only choice I got. Fucking losers and failures.
Since it’s just about a half split, you’re at least semi-circled by idiots.
So stay away from walls and other obstacles you can back into…got it!
He still had more of the popular vote than Harris, it was just they were both less than 50% due to 3rd party votes. So neither had a “majority” of the vote.
So he still would have won, even under a purely popular vote based system.
Another thing it means is that if we had ranked choice voting, those 3rd party votes would be the deciding factor in who won the presidency.
If we had ranked choice and got rid of the electoral college*
A lot of those third party votes are in solid red or blue states where it wouldn’t matter. Also a lot of the third party votes this time was for rfk and the libertarian Oliver, who wouldve probably went to trump so the outcome would probably be the same.