7mo ago

Donald Trump Has NOT Won a Majority of the Votes Cast for President

www.thenation.com

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.

United States | News & Politics @midwest.social

Five @slrpnk.net

7mo ago

Donald Trump Has NOT Won a Majority of the Votes Cast for President

www.thenation.com /article/politics/donald-trump-vote-margin-narrowed/

205 comments

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.
- 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?
- 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.
  
  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.
- 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.
- 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!
To be clear, because the headline I think is a bit misrepresentative. Trump still has over a million more votes than Harris. He just no longer has over 50% of the votes cast.
It's like 49% Trump, 48% Harris, 3% Other. So Trump still won the popular vote.
This isn't a "the Electoral College screwed us" situation. He still "won" the popular vote. He just didn't win a "majority" of the votes cast.
- Yep. And as much as I'd like to blame 3rd party voters, even if they all voted Harris to giver her the majority, she'd have still lost due to electoral college.
  I will absolutely blame the non-voters though. And the 3rd party voters still get part of the blame.
58% of the deciding power with just under 50% of the vote?
This might be a catalyst for states to sign the NPVIC. Pennsylvania started the process to sign on this week in legislature.
Perhaps in the past, swing states enjoyed the attention they got.
Now, I have a feeling voters are frustrated from getting way too much attention with mailers, calls, texts, illegal lotteries, news stories, events. As a bonus, voters in swing states are and will be getting outsized blame for electing the returning rapist-in-chief. Anyways a potential silver lining in the impending sea of shit.
- Think about the NPVIC critically for a moment. What would you have done if your state voted for Harris, but some agreement your state legislators made forced your state's EC votes to go to Trump? Suppose the margins were narrow enough that your state's EC votes were the deciding factor.
  I would be contacting my state representatives and governor immediately, demanding they withdraw from that compact before the EC votes are cast in December.
  Trump voters would make similar demands of their state if the situation were reversed.
  The NPVIC will never actually affect an election, because the participating states would almost certainly withdraw long before it did.
  
  There was some misinformation like that spread about Colorado this year, where more people voted Harris but the state assigned their electors to Trump. Only would happen if the compact is in force.
  Thing is though, as it stands with the EC, neither party gives a shit about Colorado in elections as a 54/44 split is treated as a "given" for the Dems. With a national popular vote, every blue vote in Colorado or Washington, would matter just as much as a red vote in California, same as a blue vote in Oklahoma or a red vote in Montana.
  Sure, people will try to call their reps and sue if they think their state could flip the result when EC doesn't match the popular vote result. Those processes tend to take a long time that the chances of reversing it before January are slim. This election, it would have gone to Trump either way since he had a plurality of votes. Is it really fair that only 7 or 8 states of 50 had over 90% of the campaign visits, and nearly half had none?
This is a ridiculous argument. Orange man won the electoral college, got the most votes, won the senate, house of reps, the presidency, and the supreme court. What more is there to lose?
- Plenty of coping from the liberal corporate media, instead of admitting that liberals abandoned the working class to court the monied interests.
  
  It really didn’t have much to do with abandoning anyone. It didn’t matter what democrats proposed at all. The vast majority of people answers they were dissatisfied with America in exit polls. The economy is doing fine on paper but people don’t feel that way. It was the inability to distance from Biden and provide actual radical solutions to things that got them voted down.
  At this point it has nothing to do with working class policies. It has everything to do with voter dissatisfaction and pandering to moderates.
  
  idk why people keep yapping about abandoning the working class, it mostly just seems like a dogwhistle to a general dissatisfaction that never seems to go away.
  People were doing the same shit before biden dropped out, saying they would support someone else, like kamala. That happened, and then they didn't.
  how would the liberals court the working class? would electing a fucking immigrant factory worker do it? At what point does the working class actually go "you know what, i agree, i will vote for this person" because the problem is, you can't just put some guy in the seat, we did that with trump, it was a horrendous mistake, and trump should have some idea of how this stuff works.
  You need someone politically educated and experienced, capable of representing the people, like biden. There's a reason he got so much legislation through the government, even with how polarized it is right now.
  unless of course, you want to overthrow the government, and install a dictator. That would also work.
- Control of his ticker, one hopes
- He lost last time and we let him take it. We dont have to keep letting him steal the office
- Well the left lost thier sanity so everything else has become trivial.
Wasn't it something like he only gained about 500,000 votes from the last primary election? The reason the Democrats lost was because they lost 10,000,000 due to people just straight up not voting for Kamala by either going 3rd party, switching to Trump, or abstaining. In my opinion it wasn't really Trump's popularity that won him the election but more of just the Democrats lack of popularity.
- Democrats lack of popularity, coupled with active voter suppression tactics in numerous states, four straight years of misinformation campaigns designed to decrease voter turnout and/or drive them to third parties maliciously, and most critically, no more covid lockdowns allowing people the free time to vote. People working full time wage jobs that are most likely to vote more blue are, quite intentionally, not financially allowed to vote in person due to work scheduling; 2020 was an outlier year.
  
  OR, wait for it, it might be because Democrats absolutely suck at winning elections. It might be because no one likes them. And all that might be because they're total fucking failures at governing.
  "But muh libs have done such wonderful things and the GOP is the devil!"
  SELL it to us then.
  "But LOGIC!"
  No one votes on logic. Sales class, before lunch, "People buy on emotion."
  Your post is exactly why libs so always fucking lose. Jesus, just say it out loud, "We lost because my pussy hurts!"
- Actually, Harris did nearly as well or better than Biden in the only states that matter, the swing states. In the ones the Harris didn't beat Biden's vote total, even if she had gotten it Trump would have still won the electoral college.
  In other words, no it's not because dems didn't vote.
I mean…. Does it really matter?
- Nope.
  Some liberals will say that he won't be able to claim a mandate. Doesn't matter. He will.
  
  Seriously, how far does that excuse get anyone? "Well everyone didn't vote for him so whatever" and he says "Yeah they did 🥴" and proceeds to do whatever tf he wants anyway ¯(ツ)/¯
  
  It's still good to know he doesn't have one, be able to prove it, and say it a lot all over the place with the receipts in hand.
- None of the news you read on this app matters. This is at least an interesting tidbit.
He still won the popular vote.
- By being less less poplar than he was last election, because the Dems were even less poplar
  
  What do poplar trees have to do with this ?
- The first line of the summary starts with ...
  Trump’s popular vote share has fallen
  
  He still has more than Harris. I'm not thrilled about any of this, I just don't see any sort of significance of being under 50% when we already don't use the popular vote for anything meaningful. If it drops below Harris's, then that's worth talking about.
- Very, very slimly.
- i think in presidential elections in order to "win" you need at minimum a 51% vote. Otherwise you don't actually win, but i could be mixing some shit up lol.
  Voting is fucking weird.
  
  You can win the presidency with as little as 22% of the popular vote. https://youtu.be/7wC42HgLA4k
It sucks that the Dems don't bother with a recount, even if it's still the same result. Republicans wanted recounts just about everywhere they could in 2020. Instead they just say "welp, looks like we lost. Here's the keys to the kingdom." Do some due diligence and have a damn recount.
- The problem is Republicans are heartless, but Democrats are spineless.
  
  Democrats are heartless genocidal freaks, and hardly "spineless" they just don't care. It's a party of billionaires. I have no idea how you can unironically believe this ethos that they're all a bunch of bleeding hearts but are just too scared, quivering in their boots to act but they all mean well... apparently! No, they just never fight for those values you want them to fight for because their party does not represent those values, and pretending they do at this point... I have a bridge to sell you.
- Those kind of things have to be done in every single district and costs millions of dollars. Unless there's a probable chance, it's probably better to save the cash and use it for something that could get results in the future
- I do have problems with Democrats simply handing power to fascists that have literally told us that they will end our Republic on day 1... However, at this point, I think recounting at the level you're talking about would be a waste of time. Even if it changed the results, Republicans wouldn't accept it.
  
  I agree it's a waste of time now, but loke the Wednesday or Thursday afternoon election, they should've put the wheels in motion.
- Democrats like losing because they only disagree on Republicans on like 2 issues and their funding is great when Republicans are in power.
- I saw that Harris's campaign was fundraising to pay for a recount, is that not the case?
This is major league copium. The fact is that Trump's opponent got way more votes in 2020 than in 2024, and had the blue turnout in 2024 equaled what it was in 2020, he would not have won in 2024. Period.
- Yeah I'm really not sure why these conversations are still going on. It's painfully clear that Dems lost this election because of voter turnout.
- At this point it's just sad to see the impotent denial of facts of some people. He won the election and the popular vote. End of story.
The big problem is we all think someone else will solve this issue. All the investigations, congress, and even the public... they did nothing.
Run for office. Start small. Kick them out of the school boards follow their playbook and work bottom up.
- This is the way.
- That is certainly a possible solution. However I also think a lot of folks simply don't have the time to commit in addition to their regular jobs and responsibilities. Guess that's how we wound up with so wealthy people in politics... they got all that free time ⏰ (and they think they know what's best for everyone else too, perhaps? 🙃)
- "If you have the ability to lead you have the obligation to. Because if you don't you need to consider who will"
Actually only 50% of us support the fat pedophile fascist.
- Only 33% of eligible voters actually voted against Trump. 66% either agree with him or don't care.
  
  And in not doing so, they objectively supported him, whether they're too braindead to know or not.
  
  Yup, just 71 million or so goddam people voted for a narcissistic grifter felony with daddy issues. Fuck.
- Yea but he has 100% of the control now so it doesn't matter unfortunately.
It won't matter. He, and his cultists, will continue to claim otherwise.
- I mean his vote share went down, he still has more votes than kamala.
  So they don't need to say anything he still won the popular core
Since when has reality made any difference at all to Trump?
He doesn't believe he has a mandate because the numbers add up that way, so he's not going to believe he doesn't because they don't. He believes he has a mandate because he's the bestest and smartest and most perfect president ever in the history of ever. And he's never going to stop believing that.
- It makes a big difference to him, personally. He's a walking ego, and the fact that the American people aren't in a majority behind him will gnaw at him.
  It means fuck all in any practical way. At best, the country isn't quite as giving into fascism as we thought. That's the best I got, and it ain't much.
  
  76+ million fascists voted for a fascist. Period.
At no time in the history of modern politics has the "popular vote" taken precedence over the electoral college. If you'll remember, biden's campaign made that point during his defeat of the orange 4 years ago. And the orange complained pretty loudly about it
- Not to mention the numbers I saw still show he has more votes than her, he just fell below 50%, add in the people who voted for other candidates or voted for other positions and not president and she is below. I saw only 4% of votes left in California, meaning he will beat her by at least a million votes.
- At no time in the history of modern politics has the “popular vote” taken precedence over the electoral college.
  Everybody already knows that. It sill matters. Or would matter, if Harris had gotten more total votes.
now take into account the massive GOP voter fraud
- I thought we spent four years exhaustively proving that the election cannot be stolen? How did they find loopholes after the Democrats exhaustively proved they didn't exist?
  
  It wasn't that it can't be stolen. We proved the dems didn't steal it.
  This year we had lots of evidence of fraud and manipulation by Rs and like do you really think Trump and Musk would actually just play fair?
  
  I thought we spent four years exhaustively proving that the election cannot be stolen?
  Wrong.
  Trump's team claimed for 4 years that the election was stolen without evidence. We've spent 4 years showing that the 2020 election was not stolen, which does not mean that election fraud doesn't exist and never will exist.
  
  The biggest problem with the letters that went around is that it would require every swing state Secretary of State to stay quiet about it happening. And some of those SoS's are die hard democracy and election people. It would also require the IT people not to leak any concerns and they aren't known for staying quiet about systems being penetrated.
  All in all it seems like a weird thing happened but the silence is verging on Secret Government Agency with millions of domestic spies that never write a tell all book conspiracy territory.
  
  I thought we spent four years exhaustively proving that the election cannot be stolen
  Um, hate to tell you bro, trump did cheat and steal the 2016 election (proven in court, 34 counts convicted)
  
  "Cannot"? How does one prove a negative?
Great! We can relish the fact that he didn't win over the majority of Americans as our country descends into a fascist hellhole run by billionaires, war hawks and rapists.
You all need to get your "Fuck Trump" flags made and start driving around with them for the next 4 years.
That's still a win in the popular vote. He has a mandate.
- It's a plurality and not a majority, pretty far from a mandate. It's a legal win.
  
  That's a mandate
- Usually, "mandate" used to mean overwhelming support from the majority. If these percentages hold up, donvict has a plurality. Even if he had a bare majority with Kamala and him having ~1.5% delta, it's not like it is some real mandate, either...
  
  It is. If you look at his appointments it looks like he's going to be moving as fast as he can so that's good.
Democrats need to stop wasting time by challenging the results of this election in any way. We're going to be under the control of a party that waives facts and truths so it doesn't matter.
The Democrats need to be re-worked entirely. The reason why they failed this year is like how they failed in 2016. They focused on the whole "TRUMP BAD!" wagon and expected that to carry them. That's great...as a platform. But it was all that they mostly had. Platforms aren't any good if you can't build off from them and that's what the Dems didn't do.
I know and understand that if Harris had a full year of campaigning instead of a handful of months, maybe she could've had a better shot and a better understanding of how she'd turn this country around. But, she fell into the same trap as Clinton did and that's why she lost. She wasn't the entire reason, the Dems had a part in that too collectively, but a part of the reason.
You cannot just scream "THAT MAN BAD" without backing it up and without promise of how you'll do things right - for everyone. Emphasis on 'everyone' because there apparently are some groups that Harris and the Dems failed on and lost their votes. That's important.
Right now, Democrats need to seriously reconstructure.
And I hope that within the first year of this fascist's term of how much shit they'd have to sit, watch and fight over on. That by the 2026 mid-terms, that they get their heads out of their fucking asses.
- I'm calling him a fascist, and those who voted for him fascists. Fuck this fascist country.
- there apparently are some groups that Harris and the Dems failed on
  That's every group except for republicans, who voted Trump anyway.
- Maybe if Harris had become the candidate via a primary election, instead of the DNC skipping that election to simply nominate her candidate, she would have had a better chance.
- I'm sorry but what timeline are you in? Harris barely focused on the fascism at all (I forget if she even said the actual word. Maybe twice?), and provided a shit ton of specific policy proposals that would have directly helped the working and middle classes. People can't blame anyone but themselves if they chose to ignore her.
  Comments like this make me feel like I've lost my mind. Where have you been for the past 6 months?
- I know and understand that if Harris had a full year of campaigning instead of a handful of months, maybe she could've had a better shot and a better understanding of how she'd turn this country around.
  I think she'd have dug herself into a deeper hole, if anything. That's what she did with the time she had available.
So what?
The only thing of note here is that since the winner got <50%, then I’m guessing 3rd party votes were slightly higher this election.
- 1.7% in 2024.
  1.9% in 2020.
  5.7% in 2016.
  1.7% in 2012.
  1.4% in 2008.
  2024 is not the outlier. It's mostly about how well the other major party candidate does.
  
  So, 4% less in 2024 than in 2016, the last time he won. That by itself stands in pretty stark contrast to those who want to blame his victory on people who voted for a third party.
  Trump won in 2024 chiefly because millions upon millions of Dems who voted in 2020 stayed home in 2024. That's the reality.
I actually prefer him wining the popular vote. At least this time it’s what most Americans (that are willing to show up) want.
- ...or at least voted for. It's becoming unclear whether it's what they actually wanted, but it's too late for regret now.
  
  What they wanted was for their 7,000lb full size truck they use to commute to their office job to cost less than $100 to fill up, while having good enough sound insulation in their walls that they don’t hear the screams from the collateral damage that might unfortunately need to happen.
- What the fuck is wrong with you?
  
  I mean, given the outcome is the same, I rather democracy to actually work instead of whatever the electoral college is.
  
  it beats an electoral win, popular loss, and another 4-8 years of election fraud bullshit. Plus now he actually to some degree, has to be held responsible to the people. So this likely means the next election will flip backwards if there is a general perception of dissatisfaction in his abilities, which i expect there will be, in some capacity. His current cabinet picks are a fucking clownshow.
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.
just to be clear, this isn't really a failing of the dems per say, not to say they didn't have issues, they did. But this was a global shift away from incumbency. This seems to be more of a response to covid and inflation more than anything else possibly could've influenced it.
Lucky break for trump, dems just have to come back stronger i guess.
Let's see him wriggle out of this one
The Democratic party is a lost cause. They NEVER take any responsibility for their actions. What they did this election should even be illegal. They had no primary, so as a Democratic voter, I had no choice in who I was voting for. They picked my candidate for me, and it wasn't even the incumbent! What's the point of a democracy where my vote doesn't matter, because THEY decide who I have to vote for? It's stupid! They keep doing it over and over. Before, they threw Bernie under the bus and backed Hillary whether we liked it or not. They keep making the same dumb mistakes over and over because they just don't care about working class people
- They did have a primary.
  And Hillary won her primary popular vote against Bernie and you're still pissed about it so seems like the method isn't the problem for you, it's that they ("they" being Democrats according to the party rules) don't pick whoever you like.
  
  The primary where she bought out the entire DNC and was in control of them? The same primary where the DNC worked together to stop Bernie and sabotage his campaign, even going so far as to contemplate attacking him for being Jewish? The primary where the chair apologised to Bernie for fucking him over?
  Oh yeah, totally democracy in action.
- What they did this election should even be illegal
  illegal how? they're a private party, their own rules don't require them to hold a primary. Even if they wanted to do so, it was most definitely too late, should they have held one prior? probably.
  They had no primary, so as a Democratic voter, I had no choice in who I was voting for.
  man you guys need to learn what irony is. Also just to be clear, like 10 million people ever vote in primaries, so uh. Good luck? I guess? It's not even representative to begin with lmao.
  What’s the point of a democracy where my vote doesn’t matter
  i mean it objectively does, but ok.
https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-ELECTION/RESULTS/zjpqnemxwvx/ https://www.cnn.com/election/2024/results/president?election-data-id=2024-PG&ele https://apnews.com/projects/election-results-2024/ I guess Reuters, CNN, and the Associated Press are no longer trustworthy news
- What makes you say that? For me they all say the same as the article here.
  (AP is still at 50%, but it should drop any moment. I didn't compare the numbers between them or do the math, so it may just be a difference in rounding.)
People need to chill, he won by a good margin, stop trying to create drama on everything
- I'm thinking its less to create drama, and more to be like "So he doesn't have a mandate then, to do all this bad shit he wants to do."
  Its no longer being billed as "Landslide victory! Americans clearly want bigotry!"
- People need to chill, he won by a good margin
  even if true, does that suddenly make him not a convicted criminal and rapist?
  
  Of course it doesn't change that. That is not what's being discussed, please don't turn to strawman attacks. It cheapens the discussion.
  
  Bro wtf do the elections result have on common with him being a criminal? We are talking about votes and election results, stop mixing things
- he won
  Yes.
  by a good margin
  No.
- People are going to be put in camps i don't think it's the time to chill
  
  That is not what they are saying to chill on. They’re saying to chill on this number drama bullshit.
  He won, and margins are just stats.
- yaaa.. Im sure the guy who cheated in 2016, and cheated again in 2020 definitely didnt cheat in any way at all this time..
- I mean we're all fucked, so...seems like a good time to panic.

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