Trump won less than 50 Percent. Why is everyone calling it a landslide?

That's the title of the Politico article. Here's my answer.

There is no way you can argue that someone won in a landslide when they didn't even win the majority of votes. Trump got a plurality and won the popular vote by a very small margin. I think that people don't really understand the electoral college, and Americans are known globally for being bad at geography. They see a lot of empty land, that has more deer than humans, colored red, so they think a landslide has occurred.

In the electoral college, Trump didn't have a landslide either, in my opinion. You have to win over 50% of the electoral college to win. If Trump winning fifty-something percent of the electoral college votes is a landslide, then every victory is a landslide.

Americans also have bad memories. It is not uncommon for the party that won the presidency to also win the House and Senate. That is also not a landslide, especially when the margins in the House and Senate are small. In 2021, Democrats also had the House, Senate, and presidency.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/11/22/trump-win-popular-vote-below-50-percent-00190793

 

Oh, I think in the context of the times Trump's winning the popular vote as well as the Electoral College counts as a "landslide". After all, the Republicans hadn't won the popular vote since 2004. There's a clear shift in voter sentiment away from the Democrats.

Now, I did NOT say that there’s a shift towards the GOP. Instead, 15 million fewer people voted in this election than in 2020. That's a significant shift to "none of the above" which, ironically, is a return to normal in American politics.

One thing is very clear: time has run out on the Left. If the Democrats want to win, they will have to think hard about their priorities for the country. Prosperity is more important than social reform when it comes to winning.

 

I don't know why Harris lost. No one can say with certainty why any election turns out the way it does. My gut feeling, though, is that she failed to present a clear vision of who she is and what she will do to assure prosperity and peace. Trump did not neglect this in his campaign.

It's a truism that you can't win just by attacking your opponent without also defining yourself in a positive way. In fact, the less you even mention your opponent, the better off you are. Let others do the attacking. You stay above the fray.

Now, it's possible that Harris didn’t present herself this way because she has no coherent vision for the country. Not everyone is a visionary. (I'm not, for example, but judicial elections are a bit different.) If this is the case, Harris was a poor choice of candidate. I don't blame her or the party. She was a last minute and desperate measure when it became clear that Biden was no longer competent. All one could wish is that Biden had decided early on not to run for a second term. I don't know enough about that to say.

 

"Everyone" isn't calling it a landslide. The only people doing that are Trump supporters trying to gin up support they didn't earn.

 

I don't think that's quite true. The word "landslide" isn't well defined but I think it should include any discernable shift in the sentiment of a broad swath of the electorate. As I said above, I believe that happened this time.

 

I suppose that we will not know for sure until the 2026 midterms whether a real shift in sentiment has taken place.

 

People continue to reject politics that reject people.
Pulling away from voters who disagree on issues is a mistake and unsustainable if we view the relationship between voters and government.

There are good people on both sides.

Republican keeping a disabled woman in her home when she was too debilitated to work.
Former Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.) pushed Section 8 paperwork through the bureaucracy to keep her housed and safe.

President Biden met with President-elect Trump in the Oval Office to discuss a peaceful transition of power.
This is the first of many steps to rebuild generational trust with the voters lost.
Dems and GOP should have a unity summit to discuss policy solutions for everyday Americans.
This may bring healing and compromise on some Draconian policies to come.

 

If there was no Electoral College, only a regular democracy vote, no one would call it a landslide. However, we have an Electoral College and the other things that nosborne mentioned, so, it is not totally ridiculous to call it a landslide. Although if instead Harris had won by the same amount that Trump won by, I doubt anyone would call it a landslide.

 

"Trump swept the battleground states" is fair. But he swept them with narrow wins in each.

 

It is a matter of definition of course. What I'm looking at is the shift in the attitude of a large enough part of the electorate to give Trump the win. In absolute terms, the margin is tiny, I agree.

 

Regarding the shift in attitude, I saw some interesting polling numbers. Among people that paid lots of attention to the news, Harris won their vote by 6%. Among people that paid little attention to the news, Trump won their vote by 16%. (Maybe it was 12%, I don't remember for sure.) What that means to me is that perhaps it wasn't so much a shift in attitude but instead maybe many folks didn't really ever get to know Harris and voted by their gut and just went with the more familiar face. Also we know that 2020 had a super huge surge of Democratic voters that was missing in 2024. I'm sure that there are other factors also involved in this.

 

Yes, and whose failure was that? Even in the week before Election Day I had a hard time understanding exactly what Harris would do if elected. I knew she was 1) Not Trump; 2) Supported a Roe v Wade Act; and...what?

Trump I knew all about. His promises worry me very much but I know exactly what he stands for. Unfortunately.

Well, Biden won in 2020 because he wasn't Trump. The guy who sweeps up the Democratic HQ in Chicago could have won because he wasn't Trump. That's great as long as you aren't a deeply unpopular incumbent.

Sigh.

 

My opinion is that you gave a most excellent answer to your own question. Biden won in 2020 because he wasn't Trump.

Harris said a few other things that I'm sure you remember like $50,000 tax deduction for new businesses and stuff. Most of which I've already mostly flushed from my feeble mind. I think there are multiple reasons that Harris lost. Which is always the case in such a close election.

 

Definitely agreed.

 

I think she lost because she didn’t campaign enough with Liz Cheney. /s

 

Yeah, and also because she campaigned too much with Liz Cheney.

 

When Dick Cheney endorsed Harris, I texted some friends saying that I was confused by this and was asking them if it meant I had to vote for Trump. The conversation went into all sorts of strange places like demons hell etc. Lots of fun laughs.

 

I just don't know who these endorsements were for. I did not hear of a single person who saw them as positive.