The 'Landslide' That Wasn't: Trump and Allies Pump Up His Narrow Victory

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/22/us/politics/trump-election-landslide.html

The ‘Landslide’ That Wasn’t: Trump and Allies Pump Up His Narrow Victory
The latest vote count shows that Donald J. Trump won the popular vote by one of the smallest margins since the 19th century. But Mr. Trump claims a “powerful mandate.”
By Peter Baker
Nov. 22, 2024 Updated 9:13 a.m. ET

On the night he won a second term, President-elect Donald J. Trump rejoiced in the moment. “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” he boasted. In the two weeks since, his campaign has repeatedly heralded his “landslide,” even to market Trump merchandise like the “Official Trump Victory Glass.”

But by traditional numeric measures, Mr. Trump’s victory was neither unprecedented nor a landslide. In fact, he prevailed with one of the smallest margins of victory in the popular vote since the 19th century and generated little of the coattails of a true landslide.

The disconnect goes beyond predictable Trumpian braggadocio. The incoming president and his team are trying to cement the impression of a “resounding margin,” as one aide called it, to make Mr. Trump seem more popular than he is and strengthen his hand in forcing through his agenda in the months to come.

With some votes still being counted, the tally used by The New York Times showed Mr. Trump winning the popular vote with 49.997 percent as of Thursday night, and he appears likely to fall below that once the final results are in, meaning he would not capture a majority. Another count used by CNN and other outlets shows him winning 49.9 percent. By either reckoning, his margin over Vice President Kamala Harris was about 1.6 percentage points, the third smallest since 1888, and could ultimately end up around 1.5 points.

“If the definition of landslide is you win both the popular vote and Electoral College vote, that’s a new definition,” said Lynn Vavreck, a political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of “Identity Crisis” about Mr. Trump’s first election, in 2016. “I would not classify this outcome as a landslide that turns into evidence of desire for a huge shift of direction or policy.”

...

[Passages]

1. Robert Reich pointed this out too recently.

Who did not vote and who rolled the dice for Trump.

Important to keep an accurate count while the post-mortem continues.

[dalton99a]

2. +1. Trump and his cult always try to rewrite history

[mwb970]

3. Is it too soon to look forward to 2026?

[CBHagman]

5. Of course not, given that pretty much started on November 6.

Midterms are a big deal, period, and the problem is that a lot of voters (especially young voters) simply don't show up. Some Americans really don't grasp that there are elections every two years, and that's quite apart from those who live in states where the gubernatorial elections take place in odd-numbered years.

But every two years we get a new set of House members and a third of the Senate. It's a huge deal.

[chouchou]

4. Great. Just Great. We have a President that Lies about lying about lying.

Our plan is working perfectly. ...

[displacedvermoter]

6. Fuck Peter Baker.....

I just like saying that, a lot!

[Wiz Imp]

7. These mainstream media outlets are all so pathetic.

So, I've actually seen stories in many outlets talking about the weakness of Trump's victory. But they all say something like this: "In fact, he prevailed with one of the smallest margins of victory in the popular vote since the 19th century and generated little of the coattails of a true landslide."

The fact is, he had the 7th smallest margin of victory of ALL TIME!

3 of the smaller margins were in consecutive elections in 1880, 188 & 1888 and 3 have been in the period since then.

The true picture of how pathetically small Trump's margin of victory is seen by comparing it to ALL of the elections in the nation's history (60 of them) and only 6 have been smaller. But the MSM refuses to point this out.

[SCantiGOP]

8. The real number is about 230,000

That is the number of votes that would have had to switch in 3 states to tilt the election to Harris.

[thesquanderer]

9. Yes, and by that metric I suppose W's margin was narrowest, 537 votes in Florida (n/t)

[edhopper]

10. What does it matter

if he won by one vote he would be doing the same things and the Dems would still roll over.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

15. Did the Dems ask for even ONE hand recount of a state's votes? n/t

[Callie1979]

11. So much for the "20 million missing votes PROVES they stole it in 2020!!!" BS

[Pas-de-Calais]

12. Only landslide one would want is

For entire GOP to be engulfed in one

[Mr.Bee]

13. Bad Don! No Mandate.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

14. Question: Do we add to T***p's number of lies (30,000+), or begin anew?

If the latter, "I won in a landslide" is number one.

[WarGamer]

16. This is called "Polishing the Turd"

A 2.6M vote popular vote lead (even with California voting for Harris +3.2M)... 312 electoral votes... sweeps of Congress...

Polishing the Turd.

[W_HAMILTON]

17. Oh, you! Once again belittling California as if its millions of votes don't count.

I know Republicans do that often -- even though they receive more Republican votes in California than they do almost every other state in the nation -- but it's so strange to see a Democrat doing that...

Weird.

[WarGamer]

18. hmmmm...

I AM a Californian... so that's silly.

[ancianita]

19. As Timothy Snyder says, when The Leader says it, it's the truth.

A fascist is unconcerned with the connection between words and meanings. He does not serve the language; the language serves him. When a fascist calls a liberal a “fascist,” the term begins to work in a different way, as the servant of a particular person, rather than as a bearer of meaning.

That is quite a fascist achievement. Faced with the complexity of history, liberals struggle with the overwhelming volume of questions to be asked, answers to be offered. Like communism, fascism is an answer to all questions, but a different kind of answer...Fascism reduces ... to what the Leader says.

A fascist just has to be a storyteller. Because words do not attach to meanings, the stories don’t need to be consistent. They don’t need to accord with external reality. A fascist storyteller just has to find a pulse and hold it...

And so, like any fuhrer/leader who wins, Trump makes more shit up like "landslide," because as Snyder says, "Fascism wins when the enmity summoned begins to tell the story itself."
https://archive.ph/gagW5#selection-821.444-821.514

No amount of fact-based NYT "elitist" explanation will get the base to believe anyone but trump.

We have to face that about the too-late NYT and other "both sider" msm publishers who normalized his first run in 2016 and sane-washed his second run in 2024. Now they won't get liberal readers back, and they never had half the country's below-6th-grade-literacy voters to begin with.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

20. Donald Trump had one of the smallest margins of victory in the modern era.

Link to tweet

[Dem4life1234]

21. The bastard suppressed votes

And he lost his dimwit supporters, he didn't gain any.