- cross-posted to:
- politics@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- politics@beehaw.org
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.
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It won’t matter. He, and his cultists, will continue to claim otherwise.
He still won the popular vote.
By being less less poplar than he was last election, because the Dems were even less poplar
So what?
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?
Control of his ticker, one hopes
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.
The third dimension of the political compass is radical vs. moderate. People want more radical change, and the Democrats didn’t meet them there.
He lost last time and we let him take it. We dont have to keep letting him steal the office
Actually only 50% of us support the fat pedophile fascist.
It’s way less than that. Like 35% of eligible voters did not vote.
Only 33% of eligible voters actually voted against Trump. 66% either agree with him or don’t care.
Yup, just 71 million or so goddam people voted for a narcissistic grifter felony with daddy issues. Fuck.
Or 71 million people voted against democrat corruption and the fact that they do not represent the working class.
By voting for blatant corruption instead? And tax cuts for the rich is not a policy representing the working class.
They didn’t say that they were making a good decision voting against Dems, just that it was a decision.
Yes, a bad decision, but that shouldn’t need to be said to anyone with regularly firing neurons.
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 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.
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.
do you… even know what a straw man is? Im addressing your comment that ‘he won by a good margin’, it appears you are saying that if someone wins an election, then there is no point in having any discussion about the methods that person used to get elected? All criminality and previous insane behavior is instantly washed away by winning an election?
Yeah it’s important that we all acknowledge the fascist was elected with a clear majority
yaaa… Im sure the guy who cheated in 2016, and cheated again in 2020 definitely didnt cheat in any way at all this time…
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.
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?
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?
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.
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?
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.
What about the starling machines
I couldn’t find anything about voting machines named Starling. There is a StarLink theory. The problem is that seems to be based on a TikTok video that was incoherent by most reports, and is no longer up.
I get that moneyed interests could get evidence removed from a centralized social media service. But nothing in the transcript I’ve found describes a specific link from StarLink to voting machines. In fact it sounds like the person just described the basics of TCP/IP in a roundabout way to make it sound sinister. The problem is election systems are air gapped with the exception of a few highly controlled access points. Situations where that’s been compromised, (such as allowing remote work from home for election office workers) have made the news for precisely the reason that it’s rare. And the most credible criticism of election security is that the election office’s computers could be compromised and used to spread malware to machines. But that’s an inherent weakness. If the office can’t access the results, they can’t report them.
Furthermore, there’s nothing special about StarLink that would make them a better access route. They aren’t close enough to intercept the unofficial results as a false cellphone tower, (and that wouldn’t change the official results later anyways), and any traffic going through them to attack election systems would also have to travel through modems on the ground, controlled by election officials. So destroying the satellite does nothing for covering your tracks. If you believe they can erase all traces of their traffic, then there’s no need to destroy a satellite as surely that would be even easier on a satellite controlled by a close ally.
At the end of the day, with what we know right now, the fuck up was with the Democrat’s messaging. Not anything to do with election security.
so… are we hearing any of that now?
I haven’t seen anything. I know Arizona for sure would be all over it. Their last three SoS elections were about keeping Maga out of the elections. The current governor is governor largely for standing up to Trump in 2020. If they thought they got hacked they would be using bullhorns to let us know.
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 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.
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.
The problem is Republicans are heartless, but Democrats are spineless.
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
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?
You don’t have to convince me of the merits of bypassing the EC.
You do have to convince me that the NPVIC will remain in effect after one election. Yes, repealing something like this generally takes time, and probably longer than the 5 weeks or so between the election and the day the EC votes are cast. But they don’t have 5 weeks. They have the entire election cycle.
The only way it stays in effect is if it has no effect. If it would ever change the outcome of an election, it will be repealed by every state compelled to flip its votes.
Are you certain? I do see the possibility of a state attempting to repeal it after the popular vote going the way they didn’t want and perhaps it would only live for one election cycle. I’m just not sure that every state that could overturn it would want to do so, given that a campaign under a national popular vote would mean that there would be far more attention paid to places outside of Pennsylvania and the select handful of swing states. Both campaigns want to see all of America improve in their speeches, not just the midwest and sunbelt battlegrounds, but their campaign actions aren’t representative of that within the EC.
E: Oh and if the 2028 and/or 2032 election has a result where popular vote and EC are aligned when the compact is first in force, there will be much less momentum to overturn it in the following election even if they differ.
given that a campaign under a national popular vote would mean that there would be far more attention paid to places outside of Pennsylvania and the select handful of swing states.
Under popular vote, candidates will run to the urban centers, and completely ignore the rural populace. NPVIC creates Panem.
There’s no perfect solution, but the fact there will be more campaigning in urban centres is not an indictment of the popular vote system. Rural centers don’t have to be excluded, campaign resources can be more spread out to them than before.
Example: Sure, maybe Trump wouldn’t have visited Butler, PA without EC but they are the few rural areas that would benefit at the expense of small towns in every other state. Instead, you would have Republican outreach to the red states that are perennially overlooked, Trump visiting Redding to get out the vote there, Harris campaign in CO and the PNW. Puerto Rico, US territories and DC would have actual importance instead of the whole discussion being around “what does insulting the entirety of Puerto Rico mean for Pennsylvania?”
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!)
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!
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?”
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…
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?”
Regardless of what happens, the DNC will always say the answer is moving to the right.
This isn’t borne out by trending or statements. What kind of crystal ball are you smoking?
The kind that’s had me watching politics since Clinton… Have you been under a rock?
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.
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?
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
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.
Right that is the problem wolfpack described. So what’s the solution?
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.
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.
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.
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!”
You should seriously consider running for office. You might have the energy and wherewithal to reshape the liberal party into something halfway worthwhile 🤌
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.
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.
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”
This is the way.
