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Donald Trump could claim a lot from his 2024 election victory.
► The president’s rise from pariah status to the next election after trying to overturn an election is a comeback after many years.
► The rightward shift in election results gives him the mandate to begin an effort to remake the US government as promised.
► If Republicans win a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, they will control the entire U.S. government and help implement change.
Trump cannot claim a landslide victory, but that’s how he would describe it.
As of Saturday, Mr. Trump had won the popular vote by just over 74.5 million votes, but millions of votes had yet to be counted, particularly in states such as California, Washington and Utah. The final popular vote count for 2024 is likely not known until December.
When Trump lost badly in 2020, he received just over 74 million votes. So while it’s true that much of the country moved to the right in this election, if turnout is ultimately lower than in 2020, it’s also true that there was some level of voter apathy.
However, this does not mean that voter turnout will be low in this election. The University of Florida Elections Research Institute estimated as of Friday that turnout in 2024 will be about 62.3% of the eligible voting population, although still below the modern-day high of 66.4% in 2020. , still higher than other recent elections. . Voter turnout in 1996 and 2000 did not significantly exceed 50% of the eligible voting population.
Regarding the electoral college, Trump won 312 electors. It’s a solid victory, but it comes in the bottom half of the U.S. presidential election.
This was higher than the 306 electoral votes won by Biden and Joe Biden in 2016 and 2020, respectively. It also surpassed George W. Bush’s electoral votes in 2000 and 2004, but fell far short of Barack Obama’s 365 electoral votes in 2008 and 332 in 2012. There wasn’t.
Bill Clinton never reached 50% of the popular vote in both presidential elections because he fielded a strong third-party candidate in Ross Perot. However, Clinton managed to win 370 electoral votes in 1992 and 379 in 1996.
Even those powerful victories dwarfed Ronald Reagan’s true landslide victory in 1984. Reagan lost only Washington, D.C., and Democratic rival Walter Mondale’s home state of Minnesota, thereby securing 525 electoral votes and over 58 percent of the popular vote.
Richard Nixon in 1972 and Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 both received more than 60% of the popular vote in their re-election campaigns, which seems impossible in today’s political climate. It is incredible to think that two such large landslides could occur within eight years. A former senator who was President Nixon’s re-election rival in 1972. George McGovern even lost his home state of South Dakota, winning only Massachusetts and Washington, DC.
Voters back then were much more likely to split their ballots. Mr. Johnson, a Democrat, has won the strongest Democratic majority in the House since the 1964 landslide, but in all but one state, voters who voted for both Mr. Nixon and Mr. checked them.
A more recent trend is for voters to line up their votes for the House, Senate and White House. The trend has led to a period of more frequent turnover in the White House and Congress, but will see Democrats retain Senate seats in several states won by Mr. Trump this year.
Trump’s victory in 2024 would be the third consecutive presidential election in which voters excluded the incumbent party. The last time three consecutive elections were held was in the late 1800s, when Grover Cleveland became the first president to be elected non-consecutively. Mr. Trump is in second place.
Trump is unlikely to be on the presidential ballot again because the 22nd Amendment limits presidential terms to two terms. But in two years’ time, voters will have a chance to weigh in on how he and the Republican Party wield power in the 2026 midterm elections.
The past three presidents, including Trump in his first term, all lost their House majorities in their first two years in office. If President Trump wins a friendly Republican majority this year, he will have to work hard to keep voters on his side two years from now.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
