Exactly.
Trump won in 2016 via Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin where he won by 10,704, 44,292, and 22, 748 votes, respectively. That’s 77,744 votes. Those states has the smallest margins of victory and put him over the Electoral College top.
Biden’s margin of victory in 2020 came from Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin where he won* by 11,779, 10,457, and 20,682 votes, respectively. That’s only 42,918 votes.
In 2024, Trump won via Wisconsin Michigan and Pennsylvania by 29,397, 80,103, and 120,266 votes, respectively. That’s 229,766 votes.
And look at Trump in Wisconsin.
Trump went from a 22,748 victory margin, to a 20,692 loss* margin, to a 29,397 victory margi imm2016, 2020*, and 2024, respectively. .
That’s still too close for comfort. But a win is a win. And I bet you his 2024 win came from youth and minority votes that overwhelmed Tammany Hall.
Indeed, per Wikipedia, Trump won Wisconsin with 49.6% of the vote, the highest percentage a Republican candidate has received in Wisconsin since Reagan’s 1984 landslide. When Wisconsin was called for Trump, a number of networks simultaneously declared Trump the president-elect, winning a second, non-consecutive term. Trump’s victory in the state made him the first Republican candidate to carry Wisconsin twice since Ronald Reagan did so in 1980 and 1984. He also received nearly 1.7 million votes, a record for a candidate in the history of the state. Wisconsin was the closest state in the election by margin of victory, with Trump only winning it by 0.86%, thus making it the only state to be decided by less than a 1% margin. Wisconsin also shifted rightward by about 1.5 points, the weakest such shift in any of the swing states in the election.
Republicans need the same kind of bone-crushing, relentless drive nationally to persevere in the midterms and beyond.