Posted on 01/08/2025 11:24:22 AM PST by TigerClaws
With all the ballots counted and all the races decided, in today’s post, I want to unpack what we already know about how Trump “won” the popular vote.1 I use quotes around the word “won” for two reasons.
First, to keep in full view what I wrote earlier in “Is This What Democracy Looks Like?” – that Trump’s candidacy was only viable because the justices he appointed to the Supreme Court: (1) disabled the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment (which should otherwise have barred him from holding office again) and (2) shielded him from standing trial before the election for trying to overturn the 2020 results or for hoarding classified documents (which would have kept his criminality in full view of the electorate, and possibly rendered his candidacy a non-starter due to a jail sentence or loss of support). In any other country, we would understand that as part of an autocratic takeover, not a democratic victory.
Second, as this post will show, the results are best understood as a vote of no confidence in Democrats, not an embrace of Trump or MAGA.
Visualizations like this one from FiveThirtyEight, purporting to show that “America swung right,” have been ubiquitous since the election.
But, as we will see, America didn’t swing rightward, but couchward:
The popular vote result was almost entirely a collapse in support for Harris and Democrats, not an increase in support for Trump and MAGA. Trump was no more popular this year than four years ago, while Harris significantly underperformed Biden 2020.
Most of Harris’s losses were due to anti-MAGA surge voters staying home.2 She lost the most ground in deep-Blue urban areas, where the dangers of a second Trump administration seemed most remote. About 19 million Americans who cast ballots for Biden in 2020 did not vote in 2024.
Anti-MAGA surge voters stayed home because they were less alarmed by a second Trump Administration than they were four years ago. A key to Biden’s victory was high turnout from less-engaged voters who believed they had something to lose under Trump. In 2024, however, about 15 million fewer votes were cast “against” Trump than in 2020.
As I’ve been saying for years, America has an anti-MAGA majority, but not necessarily a pro-Democratic one. In 2020 (and 2022, in part), alarm about Trump and MAGA was enough to overcome the cynicism and alienation of mostly younger voters who desperately want bigger systemic change, but who oppose the MAGA agenda. This time, their cynicism won out. This was in no small part because the media and other non-partisan civil society leaders were themselves more skeptical of the dangers, and because the inaction of the Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress against MAGA threats belied their rhetoric of existential dangers to the nation.3
This map, from the New York Times, does a much better job making clear where Trump’s “gains” came from – namely, from Harris’s losses.
Indeed, the defining feature of American politics this century is that neither party can “win” elections anymore; they can only be the “not-loser.” Only thanks to the two-party system can the not-loser be crowned the “winner,” since there is no way to fire the incumbent party without hiring the opposition party. Yet political commentators keep confusing shifts in the two parties’ electoral fortunes with changes in voters’ basic values or priorities. A collapse in support for Democrats does not mean that most Americans, especially in Blue America, are suddenly eager to live in an illiberal theocracy.
Consider that only once before in American history have three consecutive presidential elections seen the White House change partisan hands, and that nine out of the last ten midterm or presidential elections have been “change elections,” in the sense that either the presidency, the House, or the Senate changed partisan hands,4 which is completely unprecedented.5
In short, Americans are fed up. This election wasn’t just a vote of no confidence in Democrats; it was yet another vote of no confidence in our entire political system. We cannot mistake this result for an active embrace of Trump or MAGA fascism. Prologue: Escape from Flatland
The idea that “America swung right” seems self-evident based on the shift in vote margin towards Trump. But this is what I call “Flatland” thinking – a metaphor for a fatal flaw in most election analysis.
In the two-dimensional Flatland,6 we only count the people who voted and ignore those who were eligible but didn’t, for basically two reasons. First, from a pragmatic perspective, those who don’t vote literally do not count towards the final result. Second, it’s taken for granted that if they had voted, their partisan split would have been similar to those who did vote, and would not have changed the outcome.
In 3D-Land, however, we include eligible non-voters in our analysis. This is important not because it will change the outcome, or bolster post-hoc finger pointing with new “what-ifs,” but because it will let us better understand the meaning of the vote, as well as where the best hopes for the future lie. Red Sox vs. Yankees
Here’s a simple illustration. Let’s say we are told that in a 1985 vote for the most popular baseball team, there were 499 votes for the Red Sox and 460 votes for the Yankees, and another 541 fans who didn’t vote for either. (Full disclosure: I grew up in Boston.) In my lexicon, a Flatland description of the results would be that the Red Sox won 52 to 48 percent, and a 3D-Land description would be that the Red Sox won 33.3 to 30.7 percent, with 36.1 percent staying home.7
Now, let’s say that there’s another baseball fan vote in 1986, after the Red Sox blew the World Series to the Mets in 7 games when Bill Buckner allowed a routine ground ball to roll between his legs in game 6. Is Bill Buckner to blame for Red Sox losing 1986 World Series
This time, just 424 fans vote for the Red Sox, and once again 460 vote for the Yankees. In Flatland, the result is reported as a complete reversal, 52 to 48 percent win for the Yankees. But in 3D-Land, where we consider the results in the context of all 1,500 fans who could have voted, the results would be reported as Yankees 30.7 percent, Red Sox 28.3 percent, with 41.1 percent not voting.
(Rest of the "analysis"/spin/story at link)
Hmm....
Perhaps they didn't exist in 2020?
They’re not getting it. Hope it continues.
Sounds like a whole lot of butt hurt. And I only read the first three paragraphs.
This guy is on drugs.
Ronna McDaniel was part of the steal. The clan of Romney ensured that no fighting against Democratic Party ballot fraud was done in 2020. The coup was a Uniparty coup.
All garbage but this paragraph is useful to the conservative journalists here as it shows the “missing voters”:
” About 19 million Americans who cast ballots for Biden in 2020 did not vote in 2024.”
Where’d those “voters” go??
This does not look like the AP.
It is a Substack.
let me distill the essence of this ridiculous article:
Trump won because more people voted for him than voted for kamala, and the majority voted for Trump because they believed Trump would be a better President than Kamala ...
By using quotes around the word “won,” that implies questioning the legitimacy of the election, which I have been well informed is a violation of the highest laws in the land and tantamount of insurrection.
......Trump’s candidacy was only viable because the justices he appointed to the Supreme Court: (1) disabled the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment (which should otherwise have barred him from holding office again).....
That’s just total garbage! Even Confederates were allowed to hold office after the 14th Amendment was passed!
Donald J Trump is our true and legitimate President Elect! All who say differently are swine who should resign any offices they may hold!
I couldn’t get that far
“KEY FROM THIS: 19 million voters “stayed home”?”
2020 - 155.5 million combined votes for Trump & Biden.
2024 - 152.3 million combined votes fro Trump & Harris.
I can see 3.2 million ‘missing’ votes 2020 vs 2024. The whole story is nonsense and I think the grapes are very sour in the mouth of the liberal author.
Perhaps they disappeared into a black hole!
Ha-ha!
Dear AP, President Trump (I love saying that) was never indicted by a grand jury for insurrection. Ergo you are full of shyt. QED.
“ Sounds like a whole lot of butt hurt. And I only read the first three paragraphs.”
There’s no more than one sentence needed, let alone all this going on and on and on bla bla bla
He doesn’t accept that trump won.
But he did.
In meemory of Peter Yarrow, who went to his reward yesterday...
Where did all the voters go, four years passing,
Where did all the voters go, four years ago,
Where did all the voters go, made-up ballots, every one,
O when will AP ever learn,
O when will AP ever learn?
I posted this b.s. AP spin because it was amusing they actually think 19 million people “stayed home” as if they actually voted in 2020.
It also shows libs are stuck on stupid. They won’t learn the lessons of the 2024 shellacking and are set up to lose big in the 2026 elections.
There’s also an ATLANTIC article blaming for the big loss in Ukraine... TRUMP! Another bit of lib insanity.
I think it was the Clinton administration on the way out where the White House workers superglued phones and engaged in other such destruction on the way out.
Since the loss Biden has shipped out 11 terrorists from Gitmo, banned oil exploration, given out 1,000+ pardons including to his son. No telling what next. 1/20 can’t get here fast enough!
How AP “Reports”
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